Objects of Desire

Photographs by Jon Riethmuller

“The house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

The Artist

Jon Riethmuller is an Australian photographic artist whose practice explores the relationship between memory, identity and the emotional architecture of everyday life. Working primarily through carefully constructed photographic tableaux, he investigates how ordinary domestic objects accumulate meaning through lived experience and how familiar interiors become repositories of personal and collective memory.

Rather than documenting existing scenes, Riethmuller constructs each photograph with deliberate attention to the relationships between objects, colour, light and space. Ceramic vessels, flowers, fruit, textiles and paintings recur throughout his work, forming a visual vocabulary that evolves across individual images and larger bodies of work. Through repetition these objects cease to function simply as still-life elements; instead, they become companions to memory, carrying the traces of care, ritual and absence that shape domestic life.

Central to his practice is the belief that the most significant landscapes are often those that cannot be seen directly. While his photographs depict rooms and objects, their true subject lies elsewhere—in the interior landscapes of thought, remembrance, longing and imagination. The domestic interior becomes both a physical environment and a metaphor for consciousness itself.

Artist’s Statement

There is a tendency to think of still life as one of the quieter traditions within Western art. Removed from the drama of history painting or portraiture, it has often been understood as a genre concerned principally with observation, composition and beauty. Yet throughout its history, still life has also served as a profound meditation on mortality, memory, domesticity and the fragile relationships that bind people to the material world.

The photographs brought together in Objects of Desire emerge from this tradition while simultaneously extending it. Rather than depicting found arrangements, each work has been deliberately constructed. Everyday objects—ceramic vessels, flowers, fruit, textiles, paintings and furniture—are assembled within carefully considered interiors that function less as descriptive settings than as emotional landscapes. The resulting photographs occupy an uncertain territory between documentation and invention, between lived experience and remembered experience.

Throughout the exhibition the domestic interior becomes an active participant in the work. Rooms are not presented as architectural spaces but as repositories of accumulated histories. Furniture carries the marks of repeated use. Ceramics speak of care and continuity. Flowers introduce the rhythms of growth and decline. Fruit suggests abundance while quietly acknowledging impermanence. Paintings within the photographs open secondary worlds, inviting viewers to move between representation and memory.

Although no human figure appears, the photographs remain deeply inhabited. A pair of gloves resting beside a vessel, a carefully folded cloth, an empty bowl awaiting use—these details imply gestures that have already occurred or are yet to occur. Presence is communicated through absence. The viewer encounters not portraits of individuals but portraits of lives inferred through the material traces they leave behind.

Across the eleven works, recurring objects establish a visual vocabulary that gradually acquires emotional resonance. A blue ceramic vase reappears in different configurations. Lemons migrate from one arrangement to another. Seasonal flowers return in altered relationships. Paintings become windows within windows. These repetitions create continuity without repetition, allowing the exhibition to unfold as a sequence of visual conversations rather than isolated images.

The photographs ask very little of their audience beyond patience. They reward slow looking. They invite the viewer to inhabit the silence between objects, to recognise the subtle dramas of arrangement, colour and light, and to discover that the most familiar things often contain the deepest mysteries. In this sense, the exhibition is not simply about interiors—it is about the interior life.

Balloon Vase with Objects

“A house that has been experienced is not an inert box. Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.”
Gaston Bachelard

The vase appears to occupy the room as though it has always belonged there. Around it smaller objects gather without hierarchy, each holding its own history yet entering into conversation with the others. Behind them the painted landscape offers another place entirely—one remembered rather than observed. The photograph resists deciding where the true interior lies. Is it contained within the room, within the painting, or within the memories carried by the objects themselves? The arrangement remains still, yet nothing feels static. Time lingers between the objects like another material quietly occupying the space.

Blue Vase Still Life

“Even the common articles made for daily use become endowed with beauty when they are loved.”
Soetsu Yanagi

The blue vessel anchors the composition without demanding attention. Around it, smaller ceramics and the vivid red pomegranate establish a conversation between permanence and transience. The surrounding space is unusually generous; emptiness becomes as important as the objects themselves. The broad painted wall behind them is neither architecture nor landscape but an atmosphere within which memory may settle. Nothing interrupts the silence. Instead, the viewer is invited to experience the slow accumulation of meaning that occurs when familiar things are allowed simply to exist. These objects are not arranged to demonstrate beauty but to reveal companionship. Together they suggest that domestic life is composed less of significant events than of quiet relationships patiently maintained over time.

Blue Vase with Gloves

“The house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
Gaston Bachelard

The gloves introduce the absent body. Unlike the ceramics, they retain the memory of touch and gesture, implying that someone has only recently stepped beyond the frame. Their vivid red interrupts the calm blue vessel, creating a tension between utility and intimacy. The floral wallpaper speaks of cultivated nature while the ceramic bowl remains empty, waiting. Nothing in the photograph appears accidental, yet nothing feels theatrical. Instead, the arrangement hovers between preparation and recollection. The objects do not perform a narrative; they preserve its traces. The room becomes inhabited not through presence but through the quiet evidence of lives that continue beyond the limits of the photograph.

Balloon Vase with Pumpkin

“Beauty is born of use.”
Soetsu Yanagi, from his writings on mingei

The large balloon vase possesses a calm authority, while the small pumpkin quietly resists becoming a symbol of seasonal abundance. Together they establish an unexpected balance between permanence and decay. The floral painting behind them extends the domestic space into another pictorial world, reminding us that every interior contains other imagined interiors. The photograph celebrates neither luxury nor nostalgia. Instead, it asks whether ordinary possessions acquire significance simply because they remain with us over time. Beauty here emerges from familiarity. The objects seem to have accepted one another’s company, allowing the room itself to become the true subject of the work.

Vase of Flowers with Painting

“True poetry is a function of awakening.”
Gaston Bachelard

The flowers refuse restraint. They overflow the vessel, reaching beyond the measured order established by the furniture and painting behind them. Yet their exuberance is temporary. Every blossom quietly acknowledges its own impermanence. Against this awareness, the ceramic vessel appears enduring, carrying both flowers and memory with equal patience. The arrangement becomes less a celebration of colour than a meditation upon generosity. It suggests that domestic life is enriched not by permanence but by repeated acts of care—placing flowers in water, arranging stems, making room for beauty that will inevitably disappear.

Day Lily with Ginger Jar

“The flower is always in the almond.”
Gaston Bachelard

The lilies have only recently opened. Their freshness contrasts with the patterned ginger jar, whose decorative surface speaks of permanence and tradition. The folded cloth introduces another human gesture, suggesting preparation rather than completion. Nothing here is final. The photograph exists within a moment of becoming. The flowers will fade, the cloth will be unfolded, the bowls will eventually be used. Yet photography suspends these futures. Time slows sufficiently for the viewer to recognise that domestic rituals derive their significance not from spectacle but from repetition. It is these repeated gestures that quietly construct the emotional architecture of everyday life.

Day Lily with Red Object

“What is the proper way of seeing? … to see things as they are.”
Soetsu Yanagi

The single red vessel operates almost like punctuation within the composition. It interrupts the gentler tones without overwhelming them, reminding us that memory often attaches itself to the smallest object rather than the grandest possession. The lilies rise above the arrangement with remarkable composure, while the empty bowls await an unseen gathering. Nothing dramatic occurs. Instead, the photograph invites prolonged attention to relationships of colour, form and distance. Meaning emerges gradually, revealing itself only to viewers prepared to linger.

Jugs with Lemons

“Man is most free when his tools are proportionate to his needs.”
Soetsu Yanagi

Each vessel possesses its own distinct character, shaped by the hand that made it and the years that have followed. The lemons introduce brightness without becoming decorative excess. Their imperfections matter. They remain recognisably ordinary, resisting the polished perfection often associated with still life. Together, ceramics and fruit establish a quiet economy of use. These are not museum objects separated from life but companions within it. Their beauty lies precisely in their continued usefulness, reminding us that care and utility need never be opposed.

Lemons and Cherries

“The immense is within ourselves.”
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Abundance appears almost accidental. The fruit gathers naturally upon the table, while the flowers continue their silent unfolding in the background. Nothing has been arranged to impress. Instead, the photograph suggests hospitality before the arrival of guests, or perhaps the remains of an ordinary afternoon. Such ambiguity allows the viewer’s own memories to enter the work. Domestic life rarely announces its significance while it is occurring. Only afterwards do familiar objects become repositories of affection and loss. The photograph gently inhabits that interval between experience and remembrance.

Lemons with Day Lily

“Utility, material and technique … give us the quiet, warm beauty of the crafts we use every day.”
Soetsu Yanagi

Here the lilies and lemons speak different languages of time. One is already opening towards decline, the other promises nourishment before eventual disappearance. The ceramics endure quietly between them, carrying neither urgency nor sentiment. The wallpaper introduces an imagined garden, while the real flowers remain rooted in the room before us. Reality and representation fold gently into one another. The photograph proposes that domestic interiors are never isolated from imagination; every room contains landscapes remembered, desired or invented.

Blue Vase with Pumpkin

“We are never real historians, but always near poets.”
Gaston Bachelard

The repeated appearance of the blue vase transforms it from object into companion. Familiarity replaces novelty. Like an old chair or well-used table, it acquires emotional weight through recurrence rather than rarity. The pumpkin, too, returns—not as repetition but as variation. Across the exhibition these recurring objects create visual memory, allowing viewers to recognise relationships that extend beyond any single photograph. The room gradually reveals itself as a living archive, where ordinary things accumulate quiet histories simply by remaining present. In the end, the photograph asks us not what objects mean, but how they accompany us through time.

Afterword: The Interior Landscape

When we speak of landscapes, we usually imagine places beyond ourselves. We think of mountains, rivers, forests and coastlines—spaces that stretch outward into the world. Yet every life is also shaped by another landscape, one that cannot be mapped. It is the landscape of memory, imagination, affection and loss. It is the place where ordinary experience quietly accumulates until it becomes identity.

The photographs in Objects of Desire begin with domestic objects, but they do not end there. A vase, a bowl, a pair of gloves or a piece of fruit are not presented simply as things to be observed. They are companions to lived experience. They carry the traces of routine, ritual and care. They have remained with us through ordinary days, witnessing moments that are rarely recorded and often forgotten. In their silent persistence they become repositories of memory.

Gaston Bachelard understood that a house is more than architecture. It is a place in which imagination is formed. The rooms we inhabit gradually become rooms within us. Long after we have left them, they continue to organise our recollections, our dreams and our understanding of ourselves. We remember places not only through walls and windows but through the objects that occupied them and the lives that unfolded around them.

Soetsu Yanagi approached these questions from another direction. He recognised that beauty often resides in humble, useful objects whose value is revealed through long familiarity rather than rarity. Their significance lies not in perfection but in faithful service. Through use they become woven into the fabric of daily existence until they quietly participate in our emotional lives.

These photographs exist somewhere between those two ways of seeing. They are carefully constructed, yet they seek the emotional truth of lived experience rather than documentary description. The arrangements are invented, but the feelings they evoke are drawn from the ordinary rituals through which all lives are lived.

Perhaps this is why no human figure appears. The photographs do not require one. Presence already exists in the folds of fabric, the worn surfaces of timber, the weight of ceramic vessels and the temporary brilliance of flowers. Every object carries evidence of lives beyond the frame. Together they suggest that absence is not emptiness but another form of presence.

The repetition of objects throughout the exhibition is deliberate. The same vase returns. Lemons reappear. Flowers bloom and disappear. Paintings open onto other imagined spaces. Like memories themselves, these objects refuse to remain fixed. Each return alters their meaning. What begins as observation gradually becomes recognition.

The interiors depicted here are not simply the rooms in which we live. They are the landscapes through which we think. The arrangements become metaphors for consciousness itself, where memory sits beside desire, where beauty exists alongside impermanence, and where the smallest things often carry the greatest emotional weight.

Perhaps this is why still life continues to matter. In a culture that rewards speed, spectacle and constant movement, stillness becomes an act of attention. To look carefully at ordinary things is also to look carefully at ourselves.

If these photographs ask anything of the viewer, it is simply this: to pause long enough to recognise that the rooms we remember, the objects we keep, and the lives we quietly construct around them have already become part of our interior landscape.

And perhaps, having looked closely enough, we discover that the most profound landscapes are not those that lie beyond the horizon, but those we carry within us.