As an emerging voice in Australian contemporary art, Morgan Stokes’ practice is defined by a curious attentiveness to material. Working across sculpture and painting, he’s drawn to what he calls the “inherent poetry” of raw materials – weight, opacity, and resistance – and to the way physical objects assert a presence that images simply cannot. “I feel like I’ve lived my whole life through a screen,” the artist says, adding, “I keep returning to the physical, the tactile. My practice is a response to that.”

The Rocks and Blobs series emerged from that same impulse. The first work appeared in 2022, initially conceived to anchor a large-scale silk piece – translucent, almost weightless. The heavy stone form beside it was a counterpoint, and the tension between the two was immediate: one light, one impossibly grounded, each exaggerating the other’s dimensionality. The series has evolved from there, but the dialogue between opposing material states remains a core exploration.

The commission for 385 Gore Street, Fitzroy, which came from the interior designers Hecker Guthrie, marked a new register in Stokes’ practice. “I hadn’t worked at this scale before. It pushed my sculpture to a new level – there are logistical challenges that come when you push the scale. It was exciting to go there and think about the site itself,” he says.

Central to the work is a conversation with place, which Stokes spent time investigating to develop the custom pieces for the lobby. Fitzroy sits on a volcanic plain, a geology that gave rise to the bluestone and mudbrick characteristic that defines much of Melbourne. Stokes wanted that history embedded in the work. “I wanted to have a cyclical conversation about the site the project sits on. Because it was the first commission of its kind, I was able to do this, and it adds to the meaning behind the work,” he explains.

The pairing of rock and aluminium is no accident, the stones evoke what lies beneath – ancient, unprocessed, drawn from the earth. The aluminium forms, while also derived from the ground, add an industrial and otherworldly note. Plated with black nickel, they reflect the viewer back at themselves, closing that circuitous loop.

At Piccolo House, our philosophy is underpinned by restraint and resolution, making Rocks and Blobs a fitting centrepiece. As a moment of pause inside the cave-like lobby of 385 Gore St, these sculptures reward those who truly look.