Wall Sculptures

A wall sculpture does something a print cannot: it changes through the day. Because the form stands off the wall, morning light and lamplight land on it differently, and the shadow it casts is part of the work. These are original, hand-formed sculptures made one at a time in Melbourne by Bec Stevens — not prints, not castings, and never reproduced.

How a wall sculpture behaves in a room

Flat art is fixed. You hang it, and it looks the same at 8am as it does at 8pm. A sculptural piece is closer to a window in that respect — it responds. The folds catch light along their ridges and hold shadow in their hollows, so the piece reads soft and pale in daylight and deeper, more metallic, under a lamp at night.

That behaviour is worth planning for. A work placed on a wall that gets side-light — from a window to its left or right, or from a lamp below — will show far more depth than one lit flat-on from the ceiling. If you have a choice of walls, the one with raking light is almost always the better one.

How each piece is made

Every work is built by hand, one at a time. The forms are drawn from fabric — ribbons, folds, drapes caught mid-movement — and then held permanently in that shape, which is where the tension in the work comes from: something that reads as soft, made rigid. Nothing is cast from a mould, so no two pieces fold the same way, even within the same colour family.

The surface is finished by hand after forming. Depending on the piece that might be a frosted matt, a pearl, a high gloss, or a hand-painted metallic — and the finish changes the character of the form as much as the colour does. A matt chocolate piece is quiet and absorbing; the same shape in a polished brass is all highlight and edge.

Finishes, and how to choose one

Pieces are named for their finish rather than numbered — Golden Bronze, Pewter, Chocolate Cherry, Blush Pearl — which makes matching to a room faster than working from a photograph alone. The palette groups roughly into:

• Brass and gold — warm, high-contrast, strongest under lamplight.
• Bronze and chocolate — deep and grounding, good against pale or white walls.
• Chrome and pewter — cool and reflective, picks up the colours around it.
• Pearl, blush and beige — soft and tonal, closest to disappearing into a light wall, so the form does the work rather than the colour.
• Olive and burgundy — the deeper colours, and the smallest groups.

You can browse by finish from the home page, where each colour family shows how many works exist in it and how many are still available.

Sizing a piece for your wall

Works range from roughly 500 mm across to over two metres. As a rough guide, a piece looks intentional when it occupies somewhere between half and two-thirds of the width of the furniture beneath it — a 1500 mm sculpture over a three-metre sofa, for example, rather than something small floating in the middle.

Exact dimensions are listed on every product page. If you would rather see it than measure it, the home page has a See it on your wall tool: photograph your wall, and the piece is placed into the photo at true scale, so you can judge the size before you commit.

One of one

There is only ever one of each work. Nothing is editioned, reproduced or reprinted, so when a piece sells, that particular form is gone — the closest you can get afterwards is a different work in the same finish. Around a quarter of the catalogue is available at any given time; the rest have found homes.

That is the honest reason to move on something you like rather than bookmark it, and it is also why the site has a what's available now view separate from the full archive.

Delivery and enquiries

Works ship Australia-wide from Melbourne, and internationally on request. Each piece is packed individually — wall sculpture is more fragile in transit than framed art, and is treated accordingly. Every piece arrives ready to hang.

Next: see the works available now, read about the ribbon form that most of the collection is built from, or look at the lit pieces.