Current
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Awaken
Yoko Ozawa 8 - 30 Nov 2024 Born in Japan, Yoko Ozawa has been creating ceramics since 2003. During her university studies in Japanese painting, she was deeply influenced by the Japanese notion of Yohaku (blank space), which she incorporated into her ceramics and wider installation practice. Her work is inspired by her lifelong interest in natural... Read more -
Theft
Archer Davies 8 - 30 Nov 2024 Archer Davies was born in the town of Maleny, Queensland. He graduated from the QLD College of Art in 2010. Since then he has traveled and painted consistently. His paintings have been exhibited at Jan Manton Art, Chapter House Lane Gallery, Seventh Gallery, Well Studio, Tokyo, Oigall Projects and Edwina... Read more -
Exponential Horizon
Brie Trenerry x Darren Wardle 8 - 30 Nov 2024 Exponential Horizon is an AI film made with Brie Trenerry from Darren Wardle’s paintings in which the moving image is anything but a catastrophe. Brie Trenerry is a local interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, curator and educator with a focus on the moving image and new media who has exhibited extensively both... Read more -
Christmas Online Exhibition
20 Nov - 20 Dec 2024 MARS Gallery Christmas Online Exhibition 2024 Read more
Forthcoming
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Maybe She Was There
Scotty So 6 - 20 Dec 2024 Maybe She Was There is a solo exhibition by artist Scotty So, presenting a collection of new works that explore themes of nostalgia, immortality, and the artist’s whimsical, queer-inflected attempts to preserve beauty and legacy. As So confronts the concept of “twink death”—a transitional phase marked by the decline of... Read more -
Courtly Love
Nick Mullaly 6 - 20 Dec 2024 ‘Courtly Love’ is a symbolic suite of new paintings by Naarm /Melbourne based artist Nick Mullaly. The works exude a dramatised romanticism by referencing classical iconography of religion and mythology, cinema and gay erotica, acting as totems of love, lust and sorrow. These polarities of emotional states have the ability... Read more
Past
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Jud Wimhurst
THE GRUDGE. THE MISFIT. THE RESOLUTION. 9 Oct - 2 Nov 2024 THE GRUDGE. THE MISFIT. THE RESOLUTION. This body of work explores a number of themes and concepts that are of interest and inspiration to artist JUD Wimhurst – but it all starts with a little drawing, a moment of inspiration, captured in pencil on paper 8 years ago. “At a... Read more -
Once more and then again
Kate Lewis 9 Oct - 2 Nov 2024 This collection of paintings reflects time spent on Boon Wurrung/ Bunurong Country, the Victorian Peninsula. In collaboration with my environment, I layered paint on sheets of scrap metal and recycled materials found foraging the local tip and building sites. Discarded canvasses reincarnated to reveal a sense of the place they once called home.
Traversing the trails and painting ‘en plein air’ informed my time in the painting studio. Each painting is a memory of time spent in this liminal place, the bush between, where the bay and ocean come to meet on the Peninsula. These works attempt to reflect the essence of these special places rather than an explicit representation. Adding then subtracting, the paint hides and reveals the metal beneath and the harsh beauty of the discarded in contrast with the organic oily forms of the natural world as I see it.
Restricted by the gamble of found materials, each painting surface presents a new challenge in scale and shape. The peninsula landscape is rugged but sparkly, filled with ancient volcanic rock and tall canopies.
Memories from Flinders, Pulpit Rock, Black Rock Beaches, Cape Schanck, towering cypress trees.
Sandstone cliffs a natural divider of dynamic ecosystems between land and sea. Once more and then again is my exploration of colours and glimmers within the volcanic rock, arid sand dunes, crumbly sandstone, salty mist, tangled tea tree, saltbush, driftwood, burning sun and shimmering light that glistens through the oil paint and reflects off the ocean. Like me, the scrap metal is extrinsic yet found in this place.
In this country our landscape is full of emotion- vast beauty, dangerous terrain, it is deeply loved, forever mourned and fighting to survive.
- Kate Lewis Read more -
LIGHT NOW
Atong Atem, Diego Ramírez, Jason Sims, Meagan Streader 11 Sep - 5 Oct 2024 Light Now brings together four contemporary artists who are wielding light to reconfigure how we navigate space and the constructed world, featuring light works by Meagan Streader, Diego Ramirez, Jason Sims and Atong Atem. ‘Painting’ with light, Meagan Streader’s soft, refined palette redefines how we traditionally view light in space.... Read more -
To The Filter
Josh Juett 11 Sep - 5 Oct 2024 In this series, South Australian artist Josh Juett delves into the perpetual search for meaning amid uncertainty. Drawing inspiration from Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” where a man’s transformation into a giant cockroach leads to his family’s revulsion, Juett examines themes of dehumanisation and misunderstanding. The cockroach symbolises our struggle with life’s... Read more -
The Little Things Are The Big Things
Kenny Pittock 7 - 31 Aug 2024 We are delighted to present Kenny Pittock’s fourth solo exhibition with MARS Gallery, showcasing a new series of found shopping lists that playfully ponder the notion that The Little Things Are The Big Things. Kenny began collecting discarded shopping lists when he was 15 and got a part-time job at... Read more -
Ceramics Now
Pip Byrne, Honor Freeman, Ruth Li, Angelo Ooi, Zhu Ohmu, Kohl Tyler 7 - 31 Aug 2024 Ceramics Now brings together the sculptural works of six ceramicists whose practices are a testament to the diversity and endurance of ceramic forms. Collating Pip Byrne’s playful textures, Honor Freeman’s sculptural mimesis, Ruth Li’s botanical meditations, Angelo Ooi’s traditional techiques, Zhu Ohmu’s organic vessels and Kohl Tyler’s ephemeral forms, Ceramics... Read more -
MARS Pops to Brisbane
17 - 20 Jul 2024 MARS is delighted to announce our exciting pop-up exhibition at Miss Midgley’s in Brisbane from 17-20 July 2024, bringing MARS’s finest plus a local art hero, Hannah Bronte, to the heart of Brisbane. Art lovers of Brisbane are invited to experience a little slice of Melbourne at Miss Midgely’s, where... Read more -
NAIDOC WEEK 2024
Carly Tarkari Dodd, Kyle Archie Knight, Jenna Lee, Steven Rhall, Damien Shen, Cassie Sullivan 4 Jul - 3 Aug 2024 MARS respectfully acknowledges we are on the Traditional Lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong peoples of the East Kulin Nations, and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. We extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We acknowledge their living connection... Read more -
Drawing Now
Liam Gerrard, Solomon Kammer, Yuria Okamura, Lily Palmer, Cameron Robbins, Melody Spangaro 5 - 29 Jun 2024 Following the success of his previous exhibitions at MARS, Liam Gerrard presents new botanical illustrations draw from the beauty and decay of the natural environment. His work consistently deals with ideas of realism, beauty and the grotesque, and how these things present themselves in the everyday people and world around... Read more -
Jagged Orbit
Karen Ann & Andy Simionato 5 - 29 Jun 2024 A Jagged Orbit (2023) is an automated-art-system which algorithmically defaces publications, transforming their physical appearance through gradual cancellation and super-inscription until the original is illegible or unrecognisable. Through multi-input, computer vision path-finding algorithms, the system’s mark-making is determined not only by the underlying images and texts of the original publication,... Read more -
Melbourne Design Week - Squiggles and Cubes
Meagan Streader and Billy Horn 23 May - 2 Jun 2024 Hosted in the Tie Factory, a historic Carlton warehouse, Squiggles and Cubes is a collection of functional sculptures informed by, and responding to, the art practice of Meagan Streader and the furniture designs of Billy Horn. Meagan and Billy are inspired by the idea of testing materials, exercising different techniques... Read more -
Luminous Devices
Corinna Berndt 9 May - 1 Jun 2024 CORINNA BERNDT Corinna Berndt is a visual artist who lives and works in Naarm / Melbourne, Australia, on unceded Wurundjeri Country. Her practice incorporates digital media, video installation and collage. Influenced by her background in sculpture and spatial practice, her work addresses pre-conceived notions surrounding embodiment, materiality and disembodiment, when... Read more -
Floriferous
Camilla Tadich 9 May - 1 Jun 2024 Camilla Tadich is a Melbourne based painter who graduated Victorian College of the Arts in 2005. Tadich has held residencies at Bundanon, New South Wales, Centre Intermondes La Rochelle, France, and has been a finalist in numerous prizes, most recently the Nillumbik Prize 2019, Montsalvat, Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize, Bayside... Read more -
Smalls
Grace Cram 9 May - 1 Jun 2024 Grace Cram is an Australian artist based in Naarm / Melbourne. With over a decade of experience working in architecture, Grace has developed an affinity for materiality, colour, texture and composition that actively informs her painting practice. Her paintings explore the meaning found in everyday moments, aiming to capture the... Read more -
Making Beds
Miranda Hine 9 May - 1 Jun 2024 Making Beds is a series of new paintings from Meanjin/London based artist Miranda Hine. It collates glimpses of intimate and grand domestic scenes that flirt with the genres of still life, vanitas and interiors. These are the highly personal yet absurdly public spaces of English historic house museums. As these... Read more -
MARS Pops to Adelaide
17 - 21 Apr 2024 MARS is delighted to announce a pop-up exhibition with Hill Smith Art Advisory at Immersive Light and Art (ILA) in Adelaide, South Australia from 17-21 April 2024. The opening event will be on Wednesday 16th of April 6 -8 pm and will be officially opened by Dr Lisa Slade, Assistant... Read more -
Questions about a Word
Ming Liew 6 Apr - 4 May 2024 Drawing from my lived experience of learning English as a second language, and reflecting upon it in conjunction with the Chinese-English linguistic ephemera from the Victorian gold fields, this video essay examines an English-learning technique that uses phonetic-based idiosyncratic writing, a technique that has been employed by generations of Chinese... Read more -
The Swimmer
Chantel de Latour 4 Apr - 4 May 2024 As the point of perception shifts between exterior and interior spaces, the concept of a fixed parameter becomes less certain. Recurring motifs of swimming pools and other bodies of water continue to question the possibilities of containment. The places where we swim – oceans, rivers, lakes, swimming pools, baths –... Read more -
Eredità
Tim Van 4 Apr - 4 May 2024 Finding inspiration from decorative silk fabrics that draw upon international fashion designers, the artist Tim Van’s paintings incorporate a performative and theatrical component. The artist’s process is one of capturing the folds and movements, initially in a photograph, in order to bring to life the vibrancy and beauty of these... Read more -
An Invisible Piper
Giles Alexander 4 Apr - 4 May 2024 As the son of an architect, Giles Alexander developed an inherent ability to translate the three dimensional world onto a two-dimensional surface. Nurtured within the illustrious walls of London’s National Gallery, he cultivated a deep appreciation for the transformative power of painting to capture and transcend physical space and human... Read more -
At First I Was Afraid
Emil Cañita 1 - 30 Mar 2024 Emil Cañita (he/she/they) is a trans Filipino artist. Emil’s distinctive art practice involves the use of gloryholes as a creative medium. Within these intimate spaces, they document encounters with their subjects, capturing the rawness and vulnerability that can often be found in moments of sexual connection. Through video recordings, storytelling,... Read more -
Dignity of Remembering
Xiao Lu 1 - 30 Mar 2024 Many events have been erased in modern Chinese history, and the truth is hidden within a web of distorted narratives. Here, I present fragments of history as I have experienced them to ensure they are not forgotten, and the dignity of history is upheld. On December 1, 2017, The New... Read more -
The Divided Line
Kirstin McIver 1 - 24 Feb 2024 The Divided Line is a video installation that examines the role of data and algorithms in the increased political polarization, particularly surrounding the 2020 US presidential election. It was shot in the days before the election was called, in a boarded up, riot-wary Manhattan, a month before the storming of... Read more -
al-jabr (the restoration or re-union of broken parts)
Domenico de Clario 1 - 24 Feb 2024 al-Jabr: The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing is an Arabic mathematical treatise, written in Baghdad around 820 CE by the Persian polymath Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. It was a landmark achievement in the history of mathematics serving as both the eponymous work and fundamental etymology of the... Read more -
Intremities
Kasia Tons 1 - 24 Feb 2024 Intremities brings together selected works by Kasia Tons that span the last six years of her textile-based practice. Creating two and three-dimensional forms from reclaimed and natural materials, Kasia’s artmaking acts as both an escape from reality and a way to make sense of it. Central to Intremities is the... Read more -
Dust
Atong Atem 14 - 20 Dec 2023 Ritual and Birth: Atong Atem Atong Atem is an internationally acclaimed South Sudanese artist based in Melbourne (Naarm), who has conquered the world with her vibrant and intimate photography exploring the contemporary African diaspora. From the Tate Modern to the National Gallery of Victoria, Atem has captured the eye of... Read more -
your left
Ellis Moseley 12 - 20 Dec 2023 Ellis Moseley is an Adelaide-based artist, living and working on traditional land of the Kaurna people. Moseley’s practice, which encompasses installation and ceramics, seeks to draw attention to social concerns through symbolic and conceptual gestures that encourage a deeper consideration of attitudes and behaviours. Moseley’s objects are constructed of wafer-thin... Read more -
MARS CHRISTMAS 2023
Online Group Show 1 - 20 Dec 2023 We’re delighted to unveil our online Christmas catalogue which presents artists seen at MARS throughout 2023, and hint of what is to come in a brand New Year. These new works our artists have made to send to you. If you love one enough, the works will be gift wrapped... Read more -
Babble On
Brie Trenerry 2 Nov - 9 Dec 2023 Brie Trenerry ‘s new project BABBLE ON explores the profound implications of artificial intelligence (AI) and our pursuit of a collective consciousness. Through a combination of text-based collages, 3D holographic works, and AI-generated video animations, Trenerry draws inspiration from the timeless tale of the mythical Tower of Babel as a... Read more -
Velvet Gloves
Melody Woodnutt 2 Nov - 9 Dec 2023 Melody Woodnutt is a descendant of the pirate Blackjack Woodnutt, and has rambled around the world before landing in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia in 2018. She spent eight of her formative artistic years living in a remote Icelandic village lusting after extreme nature. Woodnutt works primarily within the expanded field of 16mm... Read more -
Photoglyphic
Penelope Davis 2 Nov - 9 Dec 2023 A glyph is an incised mark denoting a graphic symbol. In my exhibition, Photoglyphic, carved letters of the alphabet are cast in clear and pigmented resins to create 3-D objects, then arranged on a flatbed scanner with coloured gels and filters. The scans are taken at very high resolution and... Read more -
HELD
Jordan Wood 1 Nov - 9 Dec 2023 A small gesture of grace or is it kindness? hard to tell these days Contained/ comfort embraced The ship’s hold Space held Hands make themselves breaking a mend – vulnerable appendage of vast extremities Softness as defiance – clay wet to stone In cupped hands earth wrestles Jordan Wood is... Read more -
BRB Navigating by Shifting Stars
Tricky Walsh 28 Sep - 28 Oct 2023 There are over eight thousand satellites floating around our orbit. Only half of them are functioning anymore and most are there to provide networks for communication. Only a hundred and change are used for navigation, which maybe suggests that we are a habitual species who don’t roam far from our... Read more -
Miscellaneous Assemblies
Daniel Agdag 28 Sep - 28 Oct 2023 Daniel Agdag is an artist and filmmaker based in Melbourne represented by MARS Gallery, whose practice is directly and indirectly absorbed by systems and the interactive nature from which they derive their functions and purpose. The work collectively is made by hand into subtle and alluringly delicate forms which carry... Read more -
If the earth is not curvature, our eastern tune would have collided with yours.
Siying Zhou 28 Sep - 28 Oct 2023 Born in China, Siying Zhou is a visual artist whose practice draws upon her Chinese heritage and her social status as an Asian female immigrant in the West. In producing installations, Siying uses spatial structures and the materiality of various media, including video, photography, performance, drawings and text, to undertake... Read more -
Afterglow
Yoko Ozawa 24 Aug - 23 Sep 2023 Japanese-born, Melbourne-based artist Yoko Ozawa’s work is heavily informed by a sustained interest in the natural world; seasonal transitions, temperature, light, shadow, fog, rain and snow. Simplistic but harmonious shapes are realised in subtle tones and intricate crackle glazes, which draw on the textures and tones from her upbringing in... Read more -
Homely Gems
Lilli Stromland 24 Aug - 23 Sep 2023 Lilli Stromland’s playful mix of suburban still-life painting and stoneware ceramics form a harmonious collection of warm, fresh oil on linen pieces. Created at her studio in Sydney’s Inner West, Stromland’s five ceramic frames and two smaller ceramic ‘sketches’ are handmade in her garden to produce a unique finish each... Read more -
Mastotermes
Liss Fenwick 24 Aug - 23 Sep 2023 Liss Fenwick is a visual artist from Larrakia country, living in Naarm/Melbourne. Their lens-based practice explores place and the transformation of problematic euro- and human-centred hierarchies in the so-called ‘Northern Territory’. Their recent exhibitions include Humpty Doom (2023), BACK OUT (2022), Natural History of Destruction (2021). Mastotermes is a video... Read more -
Uprooted Presence
Kate Lewis 22 Aug - 23 Sep 2023 Sydney born, Melbourne based, artist Kate McKenzie Lewis’ work is steeped in the Australian landscape. Painting and the bush have been two constants in Kate’s life. Time spent in Booderee Country (Jervis Bay), Gadubanud lands in the Otways and Taungarung Country (The Victorian Alps) has given Kate the opportunity to... Read more -
Genre
Archer Davies 22 Aug - 23 Sep 2023 For these works Archer Davies has looked to disparate influences from the still life works of Edouard Manet, Jan van Eyck to film stills from 1970’s cinema to create a series of paintings that are linked by his interest in history and genre. The work never seeks to express individual... Read more -
The wound is the place where the light enters
Leila Jeffreys 27 Jul - 19 Aug 2023 Leila Jeffreys is an acclaimed photographic and video artist who lives in Sydney, Australia. She is best known for captivating images of birds from Australia and around the world that explore and subvert the traditions of portraiture. Her avian subjects are photographed at human scale with a startling attention to... Read more -
Gilded Cage
Josh Juett 27 Jul - 19 Aug 2023 Josh Juett’s Gilded Cage features 10 still life paintings of found objects. Juett’s influence from the Dutch Masters is apparent, not only in painstaking technique but also in subject matter, whereby the artist's selection of objects is symbolic of his inner psyche. These still life painting of abandoned paraphernalia find... Read more -
Entombed in Joy
Damien Shen 1 - 22 Jul 2023 Shen’s first exhibition of new work since the COVID-19 global pandemic began leans directly into the memories of childhood joy. Growing up, Shen found solace in the fantastical world of animation, where he was able to escape from the difficulties of reality and enter a realm where anything was possible.... Read more -
“Without truth we cannot heal, without healing, we cannot reconcile.”
Iluka Sax-Williams 1 - 22 Jul 2023 With a broad practice spanning visual art, dance, design and more, the work of lluka Sax-Williams is informed by his connection to his Taungurung and Torres Strait Islander cultures. His passion for sharing and enhancing awareness of First Nations practices manifests not only in his work, but also his involvement... Read more -
Carry me with you
Jenna Lee 1 - 22 Jul 2023 Jenna Lee is a Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and KarraJarri Saltwater woman with mixed Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Anglo-Australian ancestry. Using art to explore and celebrate her many overlapping identities, Lee works across sculpture, installation, and body adornment. She also works with moving images, photography and projection in the digital medium.... Read more -
Death Drive
Sophia Hewson 25 May - 25 Jun 2023 Hewson is a clincial Psychotherapist (2023), and a member at The Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis in Melbourne (2021). She was a Ramsay Art Prize finalist in 2019, completed a six-month residency at Residency Unlimited in New York (2015), is a recipient of the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art International Project... Read more -
Secret Existence
Marion Abraham 25 May - 25 Jun 2023 My painting is organised as an exploration of body and ‘soul’ to investigate inner workings of the self. I’m attracted to violent and bombastic moments, riddled with wild rantings covered in superficial beauty. My work uses cliches and evocative language that is equally paranoid and self-conscious. I see the soul... Read more -
Julie Fragar
25 May - 25 Jun 2023 Julie Fragar is an Australian painter and educator. Her paintings are driven from her own lived experience, whereby existing somewhere between fiction and fact creating vast, vivid imagery. She is the recipient of several awards, including the 2017 Ramsey Art Prize Lipman Karas People’s Choice Award, and her work has... Read more -
PAINTINGS
Michelle Woody Minnapinni 25 May - 25 Jun 2023 In her paintings, Michelle applies Tiwi earth pigments using the Kayimwagakimi comb — a toothed painting tool carved from locally harvested ironwood and used in ceremonial Tiwi body painting. In the long-standing tradition of her ancestors, she also works in natural ochres sourced on country around Milikapiti. These materials are... Read more -
Relations of Return
Brodie Kokkinos 25 May - 25 Jun 2023 Brodie Kokkinos is a conceptual artist whose practice spans across video, photography, sculpture, installation and performance. Motivated by the haunting power of visual culture Kokkinos explores ways to visually reimagine the slippery seductive power of such popular imagery in alternative timelines and circumstances. Kokkinos graduated from VCA in 2020 with... Read more -
Vampires of the Earth
Diego Ramírez 27 Apr - 20 May 2023 “Vampires of The Earth is an exhibition inspired by the social mediatisation of Pemex’s spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2021. “The day that pipe burst, I received a hilariously performative message checking in on me,” says Ramírez, “a drop of oil came to mind, like a little tear…falling... Read more -
Garden Variety
Emily Galicek 27 Apr - 20 May 2023 Garden Variety is an exhibition of new paintings by Emily Galicek that celebrate the often-overlooked patterns of the domestic interior. Drawing on early 20th Century wallpapers and textiles, Galicek’s paintings warp, extend, layer and erase these patterns to create new, playful compositions. These compositions begin digitally, and are translated by... Read more -
Continuance
Angelo Ooi 27 Apr - 20 May 2023 “Continuance” is defined as the state of remaining in existence or operation. Exploring the notion of continuance through processes and history of making pottery, the exhibition brings together both the new and old. The medium encapsulates this concept through its process and product. Tracing back to the Neolithic period, pottery... Read more -
The Inside of a Square
Blake Dearman 27 Apr - 20 May 2023 Emerging artist Blake Dearman works across a variety of different mediums, including photography, video, and sound. His work incorporates traditional methods of image-making together with more contemporary approaches such as data visualisation and digital synthesis. A background in electrical engineering, paired with an interest in existential philosophy serve as the... Read more -
Impulse
Nasim Nasr 29 Mar - 22 Apr 2023 'In my Measure of Love photographic series, I acknowledge the immeasurable tears that human beings can shed throughout life. This series is about my personal relationship with tears, emotions and love. Being born in the middle of the Iran-Iraq War I have found myself hugely emotional in response to life—from... Read more -
A Female Gaze
Dani McKenzie, Chelsea Lehmann, Eliza Gosse, Jo Bertini, Lucy Roleff, Marisa Mu, Sis Cowie 1 - 25 Mar 2023 A Female Gaze brings together the works of seven established and emerging Australian artists. Spanning a range of stylistic approaches from vibrant surface design and bold brush strokes to classically rendered still-lifes and domestic interiors, the works attest to the myriad ways that female subjectivity can take shape. Bold visions... Read more -
Through Her Breath
Bronwyn Kidd 1 - 22 Mar 2023 Through Her Breath is a solo exhibition featuring new photographs by Bronwyn Kidd created in collaboration with choreographer Carol Brown. The exhibition celebrates ancestral breath, placing women, whose bodies are the source of our first breaths, as the inscribers of embodied legacies of past and present. In the artist’s words,... Read more -
To Carry Light
Jenna Lee 1 - 25 Mar 2023 ‘To make light’ is a time and space responsive installation of works created by Jenna Lee during her two-month residency with Kyoto Art Center supported by the Australia Council for the Arts. Spanning the duration of her stay and responding to the location’s history as a school, this exhibition blurs... Read more -
Paths that don’t go where people want them to go
Abbey Rich 4 - 25 Feb 2023 Paths that don’t go where people want them to go is a reconstruction of strange occurrences in urban spaces. The work draws from case studies as well as personal exploration in the artist’s immediate surroundings. Abbey seeks to navigate the ego and the well intentioned yet harmful effects that urban... Read more -
Paintings
Atong Atem 4 - 25 Feb 2023 Atong Atem is an Ethiopian born, South Sudanese artist and writer based in Narrm/Melbourne. She works primarily with photography and video to explore migrant narratives, postcolonial practices in the African diaspora and the exploration of identity through portraiture. Atem was the recipient of the inaugural National Gallery of Victoria and... Read more -
The World's Gone Pear Shaped
Kenny Pittock 25 May - 12 Jun 2022 The World’s Gone Pear Shaped is a bold new series of paintings and sculpture that elevate the everyday whilst remaining grounded in the thick of it. This exhibition uses humour to disarmingly broach more sincere ideas around anxiety, and the tension between holding on and letting go. These works serve... Read more -
PHOTO 22 Shungay
Scotty So 29 Apr - 22 May 2022 In this series of portraits inspired by Asian erotic paintings, European Chinoiserie art, Instagram makeup trends, and contemporary gay culture, Melbourne artist Scotty So challenges the notion of cultural aesthetic appropriation of Asian cultures. Exhibited as part of Photo 2022 International Festival of Photography, dispersed amongst the Tianjin Garden above... Read more -
Surat
Atong Atem 29 Apr - 22 May 2022 Commissioned by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2022 International Festival of Photography, Surat (which translates from Sudanese Arabic as ‘snapshots’) is an homage to family photos and the characters that make up a family. Atem revisited her family photo albums that span decades and continents, and restaged and reimagined scenes and... Read more -
Melbourne Fashion Festival Exhibition
Scotty So 5 - 20 Feb 2022 MARS Gallery presents an exhibition featuring tailored cheongsam created by artist Scotty So to coincide with Melbourne Fashion Festival 2022. Walk through the MARS downstairs basement and into a wardrobe of hand made cheongsam (a form fitting gown birthed from the modernisation and feminism in the 20s China). Each piece... Read more -
Banksia
Atong Atem 1 - 12 Jun 2021 Commissioned by RISING Festival 2021, Atong Atem's first video work, Banksia, explores the lesser-known history of Australia’s first African settlers. The video - accompanied by an arresting score by Melbourne composer Petra Salsjö - and photographic series work in conjunction to reveal otherwise obscured layers of history on... Read more -
To Be Real
Atong Atem 23 Nov 2020 - 7 Mar 2021 As part of PHOTO 2020 International Festival of Photography, award-winning artist Atong Atem created a new series of large-scale photographic works for the Immigration Museum. In these bold, dynamic portraits, seemingly surreal worlds are created and explored by the subjects, filling the ground floor with vibrant colour and life. Exploring... Read more
