In a Room is a conversation series where we ask our friends to share their favourite domestic spaces. For this edition we’re joined by artist, designer, and publisher EVI O
Evi O. is an award-winning multi-disclipinary designer and self-taught artist based in Sydney. With a curious eye and mind, she is constantly exploring and observing her surroundings. Through paint, Evi O. continues to explore the use of dominant abstract shapes, although the compositions she presents are broadly suggestive of earthly forms – animal, plant or constructed. The creatures she depicts, and the scenes that she relays are symbolic of people, places and scenes that have left their mark – and this affords her an intimacy with her subjects that infuses the images with emotional resonance. She is represented in Sydney by Saint Cloche Gallery.
SUPERNOVA – Evi O’s latest body of work – will launch at Sydney Contemporary at Carriageworks, Sydney, 5-8 September 2025, at booth J10 (Saint Cloche Gallery).
Which room are you in today?
I’m in my art and design studio in Marrickville as it’s Monday. It is a day to plan the week ahead with the team and eating emails and admin tasks hungrily.
Which room is the most active in your house?
We live in an open plan-vibe apartment where the kitchen and living areas blend. A generous part of it are glass windows looking towards the outside and we’re lucky to see a glimpse of CBD but with enough coverings of greenspaces and expansive sky. We cook, dine, watch movies and have conversations in this space. I personally love to skywatch (and bat watch). This is also the room where our dog knows where to do zoomies in. It is the heart of our home.
Which room gets the least amount of use?
I would say the bathrooms – they’re not the most inspiring space in our apartment.
Which is your work-from-home room of choice?
I actually don’t WFH much at all! I’m old-school in this department and I love to have separate space for work and home. The act of work is a daily ritual to me as much as my home ritual and having intentional space for them makes it much easier for me to both focus and stop.
The home of Evi O
Photo by Daniel Shipp
What defines a great room?
When everything in the room is intentional. Not to sound like The Minimalists or Marie Kondo but if you don’t remember you had an object or why you did something in the room, that thing probably is not that necessary for the space, and your life.
What is your personal favourite type of room?
MI do love a room with serious height, be it a white cube contemporary museum, an almost done high-ceiling building, or a church. It feels so calming being in it and there’s a whole fascinating study on how the height impacts humans. Look it up!.
Tell us about your all-time favourite room.
I very much enjoyed a room in Chichu Art Museum on Naoshima island where it was showing an artwork by Walter De Maria. Very similar to the previous question the room had a temple-like quality. It was a concrete room with a skylight window for natural light to pour in. There is a series of ascending steps leading to a pedestal-like top with a giant, black marble that looks like it belongs to the anime Gantz. It was a perfect mix of drama and beauty. So there’s that, and of course there’s the bathroom in Sketch, London … I can go on!
Walter De Maria "Time/Timeless/No Time" (2004), Chichu Art Museum, Japan
Photo by Mitsuo Matsuoka
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