Beach blues

“I couldn’t get on the plane,” says Daimon Downey. For eight years, as the frontman of the dance music band Sneaky Sound System, he had toured the world. The US, Russia, Italy, Spain, Great Britain, Canada — supporting Lady Gaga and Robbie Williams, among others. A headline act, too, playing at the Glastonbury Festival. Living out of a suitcase. But suddenly he experienced a visceral change. 

“The tour was leaving for overseas,” he says. “I was literally, like, I can’t do it. I need a pet. I need a girlfriend. I need a fridge. I need a bed. I need pot plants. I need to put my feet on the ground, grow some roots.”

Downey had always wanted to be a painter. When he made the decision to leave the band, it all happened fast. He moved into his Bondi apartment, turned it into a studio and started working towards an exhibition. Within a few weeks he had met actress Georgia Gorman. 

It sounds like a prime example of manifestation. But as Downey would acknowledge, there was a rawness to the transition. 

“It was so nerve-racking ’cause you’re just alone,” he says honestly. “You’re painting by yourself. From making pop music, where you’d play, and the soundboard was the crowd. You could change it, test it. Yeah, the solo vibe, it was lonely but exciting.”

Downey’s upstairs apartment is directly across the road from Bondi Beach. An ocean view fills the bay windows. He lives there with Gorman and their young son, Sterling. 

The colours in the apartment are vibrant but not hectic. The pastel blues and pinks of the space sit well with the sorbet tones of the Art Deco buildings of Bondi. The walls are full of artworks. Key furniture is from MCM House with vintage pieces sourced from online marketplace Curated Spaces.

There’s something invigorating about Downey’s presence, like sea air. Maybe it’s his can-do spirit. When he was in Sneaky Sound System, they formed their own music label after being rejected by recording companies. Now as a visual artist, he holds his own exhibitions, sells his own work. 

“I do exhibitions that are one-night only, so they are concentrated. And then you’ve got two days to go and pick it up," he says. "I turn the music up, have great cocktails. Some collective things happen — when things are selling, and people are in the vibe. 

"No closing time. Maybe turn the lights down, put a disco ball up. At midnight people are still chatting away. You can go home with a story of the artwork, how you bought it. The pleasure of the whole process, the atmosphere of it all.”

There’s a clarity to Downey's world. The colours of Bondi buildings, the sea, the artworks, the clothes he wears — it all comes together. We’re presented with so many choices in life, so many ways of how to be, it’s refreshing when someone has such definition. There’s a power in editing down your world.

This is an edited extract from New Coastal by Ingrid Weir (Hardie Grant, $60). Photography by Ingrid Weir.