Overview
Not too many people can say they've got an actual museum in their backyard. But local architect and art collector Corbett Lyon sure can. He and wife Yueji have just opened the doors to their new Housemuseum Galleries — a public exhibition space for contemporary art, architecture and design, built adjacent to the couple's Kew home.
Their original Lyon-designed Cotham Road pad — called the Lyon Housemuseum — is famous itself as a fusion of private residence and private museum, open to the public for tours and events on certain days of the year. The couple built it back in 2009, as a platform for challenging conventional ideas about public and private space. The following year, this groundbreaking home even scooped Victoria's highest architectural design award for residential architecture, the Harold Desbrowe-Annear Award.
'Enter' by Tobias Titz.
Now that the striking new gallery space next door has joined the family, it'll play host to regular local and international exhibitions, with a focus on pushing the envelope as to how art is displayed and experienced. Showing off more of Lyon's design prowess, it's a contemporary beauty, complete with soaring 5.5-metre-high ceilings and five dedicated exhibition spaces. It even boasts its own enclosed sculpture courtyard, as well as a cafe and retail shop. And it's open to the public six days a week.
The Housemuseum Galleries are making their debut with inaugural show ENTER, which showcases new works by 16 contemporary Aussie artists, including hyperreal sculptor Patricia Piccinini (her immersive white 'field' is pictured above), audiovisual artist Kynan Tan, sculptor and visual artist Callum Morton (whose giant Donald Trump head you would definitely recognise) and painter Esther Stewart.
The Housemuseum Galleries are open 10am–5pm, Tuesday to Sunday, at 217 Cotham Road, Kew. ENTER runs until July 21.
Images: John Gollings, Diana Snape and Tobias Titz.