My design work is often about storytelling, but I think this is probably one of the most personal works I’ve ever made,” says Danielle Brustman. The acclaimed interior designer’s new exhibition, I Could Have Danced All Night, is showing at the Jewish Museum of Australia: Gandel Centre of Judaica. Inspired by her grandmothers, Marta and Dora, and featuring their heirlooms, photographs and favourite music, it’s an evocative multimedia showcase that draws heavily from her childhood.

“It’s been very moving, and it’s been quite stirring as well,” she says. “There have been a lot of tears as well as joyous memories. It’s really been quite a powerful experience for me to revisit their stories.”

A multi-talented designer and artist, Brustman began her design career working as a set designer for theatre, before establishing her interior design studio in Melbourne in 2012.
Named one of the top 50 interior designers by Vogue Living, her work has shown in exhibitions and prizes including the Rigg Design Prize, NGV Triennial and Melbourne Design Week.

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Specially commissioned by the Jewish Museum, this latest show was unveiled earlier this month, and will also run alongside another exhibition, A Secret Chord, that opens in November. The musical theme of the complementary exhibition helped Brustman when developing her own artistic concept.

“The general, overarching theme is [to] talk to what it means to be Jewish and Australian,” she says. “So, my starting point was thinking about how music had been a really important part of my childhood and my family.

“That’s where the idea came to talk about my grandmothers, because one of my grandmothers in particular was a lover of music and the arts. She used to sing and dance, so I had so many childhood memories associated with music.”

The centrepiece of the exhibition is two intricately designed boxes – a jewellery and memory box named after Dora, and a music box named after Marta. First conceived by Brustman in January, the boxes were built by Brent Hall from Marfa Furniture over several months.

“They’re both quite complex,” she says. “One of them, Dora, is actually made from the timber material that belonged to an old dresser that was my grandmother’s. I had kept it with me and taken it around with me to all my share houses in my twenties.”

Meanwhile Marta, the music box, was inspired by items owned by its namesake matriarch. The tortoise shell acrylic resembles a comb she wore, and its shape is based on a shopping bag she used, which Brustman owns today.

“There’s five trays in the music box, and each tray has the title of a song that my grandmother used to sing, embossed inside,” she says. One of those songs, Cole Porter’s I Love Paris, can be played from the box.

Those same songs are heard in the exhibition’s soundtrack, curated by Brustman, alongside Yiddish folk songs that honour Dora’s family. There’s also a slideshow of family photos, which imbue the space with a strong sense of family history.

It was important to Brustman to honour her family’s legacy while conveying the differences in her grandmothers’ stories. “Marta’s family came [to Australia] in the 1930s from Romania, and they arrived in Sydney with very little. She grew up on top of a pub in Surry Hills,” Brustman says.

“Dora’s trajectory coming out to Australia was a much tougher one, and there was a lot more sorrow and tragedy in her story.” The contrast in the two family backgrounds added a layer of intricacy to the work.

“It was really just trying to find a way to weave those two stories together,” she says, “but also about celebrating the way they both wanted to make a better life for their families in Australia. It was a little complex to interweave those stories, but I’ve done my best to honour both women.”

I Could Have Danced All Night opens on Tuesday August 13. Tickets are now available to purchase; JMA members can enter for free.

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