Unreal Estate
Mietta Charlwood
Master of Architecture | University of Sydney
“Home is where time unfurls, where rituals anchor us, and emotions crest and break—braided through laughter, debate, and the swelling cadence of lives entwined.”
MATERIALS: timber + beeswax
Artist Statement
Home is not a possession, nor a boundary drawn in lines on a map. It is movement, echo, and return. It is carried in ritual, reshaped in memory, remade through hands that hold and pass it on. I once thought home was something to claim—fixed, owned, a title to secure.
But as I carve, as I listen, I learn: home lingers in the scent of beeswax warmed by touch, in the grain of Jarrah shaped by steady hands, in voices that rise and collide, folding into moments of reflection— questions left hanging in the air, reshaping thought long after the words have passed. The bowl is a steady presence, a marker of where I began. While the beeswax softens and re shapes, the bowl’s inner form remains, holding the memory of its first shape. Beneath them, the rippled base carries the weight of rain pooling into form, pressing against rigid lines, fracturing the colonial grid. The ripple expands outward—fluid, layered, uncontained—like water finding its own course, breaking through imposed boundaries. This work is an unravelling. A reckoning. A remembering of home not as a place to own, but as something lived, felt, built together and carried forward.
Synopsis
Home is not confined to walls or ownership; it is something lived, something felt—home lingers in ritual, breathes through material, and carries memory in scent and form. It exists in the warmth of touch, in the scent that lingers long after hands have let go, in the way light plays across a surface, in the echoes of voices that shape space long after they have quietened. The making of this piece was an act of connection. In the workshop, stories moved between hands as much as tools—knowledge passed in gestures, in the weight of wood against the lathe, in the shared rhythm of work. Learning the lathe was daunting, yet in its vibrations, in the grain shifting beneath my blade, I found a pulse—an evolving conversation between maker and material. The Jarrah bowl is an anchor—holding where I started, bearing the marks of my making. The beeswax sphere softens, reshapes—its warmth held in the palm, its scent lingering long after it is set down.
This object was designed to be touched as much as seen—inviting interaction, asking to be picked up, felt, and played with. The sphere’s form was chosen for this reason, alongside the rippled base, in connection to my memories of home—the rhythm of rain against the earth. Working with beeswax became an exploration of form in motion—moulding with ice, pouring into water, capturing the fleeting movement of liquid solidified in time. Scratching, brushing, carving—each mark a story, each surface a trace of interaction. The learning, the experience, and the play were as essential as the final form. Beneath them, the rippled base presses against imposed lines, breaking form, dissolving structure—fluid, layered, unbound. Like rain pressing into earth, dissolving imposed boundaries, this work is a reckoning, a remembering. Home is not something to hold—it is something felt, something carried, something unfolding still.
