A pseudo-fictional review of Lovefool and AdminAdmin Issue #1 at Strawberry, 2024 1996: it was the summer before sixth grade. It was also the summer Jill Bates told my friend John she wanted to give him a handjob. None of us had gotten a handjob before and even less of us knew what it actually […]

When we founded the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale, I was inspired by the DIY culture in our artistic community and the rich history of artist-led projects, as well as a new wave of young art graduates who are starting various project spaces. There is this fertile ground in Melbourne right now. People seem to be taking on different kinds of projects and running with them. That, for me, was the catalyst as well as my personal interest in sculpture.

In 1974 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released That’s Entertainment! to celebrate the studio’s 50th anniversary which now, in 2024, marks its 100th year centenary. Perhaps to echo the film’s status as a proto-highlight reel anticipating a legacy, the exhibition of the same name at Animal House is a dedication to Yusi Zang, Tim Woodward, Beth Maslen, Chris Madden, […]

The Possibilities Are Immense: Fifty Years of the George Paton Gallery comes at a transitional moment for the University of Melbourne’s student gallery, also known as the GPG. In 2022, the GPG moved out of the decrepit old asbestos-riddled student union building and into the new student ‘precinct,’ a conglomerate of sinewy grey concrete, golden […]

Housed within Buxton Contemporary, The same crowd never gathers twice is an exhibition with a curious title. It initially provoked me to think of moments when I found myself situated within crowds, organised or not, such as the dinner table, the food court or a tram stop. And how fleeting the configurations of crowds are, […]

Travelling north on the 86 for the group exhibition Five rooms and house rules at Bundoora Homestead Arts Centre, I find myself playing a kind of phrase association to see how frequently I can think of different idiomatic uses of ‘house’ and ‘home’. For the most part, the ‘home’ sayings encircle the same kind of […]

Last month, GPU manufacturer NVIDIA’s share prices tumbled by nine-point-five per cent, representing the greatest loss in market value in one day for any company ever at a loss of 279 billion dollars 1. The GPU is the primary technology that powers AI, and harnessed en masse allows for inference to be conducted at industrial […]

Somewhere there is a Siren. Beginning with the utterance of a single note,  she listens for the return of her own voice.  She responds with the same note again,  and again, echoing into an endless chorus,  a swarm, a sea, a body. Her voices  fill the room with an ethereal presence,  escaping into the world, […]

In reflecting on the varied approaches to furniture engaged by artists, designers and architects, the cultural and social contribution of furniture is evident. However, architecture’s urge to respond and engage with the modern socio-political conditions has become more present.

In reflecting on the varied approaches to furniture engaged by artists, designers and architects, the cultural and social contribution of furniture is evident. However, architecture’s urge to respond and engage with the modern socio-political conditions has become more present.

In reflecting on the varied approaches to furniture engaged by artists, designers and architects, the cultural and social contribution of furniture is evident. However, architecture’s urge to respond and engage with the modern socio-political conditions has become more present.

Sarah Low, A Wild and Fragile Coast  Brunswick Street Gallery, Fitzroy VIC 18.04.24 – 05.05.24 On Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, I run out of adjectives and exhaust all expletives. The intensity of the landscape seems to ask for nothing less than a total obliteration of the self; a sacrifice of one’s body plunging into the turbulent […]

Futures Gallery, Collingwood, VIC Alice Ramsden – Murmurations 06.04.24–04.05.24  The blue in Quiescence embodies what the title suggests: a stillness, a latency, a tenuous space between calm and activity. Fading and blending into the surrounding hues, it seems a dampened blue, reminiscent of water damage. A blue conceded, yet, also, a blue birth. A blue […]

For Magnetic Topographies, a social practice becomes a place-based practice becomes a compost made up of new friendships and knowledge. A practice that is playfully unassuming yet deeply anti-institutional: meet your friends, go for a walk, see what happens. 

Cache, Melbourne  Clara Joyce – Breathing and Chaos 6.4.24 – 7.4.24 I’d love you even more if you came with me. I was underway, underweight and emotionally charged entering the building. With bleached streaks and big pillows under your painting desk, I’ve followed you ever since you melted my legs, right in front of me […]

I felt completely unable to start this piece of writing. Even the slightest murmur could have salvaged my muted despair. But silence entombed me underneath this unceremonious mound of doubt, where I could only hear the hissing noise of total emptiness. Every sentence felt clunky, every thought irrelevant, every metaphor nonsensical. My world was blank […]

Dream Gallery, Pakenham  Hana Earles & Anabel Robinson 27.11.23 – 07.12.23 So I’m in Pakenham, in the middle of an empty office-turned-studio, in the middle of a field, perhaps too caffeinated, and staring at some art. Audrey chaperoned the four of us up from the city in her Subaru Forester accompanied by her dog, Ruby. […]

Galleries: BLINDSIDE (Melbourne) Exhibitions: Alex Hobba, Cockfighter’s Ghost There is something threatening about having a wide range of interests. Information aesthetics seem poised to overwhelm you with junk. Organising quickly becomes a profession and a chore, the logics of advertising and marketing simultaneously grow more obvious and more oblique. Advertising as a discipline is predicated […]

As we walk into the gallery, Kai tells me it’s Car Wash’s fifth birthday this year — a fact I find difficult to believe. Located in West Melbourne, the abandoned-car-wash-turned-gallery has been the site of countless self-organised exhibitions, gigs and parties, while somehow always evading the scrutiny of local council and building owners (if they […]

Galleries: Cathedral Cabinet, Gertrude Glasshouse Exhibitions: Victoria Stolz, no external; Francis Carmody, A Relic Remains There is a pull across the mismatched grids of the urban metropolis. From the purpose-built contemporary art space of Gertrude Glasshouse to the appropriated commercial window of Cathedral Cabinet, the allure of myth and meaning is the preoccupation of two […]

Gallery: FUTURES Gallery Exhibition: Sarah Drinan, Flesh Boundaries When I arrive at FUTURES the gallery-sitter is eating a bowl of soup alone at the front desk. It is quiet and I feel awkward about interrupting lunch so I walk straight into the show. In Spring, the first of Sarah Drinan’s paintings I see on entry, […]

Hyacinth, MelbourneCarmen-Sibha Keiso and Emily HansonOctober 13 – 31, 2023 At Hyacinth, I am eyeing the cracked and conspicuously unlatched floor-to-ceiling windows that one could plausibly lean on and fall through, down six floors of the Nicholas Building to certain death – an unfortunately fitting image given the rental precarity of the gallery, as evinced […]

Gallery: Rubicon ARI Exhibition: Sophie Cox, Protest and Survive The gallery-goer accustomed to skipping over exhibition labels and texts might just be compelled to stop and read by Protest and Survive, Sophie Cox’s ode to craftivism exhibited at Rubicon ARI. Thirteen textile works hang neatly and cleanly on the walls of the gallery space, but […]

Bus Projects, MelbourneJames Ashley, Alex Bienstock, Bradford Kessler, Adam Lehrer, Emily Ličen, Charlie Robert, Samm Sutton, Chelsea YoungAugust 31 – September 23 My ancestors come from a country called Bohemia. Montmartre was its capital. Courbet, Lautrec, Krebber, Bacher were its heads of state. Nihilism, its imperious national anthem. One day in 2010 the clock tower […]