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Review: New Greg Natale Flagship store

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By Penny Craswell

Interior designer Greg Natale has made his name through bold yet elegant colours and geometries, gradually augmenting his interiors with ranges of his own designed objects, homewares, textiles and more. Now, for the first time, you can browse the entire collection at the new Greg Natale Flagship store in Sydney’s Potts Point.

Greg Natale Shop, Sydney. Photo: Anson Smart

The shop itself is also designed by Natale, with floors in his own Rubato tile made with Jurassic marble, teamed with pale grey wall and ceiling finishes and elegant high arches to a wall niche and doorway.

Custom-made visual merchandising tables and round plinths in the same Jurassic marble and in a grey fluted finish create sculptural stands for the display of goods on sale.

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Review: Scented Intoxication exhibition by Lyn and Tony

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By Penny Craswell

Lyn Balzer and Tony Perkins are a Sydney-based photography and designer/maker duo with an international sensibility, whose works are nevertheless deeply rooted in Australia. Their new exhibition at Sydney’s Australian Design Centre, called Scented Intoxication, features works made from a range of materials in two simple colours: black and white. But it is scent that is the most extraordinary feature of this exhibition.

Gallery view, Scented Intoxication. Photo: Australian Design Centre
Gallery view, Scented Intoxication. Photo: Supplied by Australian Design Centre

When you enter the exhibition space, it hits you right away, a beautiful, heady perfume that is not sweet or perfume-like in the traditional sense, but is reminiscent of burnt wood or native Australian vegetation or both. Lyn and Tony worked with French-born Australian-based Elise Pioch Balzac of Maison Balzac to create two scents for two scented candles: L’Obscurite (darkness) is a black candle with a scent inspired by one of Lyn and Tony’s photographs of a sea cave in Kiama NSW. Elise interpreted the image in a scent inspired by volcanic rocks using tree resin, birch tar and red cedar. The other scent is L’Etrangete (strangeness), a white candle with a scent inspired by another photograph by Lyn and Tony, this time of a waterfall in a lush rainforest. Elise interpreted this image of sunlight in greenery as a scent with lemon myrtle, native ginger and hemp. Read more →