Barton Taylor is a Sydney-based commercial photographer specialising in the documentation of architecture and interior design. He spends his days chasing shadows around and rearranging the furniture in strangers’ houses, nestled in gardens, gutters, under the stairs, in various weird contortions, waiting patiently for the sun to come back out; trying not to take himself too seriously, but deeply serious about his work.

When not photographing the built environment Barton quietly works away at an ever expanding body of largely photo-based conceptual ‘art’ work. The focus of this work is most often detritus, ephemera, inventories of things, what he refers to as a sort of pop-anthropology.

The Project

Located just outside of Alstonville NSW, Victoria Park is a home for five, and also a working farmhouse set on a custard apple and former avacado farm.

From various approaches the house awards differing experiances, including a relaxed ornamental garden and outdoor area designed for gathering and cooking from the West, or the more formal Southern aspect presenting a familiar but abstract nod to a gabled rural house.

There is fluidness within, questioning what constitutes inside or outside space, with regular rhythmic motifs and materials tying everything together. A series of interconnected open spaces with operable sliding walls constitute the ground bedroom floor, intersperced with garden spaces that pierce through and connect to the upper ‘living’ area.

In a sense the house takes on the form of a lattice, an armature, which ties together the typical homely domestic chaos and enhances and encourages it, while grounding in the the natural location it celebrates.

Architect: Russell with Co.