Inaugural MAF X NGV Design Commission Awarded to Anna Varendorff

Anna Varendorff is an artist and designer whose practice spans jewellery, sculpture, product and lighting design. Since 2013, she has worked under the moniker ACV Studio, producing design works that are at once minimal and expressive, achieving cult recognition in Melbourne and beyond. Trained as a metalsmith, Varendorff fabricates with precision in metal, yet her works retain a poetic lightness. Defined by pared-back tubular forms, graceful arcs and slender brass or steel lines, they culminate in refined objects that merge craft discipline with industrial clarity.

Varendorff completed a Master of Fine Art at Monash University in 2015. She has exhibited extensively around Australia and overseas. She has exhibited at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art as part of NEW16; at CAVES at The Substation; and at TCB Art Inc., Bus Projects, Craft, c3 Contemporary Art Space, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and Anna Pappas Gallery, among others. In 2018, ACV Studio’s Glass Half Full Vase received a Wallpaper* Design Award for Design of the Year, cementing her reputation as one of Australia’s most distinctive contemporary designers.

WATCH | Don Cameron’s Sculpturally Functional Collection

Brahaman Perera to Bring Efforless Luxury with the Champagne Bollinger Bar

There are partnerships that make perfect sense: caviar and McDonalds hash browns, Mary-Kate and Ashley, Champagne and art fairs. So, it was only a matter of time before Champagne Bollinger swept into Melbourne Art Fair as the official Champagne Partner. After all, all that art in one place can be overwhelming without a glass of fizz.

To mark the occasion, the ever-divine Brahman Perera, designer, ambassador, tastemaker, aesthete, is conjuring a Champagne Bar for Bollinger that promises to be part parlour, part hallucination. Expect brushed brass, soft velvet, and the faint suggestion that time has melted into fabric. Brahman, as always, moves with that impossible Melbourne poise: elegance with an air of mischief, restraint with a pulse.

Brahman has long been one of those people who makes beauty look accidental — the kind of elegance that doesn’t apologise for itself, just quietly orders another glass. Together, he and Bollinger aren’t just serving Champagne; they’re serving the fantasy of effortless perfection, with a twist of lemon and a subtle sense that you should’ve worn better shoes. Where every glass seems to refill itself and the room is full of good lighting and possibility.

So come, sip, and pretend (as we all do) that it’s just another perfectly ordinary Thursday in February.

Melboure Art Fair’s opening night Vernissage takes place on Thursday 19 February 2026. Click here to buy tickets.

Tom Polo’s works are both mirror and portal

Tom Polo’s paintings have a distinctly human, yet otherworldly quality to them. Drawing from conversations, secrets exchanged in the studio, or simply beginning with a feeling, each work becomes a record of human connection, a moment shared between subject and artist that later fosters a connection between artwork and viewer, where recognition and reflection might unfold. Disappearing into huge washes of colour and gestural markings, viewers may be reminded of a feeling, a familiar shirt, or the way their favourite person cranes their neck when they laugh.

Generously welcoming MAF into his studio, Tom shared his ways of working, and his fascination with psychological mirroring: the subtle (and not so subtle) ways people who spend a lot of time together tend to take on each other’s rhythms and idiosyncrasies.

STATION (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney) will present new works from Tom Polo at Melbourne Art Fair 2026. Tickets on sale now.

Tali Roth’s Material Attachments

On a grey, damp August day, stepping into interior designer Tali Roth’s mid-century home felt like being wrapped in a blanket. Candles flickering away in the background, Tali guided us through some her favourite objects, not limited to pyrite crystals gifted from her father (thank you Trevor Roth), an incredible Georgia O’Keefe photograph by George Makos, and a Lina Bo Bardi chair that includes a sceptre fit for a queen.

This is Material Attachments — a series where we visit collectors not for what they’ve acquired, but for what they can’t let go of.

Elliot Garnaut’s Material Attachments

Elliot Garnaut has taste. Not just in clothes (he’s a stylist by the way), but in music, Champagne, and the art of doing both in front of a fire with Whitney Houston’s debut vinyl spinning away in the back. Vape in one hand, glass in the other, it’s a scene we at the Melbourne Art Foundation can only dream of.

Another brave soul to let the marketing department into his home (a team of 2 with minimal planning skills), Elliot’s space is curated for elegance and an underlying coziness. It’s the sort of place you plan to visit briefly but somehow find yourself there three hours later.

While he has fallen victim to the Labubu propaganda, Elliot’s home houses works by Nicholas Ives, Hannah Gartside, Drew Connor Holland, as well as a 17th century Tibetan bust that in another timeline, would be languishing in Kim Kardashian’s echoing mansion.

This is Material Attachments, a series in which we visit collectors not for what they’ve bought, but for what they’ve refused to let go of.

Yvonne Shafir’s Material Attachments

We assume you already know Yvonne Shafir.
If you don’t, well, you’re about to finally start living.

For reasons we’re still trying to understand, Yvonne allowed a group of under-caffeinated Melbourne Art Fair staff into her home (we promised to bring Babka—Andy forgot, Jodie panic-bought one arriving an hour late, and nobody made eye contact until it arrived).

What we found was a pink-hued labyrinth: part archive, part shrine, part psychological obstacle course. Art, objects, and what Yvonne lovingly refers to as “symbolic junk” filled the space. Everything meant something. Nothing was neutral. Even a stuffed deer head attached to the wall (discovered at an op shop) served part of her welcome ritual, singing a jaunty Christmas tune from its battery powered speakers. Down the hall several things blinked and swayed back and forth.

Yvonne has a soft spot for the pink, the fluffy, and the ambiguously alive. Her collection includes works by Hiromi Tango (Sullivan+Strumpf), Kathy Temin (Anna Schwartz Gallery), Cybele Cox (Ames Yavuz), her own creations, and a number of pieces that may once have been lamps or may, in time, evolve into lamps. Each object radiates story, memory, or mild psychic interference.

This is Material Attachments: a series in which we visit collectors not for what they’ve bought, but for what they’ve refused to let go of.

Melbourne Art Fair Appoints Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel as Curator for VIDEO

Since 2018, Melbourne Art Fair’s VIDEO sector has showcased innovative and experimental video works by Australian and international artists. Melbourne Art Foundation is thrilled to announce Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel as the curator for VIDEO in 2026. 

Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel is the director of the Fondation Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, where she has curated shows by Martine Syms, Neil Beloufa, Issy Wood, Cyprien Gaillard (also at Palais de Tokyo), Martin Margiela, Marguerite Humeau and Jean-Marie Appriou, and a forthcoming exhibition by Diego Marcon (2026). Under her tenure, the institution has also presented shows by Lina Lapelyte, Pol Taburet, Mark Leckey, Mohamad Abdouni, and forthcoming projects by Meriem Bennani and Steffani Jemison.  

In 2020 she was the curator of the Riga Biennial, “and suddenly it all blossoms”, and director of the feature film based on the exhibition. From 2011 to 2019, she was curator at the Palais de Tokyo where she has presented, among others, the cartes blanches to Tomás Saraceno, ON AIR, and to Tino Seghal. She has also curated the exhibitions of Marguerite Humeau, Ed Atkins, Helen Marten and David Douard, as well as the group exhibition Le bord des mondes.  

She has regularly collaborated with international institutions, such as the Fondation Art Explora, the MoMA PS1, Nottingham Contemporary, the Stedelijk Museum, Palais de Tokyo, or the Château de Versailles. She is a regular advisor and juror for several institutions and art fairs such as the French Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, Art Basel Paris, the Villa Kujuyama, the Villa Albertine, among others.  

Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel regularly publishes in international prints and catalogs, and participates in seminars and juries worldwide. 

Artists previously exhibiting in VIDEO include Destiny Deacon with Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (Gadigal Country/Sydney), Sara Cwynar with Cooper Cole (Toronto), Buhlebezwe Siwani with Galeria Madragoa (Lisbon), Amala Groom with BAProjects (Naarm/Melbourne) and more.

Melbourne Art Fair returns 19 – 22 February 2026 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC).

Image: Bettina Pettiluga

Explore & Collect with Keri Elmsly

A dynamic creative producer, Keri Elmsly is known for leading and developing creative experience-driven ambitious projects and businesses for global leaders in culture, tech and art. Currently the Executive Director of Programming at ACMI, Melbourne Art Fair speaks with Keri about her top picks of the Fair.

Explore hundreds of artworks on the Fair’s online platform, MAF Virtual, live until 7 March.

STATION (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney)
Paul Yore, Sydney Opera House (You Make Me Feel), 2024

Paul Yore’s work nestles into your mind the way an earworm does with a song. His solo show Word Made Flesh at ACCA in 2022 was the first exhibition I went to when I moved to Melbourne from LA and was the welcome I needed. To me, every element of the visual language, materials and politics is an arresting and immediate refusal of the mundane and mediocre.  This piece shouts in the face of rising nationalism and retraction.

Paul Yore, Sydney Opera House (You Make Me Feel), 2024, mixed media assemblage on board comprising glass, crockery, Perspex, beads, glitter, found objects, synthetic fur, trim, ribbon, cotton thread, LED light, wood, adhesive, fixtures, synthetic polymer, enamel, 163.0 x 173.0 x 12.0cm. Courtesy the artist and STATION.

Australian Tapestry Workshop (Naarm/Melbourne)
Julian Martin, UNTITLED 12, 2020

I am drawn to tapestry so often, to see these works as the result of collective intention strike the core of my heart. The tightness of each thread and density of the work hums with intensity and constraint, without compromising the vibrant joy of the dance.

Julian Martin, Untitled 12, 2020, wool, cotton, 21 x 14cm. Courtesy the artist and Australian Tapestry Workshop.

Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne)
Noel McKenna, The snail watcher, 2024

We are currently obsessed with Adam Elliot’s Memoir of A Snail– as is the rest of the world right now! With so much inference, this painting’s immediacy sets me off with more questions than are reasonable to be asking. Mostly though, when is the dog going to be let out? Is there a red brick house in the background and how decorative is that wrought iron fence at the top?

Noel McKenna, The snail watcher, 2024, oil on canvas, 41 x 42cm. Courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries.

Melbourne Art Fair continues online, with MAF Virtual until 7 March. Click here to discover hundreds of artworks from leading and emerging artists.

Mitch Mahoney on ‘Gurnbak’, Commissioned By the Victorian First Peoples Art & Design Fair Showcase and More

Multidisciplinary artist Mitch Mahoney focuses on the revitalisation of South-Eastern Aboriginal practices, creating cultural items such as possum skin cloaks, traditional canoes and kangaroo tooth necklaces. He is the recipient of the inaugural Victorian First Peoples Art and Design Fair Commission and his work, Gurnbak premiered at Melbourne Art Fair 2025.

Speaking with Melbourne Art Fair, he expands on his practice, how he collects his materials whilst maintaining a deep respect for Country, and his hopes for the VFPADF.

Your work, Gurnbak (Goodoo, Mulloway, Long tail), premiered at Melbourne Art Fair as part of the Victorian First Peoples Art and Design Fair Showcase. Can you describe the work and your process when creating it?

Gurnbak was created through the process of fish printing which is also known as gyotaku. This work was also mixed with an overlay of Southeast Indigenous line work. Gurnbak is created as a way to bring my passion for waterways into my work. The fish seen in the work were acquired through different methods to highlight the different ways we as humans, interact with fish and waterways and spark conversation around fish farming, commercial fishing, and wild-caught fish.

Mitch Mahoney, Gurnbak (Goodoo, Mulloway, Long tail), installation view. Melbourne Art Fair 2025. Photo: Cristina Ulloa Sobarzo.

Much of your work focuses on revitalising South-Eastern Aboriginal practices such as creating possum skin cloaks. How did you initially learn these practices?

All my knowledge was passed to me from my family in the beginning of my practice. Together as a family we would attend workshops and make possum skin cloaks as well as spend time together collecting materials and creating different objects.

Your works, including Kampitya (Father), represent a deeply entwined connection between the work and nature. How does the physical process of creating help you connect to Country?

For me, the work Kampitya (Father) was about time spent on Country with my own father, meeting other members of the community; particularly Dave Doyle and his family, and being able to go out in the bush and learn about that Country from him. I spent several years learning about coolamon making to work on creating a red gum canoe; an experience that is a defining moment in my learning.

Can you speak to the materials you use and how you source them?

When it comes to materials, I collect from many different places and gather a whole range. Generally, I spend time collecting stringy bark, coolamons, sap, resin and reeds. The main thing about collecting is to know where you are, whose Country it is, and to ask for permission. For myself, I make sure that I’m always considering what effect my collecting will have on Country and ensuring that I’m collecting in a responsible way.

Mitch Mahoney, Gurnbak (Goodoo, Mulloway, Long tail), installation view. Melbourne Art Fair 2025. Photo: Phoebe Powell.

How do you hope the introduction of the Victorian First Peoples Art and Design Fair will impact Victorian First Peoples artists in future?

For me, I hope that the Victorian First Peoples Art and Design Fair will be a place that can showcase who we are to the wider world, showing the distinctive styles that we use and the breadth and range of our work, but also stating that we are here and we are working hard to continue our practices and knowledge. I also hope that it will create more opportunities for young South-eastern Indigenous artists to continue practising the work they are passionate about and develop their practice into the future.

An initiative of the Victorian Government’s Creative State 2025 strategy, the Victorian First Peoples Art and Design Fair Showcase Exhibition premiered at Melbourne Art Fair, and was driven by the First Peoples Directions Circle – a group of esteemed First Peoples creative leaders who guide the work of Creative Victoria.

READ | Diena Georgetti x Melissa Loughnan 

I’ve been a fan of Diena Georgetti since curating Victory Over the Sun with Helen Hughes at Utopian Slumps, in its first location in Collingwood, in 2009. The work in the exhibition was an intricate geometric abstract painting in brown and primary-coloured tones. As a failed painter myself and an appreciator of the canons of modernism, Diena’s technical prowess completely blew my mind. I’d been told that she doesn’t really do email or phone calls and just dealt entirely with her gallery. She sent me a handwritten thank you note afterwards, in a sparkly peach envelope, which I have kept to this day. Sixteen years later I am now the proud owner of one of Diena’s paintings, and as new Fair Director, am pinching myself that she has agreed to chat with me. 

ML: I am a big fan of your new AI-driven works. Can you tell me how this new direction came about? 

DG: A lover whilst exiting my life, turned to say ”l never really loved you. l loved your art.” 

It wasn’t the biggest burn. 

I consider myself the art anyway. 

It’s the best part of me. 

Really, actually, the only me. 

There is so little of me (‘my’ life). I have extra territory to make a variety of art personas. 

Early on, I saw a Mondrian exhibition that included bucolic landscapes, abstract still lives, and the hard-edge grid paintings. It read as a group presentation. Right then I wanted to be that artist – signatureless.  

Within this greed are the AI paintings. Late on a Sunday afternoon, bored but not, I entertained myself on a generator. I used all the prompts from my self-made archive, including art movements/artists/music lyrics/historical eras and dates. An example was ”please help my killer, Matisse.” 

In prompting, I was starting the art with words, which in turn became ideas. These are ideas made into paintings. Which isn’t a way I make art. My preferred way is to make imagery, that is then interpreted into ideas. An education. However, these newfound ideas became undeniably worthwhile. So, although I was initially uncomforted by the illustrative type of them, I gave over to the value of the content. 

Diena Georgetti, The Collector/foyer, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 101cm. Courtesy the artist and Neon Parc (Naarm/Melbourne). 

ML: Are The Collector/trinity and The Collector/foyer the basis of what you’ve presented at Melbourne Art Fair? Can you tell me about them? 

DG: The Collector collection came by thinking of my 40 years making art, isolated in the studio. I thought about those objects outside of the studio. I thought of the collectors, and how in number, they are rarer than artists. How private they are, not thirsty for acknowledgement. And how that small numbers of peoples’ attentions carry the continuance of many artists. To honour them, I made them the art. 

I’ve contributed two Collector paintings to the NEON PARC stand, as part of a group presentation, including Damiano Bertoli and collaborators Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley. The largest at 2 metres is titled The Collector/trinity and depicts a chain of three figures (portrayed as collector, artist, director?) in embrace within an art gallery. The physicality of that connection appears sexually driven, and may emit the question of art appreciation being, likewise hard wired. There is some kind of supernatural affect upon them, due to the proximity to all that art. Something extra metabolic erupts as a tumour upon them, connecting them by organic tissue. The smaller painting at 1 metre is titled The Collector/foyer, in which a single female figure is viewing a painting within a foyer. She is dressed for a soiree and appears to have ostracised herself to spend time alone. In that, an intimacy develops between her and the art. The painting appears almost smug, in its position of elder, having within it, the historical experiences of all mankind. Her pose, in response, is one many of us have struck. Self-aware, all eyes, with white noise screeching in our ears. Desperate to find, learn, and know what can be, via this mysterious object. 

Upcoming projects for Diena Georgetti include the Art Basel Hong Kong Insights sector with a solo presentation courtesy the artist and Neon Parc, March 2025; Circular Quay Foyer Wall commission at the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, courtesy the artist and 1301SW Sydney, March 2025; and debut solo presentation at 1301SW Sydney, October 2025. 

Image right: Diena Georgetti, The Collector/trinity (detail), 2025, acrylic on canvas, 120.5 x 170cm. Courtesy the artist and Neon Parc (Naarm/Melbourne).

2025 Richard Parker Award Announced

Melbourne Art Fair is delighted to announce Hannah Gartside, represented by Tolarno Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne), as recipient of the Richard Parker Award. Founder of RATIONALE, an Official Partner of Melbourne Art Fair, Richard Parker brings a deep commitment to the support of contemporary art to all endeavours. Viewing art as inseparable from the function of daily life and culture, RATIONALE believes in the intrinsic value of artmaking and the paths of connection it forms across our lives.

Hannah presents a solo show at the Fair, transforming vintage gloves from her vast collection into small bunny sculptures which call on the viewer to empathise, opening a portal into their own longing, desired and sometimes buried feelings.

Discover Hannah Gartside’s work alongside works from 70 galleries and Indigenous art centres at Melbourne Art Fair.

Click here to learn more about her practice, and how she created her series, Bunnies in love, lust and longing.

Jane Yang D’Haene on Embracing Chance and Transformation Within Her Ceramic Works

Presenting a dual show of new works by Jane Yang D’Haene and Puuni Brown Nungarrayi, COMA Gallery (Gadigal Country/Sydney) returns to Melbourne Art Fair. D’Haene’s stoneware is profoundly influenced by her Korean heritage, particularly traditional ceramic forms such as the dal hang-ari (Moon Jar), an iconic symbol of Korean culture. Jane speaks with Melbourne Art Fair about her transformative practice, incorporating both traditional and contemporary techniques.

When were you first introduced to ceramics?

In 2017, my journey into the world of ceramics began, sparked by a thoughtful recommendation from my girlfriend. She intuitively sensed that ceramics would be the perfect medium for me, capturing my imagination and creativity in ways I had yet to discover. Her insight proved invaluable, as working with ceramics has opened up an entirely new avenue of artistic expression for me. It’s remarkable how someone can see our potential so clearly, even before we recognize it ourselves.

Jane Yang D’Haene, Untitled, 2024, stoneware, porcelain, glaze, 46 x 34 x 34cm. Courtesy the artist and COMA Gallery (Gadigal Country/Sydney).

Can you expand on your experimental take on the traditional Korean ceramic forms of dal hang-ari (moon jars)? Where does your interest in moon jars stem from and how does your process both pay homage to and depart from the traditional?

My experimental approach to the traditional Korean ceramic forms, particularly the dal hang-ari or moon jars, is deeply rooted in a desire to honour and reinterpret cultural heritage. The moon jar, with its serene and understated beauty, symbolises both the simplicity and complexity of Korean ceramic traditions. My interest in these forms stems from their historical significance and their ability to transcend time with their pure, spherical elegance. In my work, I aim to pay homage to the traditional essence of moon jars through meticulous attention to form and proportion. However, I also strive to push the boundaries by incorporating contemporary techniques and aesthetics. This involves a bold experimentation with colours, textures, and glazing methods, which allows me to infuse modern sensibilities into these age-old forms.  The process becomes a dialogue between the past and present, where each piece reflects a synthesis of tradition and innovation. By doing so, I not only preserve the cultural legacy of moon jars but also breathe new life into them, inviting viewers to engage with these timeless forms in fresh and unexpected ways. This journey is not just about creating art but also about forging a connection between history and modernity.

You have previously spoken about your work as transforming emotional experiences of memory into physical forms. Can you expand on how this idea is communicated through your work?

At the heart of my artistic journey is the transformation of emotional experiences and memories into tangible forms, particularly the complex narratives of the human body as it evolves through illness, age, and womanhood. Each ceramic piece becomes a vessel, capturing the nuanced interplay of human emotion and personal history. This transformative process begins with introspection, delving into memories that hold special significance and exploring the emotions they evoke. The process of shaping clay mirrors the shaping of memory and the transformation of our bodies. Layers of glaze and clay represent each memory, whether a fond childhood moment or a difficult recent experience. These layers embody the resilience and beauty of human evolution, capturing the fluidity and strength of form. By embedding my emotional landscape into each piece, I create art that resonates personally, offering a shared space for others to find echoes of their own experiences. My work seeks to transform fleeting moments of memory into enduring expressions of art, bridging the ephemeral and the eternal, and celebrating the ever-changing journey of our bodies and emotions.

Jane Yang D’Haene, Untitled, 2024, stoneware, porcelain, glaze, 28 x 31 x 31cm. Courtesy the artist and COMA Gallery (Gadigal Country/Sydney).

What is the significance behind leaving much of the textural formations to chance in your work? Is the final result always unexpected? 

Leaving much of the textural formations to chance in my work holds deep significance, as it mirrors the unpredictability and spontaneity of life itself. Embracing chance allows for a genuine expression of the organic and evolving nature of our experiences, much like how life unfolds with unexpected twists and turns. By allowing the clay and glazes to interact freely, I invite the material to speak for itself, creating textures and patterns that are unique to each piece. This element of unpredictability ensures that each work is a one-of-a-kind creation, reflecting the individuality and complexity of personal memories and emotions. The final result is often unexpected, and this element of surprise is integral to my artistic process. It encourages me to let go of control, embracing imperfections and serendipity as part of the creative journey. This openness to chance not only adds depth and character to my work but also resonates with viewers, inviting them to find beauty in the unexpected and to reflect on the serendipity within their own lives.

What can we expect to see from your presentation with COMA at Melbourne Art Fair?

At my presentation with COMA at the Melbourne Art Fair, you can expect a collection that delves into the themes of transformation and memory, with a focus on the narratives of the human body through illness, age, and womanhood. Each piece serves as a vessel to capture the emotional and physical evolution that defines our lives. The collection features ceramics with rich, layered textures and vibrant glazes, each telling its own unique story. The interplay of chance and intention is evident, as I embrace the unpredictable nature of the materials to create dynamic and intricate works.  At the end of the day, whether transformed or unchanged, we remain who we are—beautiful in our uniqueness and resilience. This presentation is a celebration of that inherent beauty, embracing the imperfections and changes that life brings. Each piece at the fair honors the journey of self-discovery and acceptance, reminding us that our true essence shines through, regardless of the transformations we undergo. It invites viewers to engage with art that resonates on a personal level, encouraging reflection on their own experiences of change and growth, and celebrating the beauty and complexity of life’s journey.

Melbourne Art Fair, 20 – 23 February at MCEC. Click here to secure tickets.

Art Guide Bookstore On Their Top Recommendations

Bringing a pop-up Bookstore to Melbourne Art Fair next week, the Art Guide Bookstore team suggest their must-buy books, all available for purchase at the Fair.

Renee So, Provenance
Publisher: Monash University Publishing

Working across ceramics and textiles, Renee So draws inspiration from a constellation of eclectic touchstones that traverse time and space. One particular reference point are Bellarmine (German for bearded man) stoneware jugs c.1550-1700 that can be found interpreted in many of So’s knitted paintings and ceramic objects.

So’s engagement with art history and artefacts is underpinned by cross-cultural thinking and a feminist worldview.

Surveying over a decade of So’s practice, Provenance the exhibition was held at MUMA in 2023. Viewing the exhibition in the flesh was a personal highlight. The accompanying publication is beautifully designed with insightful contributions from historian of archaeology Hélène Maloigne, academic and curator Chus Martínez, poet and editor Emily Berry, and Renee So in conversation with MUMA director and curator Charlotte Day.

John Nixon, Editions 1 & 2
Publisher: Negative Press

Editions 1 & 2 shines a spotlight on the printmaking activities of the much loved late John Nixon and features thoughtful and generous contributions from Sue Cramer, Lizzie Boon, and Trent Walter.

Spanning a 40 year period from 1982 – 2021, this archive provides insight into an important, yet lesser-known aspect of Nixon’s wide-ranging and vast oeuvre.
Nixon’s approach to printmaking is one of experimentation and dedication. In trademark reductive style, a range of printmaking techniques including woodblock, etching, and monotype resourcefully utilise everyday materials. By transforming the discarded and overlooked (plastic meat trays, newspapers, the humble potato) from ‘something that is not really wanted into something that is wanted’ suggests a joyous enthusiasm with endless possibilities. This is the material of a life well lived with art.

Lisa Radford, Jarrod Rawlins, Jon Campbell
Publisher: Uplands

Published in 2010, Jon Campbell by Lisa Radford and Jarrod Rawlins might now be considered an ‘oldie but a goodie’. Friends, colleagues, and former students join in to tell the tale.

To immerse oneself in Jon Campbell’s world is to catch the vernacular, the street signs, the slogans, the back yards, the beach, the surf, the car, the travel, the people, the community, the songs, the set-lists, the music, the painting, the print, the performance, the installation, the colour, the edges, the layers, the teaching, the attitude, the spirit, the love.

Discover a range of Australian publications at the Art Guide Bookstore, Melbourne Art Fair 20 – 23 February. Click here to secure tickets.

Explore & Collect with Louis Li

Founder and Managing Director of JKLP Group and Melbourne Art Fair ambassador, Louis Li is an ambitious collector of art and design in the global art landscape. He embraces and continues to expand the mysterious yet poetic Jackalope Art Collection at Jackalope’s luxury accommodation.

Speaking with the Fair, he outlines the works he is most anticipating seeing at the event.

1301SW/STARKWHITE (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Tāhuna/Queenstown), Booth A3
Mikala Dwyer, Empty Sculpture, 2024

Empty Sculpture is a playful and fantastical exploration of plastic. Mikala’s practice has developed through a series of evolving projects and research which align with my theories of the occult and alchemy. 

Mikala Dwyer, Empty Sculpture, 2024, plastic, 93 x 83 x 34cm. Courtesy the artist and 1301SW/STARKWHITE (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Tāhuna/Queenstown).

Sullivan+Strumpf (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney, Singapore), Booth C10
Dawn Ng

Dawn’s paintings and video works explore the concept of time and memory – I like the lyricism and nuanced use of colour with her feminine touch.

Dawn Ng, The Earth is an Hourglass (still), 2024, 4K res moving image work, h265 4:2:2 10bit Dolby Vision HDR, supplied on USB, 38m: 33s, edition of 5 plus 2 artist’s proofs. Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf ((Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney, Singapore).

Nasha Gallery (Gadigal Country/Sydney), Booth K3
Drew Connor Holland, horse i

Drew’s work is reflected in ideology; every image represents a collage of his personal experience and imaginative anxiety. It reminds me of the working process of the great Belgian painter, Luc Tuymens.

Drew Connor Holland, horse i, 2024, synthetic polymer, marble dust, water colour, toner, graphite, oil, archival varnish on birch panel, 24 x 20 x 5 cm. Courtesy the artist and Nasha Gallery (Gadigal Country/Sydney).

1301SW/STARKWHITE (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Tāhuna/Queenstown), Booth A3
Bill Henson, Untitled 2014-2015

Bill is my favourite Australian photographer. His dark, enigmatic photographs show a supreme sense of mystery and obscurity. The intensity and intimacy of his selection of motifs reflect an interplay between the mystical and the real.

Bill Henson, Untitled, 2014-2015 CL SH821 N9E, Archival inkjet pigment print, 127 x 180cm. Courtesy the artist and 1301SW/STARKWHITE.

Don’t miss Melbourne Art Fair, 20 – 23 February 2025. Click here to secure tickets.

WATCH | Tony Albert on Drawing From and Intervening with His Collection of ‘Aboriginalia’

One of Australia’s foremost contemporary artists with a longstanding interest in the cultural misrepresentation of Aboriginal people, Tony Albert, will present a solo presentation of new works at Melbourne Art Fair with Sullivan+Strumpf (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney, Singapore). Titled Reclamation, Tony draws on his collection of ‘Aboriginalia’: domestic and tourist artefacts that include images of Aboriginal people, their cultural objects and designs. Speaking with Melbourne Art Fair, he gives insight into how he started his vast collection, how he intervenes with the objects through his art, and what we might expect to see at the Fair.

Melbourne Art Fair, 20 – 23 February at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Click here to secure tickets.

Rachel Ciesla’s Guide to Naarm

Rachel Ciesla is the curator at The Art Gallery of Western Australia’s Simon Lee Foundation Institute of Contemporary Asian Art in Boorloo (Perth). For the 18th edition of the Melbourne Art Fair, she joins as curator of VIDEO, a dedicated sector of the Fair which presents a dynamic and thought-provoking collection of contemporary moving-image works. Now based in Boorloo/Perth, Rachel reflects on some of her favourite spots around Naarm/Melbourne, places she always looks forward to revisiting.

What do you miss most about the city when spending long periods of time away?

The Japanese breakfast at CIBI, then walking from Collingwood through Carlton Gardens and into the city, sitting in the front window at Dukes with a coffee before searching for something a little special at World Food Books or picking up a classic from Readings or Paperback, having lunch with an old friend at Sunhands and a few too many martinis at Apollo Inn after midnight.

CIBI, 33-39 Keele St, Collingwood. Photo: Tim Grey.

Where would you take someone to give them a good first impression of the city?

If the weather is just right then let’s walk through the Botanic Gardens, find ourselves at NGV, and come out the other side in China town for some dumplings.

Favourite dinner spot after a day exploring at the Fair?

Since it opened in 2016 it has been Napier Quarter. It has always been so very gentle to me.

Napier Quarter, 359 Napier St, Fitzroy.

Favourite place to discover art?

Some friends of mine recently opened a gallery in the Nicholson Building called ORDINANCE. If you’re in the city on a Friday or Saturday it’s worth a visit.

Darcey-Bella-Arnold, Cardboards, 2024, Ordinance-Gallery. Photo: Teagan Ramsay.

Melbourne Art Fair returns 20 – 23 February. Click here to secure tickets.

Janet Laurence on Interconnectivity and Alchemical Transformation

Presenting in a curated group show with ARC ONE Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), Janet Laurence embraces the idea of interconnectivity within her work, which spans photography, sculpture, video, and installation. Melbourne Art Fair speaks with Janet about exploring alchemical transformation, creating works from a place of empathy, and what we can expect to see from her works at the event.

Laurence’s works will be presented alongside those by Marina Rolfe and John Young, Booth C1.

Your practice conveys the idea of interconnectivity between all living beings, and our conflicting relationship with nature, often in response to a specific site. Can you expand?

Indeed, my work embodies the interconnection between all living things. It’s something completely embedded in my thinking, so naturally it lives within my process in making work.

From the conceptualization of the work, the subject is partly triggered by the ability to see the potential which I want to amplify through the process of making the work. For example, right now I’m beginning a series of works about the evolving knowledge of the mysterious interconnection between plants and minerals, and the exceptional language between plants, trees, earth and rocks. There is now clear scientific data to support this fascinating language.

Janet Laurence, preparation for the new work. Photo: Jacquie Manning. Courtesy the artist and ARC ONE Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne).

You describe your work as exploring alchemical transformation. What do you mean by this term and how do you capture these transformations in your works?

I love imagining the invisible and illusive states of desire whereby certain elements and materials create a state of symbiotic alchemy, combining or reacting with one another.

It is of course chemistry, however taking it into an artistic realm the alchemical has a much more romantic and philosophical dimension.  It is its own abstract field with a world of possibilities. It enables me to make decisions combining matter, materials, objects, and colour that can create an aesthetic, based on my alchemical language.

I often use translucent images and materials in my work so that light can pass through, creating haunting bleeds and provocative combinations of colour, image, and shadow. This way, creatively I set up alchemy.

How has your decade-spanning interdisciplinary practice evolved since you first started? How has the climate crisis – which has only grown more dire – impacted your work?

I began my practice as a way of exploring the world of nature around me. This of course went into various areas of nature from clouds to forests to the sea and glacial world. The more I see the more I realise its fragility and wonder and the catastrophe of climate change and the human over development.

I bring this into my work not as a didactic statement but as empathy, care and love for this amazing world of nature, the more than human world that without a voice is being rapidly lost.

Janet Laurence, Celestial, Salt, Sea, 2024, duraclear on shinkalite acrylic, oil and pigments, 100 x 240 x 10cm. Courtesy the artist and ARC ONE Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne).

With a body of work that is as emotive as it is conceptual, do you hope that your works provoke action in some capacity from the viewer?

I believe strongly in the necessity for the artist’s voice to speak up. My question is how can art reach the hearts and minds of those in power, who seem more present and more remote than ever?

What can we expect see in your presentation with Arc One Gallery at Melbourne Art Fair?

The work will be the beginning of my new exploration into a love affair between rocks, and their inherent ancient minerals, and plants and their essential needs for survival.

I call it the Planetary gardening series and it questions the relationship between mining sites and the specific needs of the trees and plants that depend on those minerals. And yet, they continue to be extinguished by mining and so these plants become living planetary rarities and the great treasures of the world.

Janet Laurence, Hidden celestial from the Planetary gardening series, 2024
Duraclear on shinkalite acrylic, oil pigment, 100 x 273 x 10cm. Courtesy the artist and ARC ONE Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne).

Melbourne Art Fair returns 20 – 23 February, to the MCEC. Click here to secure tickets.

Explore & Collect with David Flack

David Flack, Founder and Principal of Flack Studio and Melbourne Art Fair Ambassador, is an Australian designer renowned for multi-faceted, experiential residential, hospitality, commercial and retail environments. As the scion of a construction business family, he has a deep-seated understanding of the built environment; as a sophisticated traveller with an appreciation for art and culture, he is attuned to the potential of interiors to not just provide shelter from the world, but to create one’s own identity within it.

Melbourne Art Fair speaks with Flack about his most anticipated artists, works, and galleries coming to the Fair next week. 

D’Lan Contemporary (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal/Sydney, New York), Booth C8
Timothy Cook

Timothy paints circular forms that represent Kulama – an important initiation ceremony for young Tiwi men that occurs at yam harvesting time. I love that this work is on locally sourced bark. When I see a work like this I think about how generous First Nations artists are in their willingness to share their cultural knowledge, when they have been disrespected so fully by the process of colonisation.

Timothy Cook, Kulama, 2023, locally sourced ochres on stringybark, 107 x 67cm. Courtesy the artist and D’Lan Contemporary (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal/Sydney, New York).

Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne), Booth E3
Noel McKenna

My dogs are family to me, I love how Noel always centres animals in his everyday portraits. The interior of this room reminds me of the austere but beautiful Louis Barragan House in Mexico city, which employs simple forms and shocks of bright primary colours to make evocative spaces.

Noel McKenna, The rain cries, 2023, oil on plywood, 42 x 44.5cm. Courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne).

Nanda\Hobbs (Gadigal Country/Sydney), Booth M5
Lottie Consalvo

There is a rawness to Lottie’s work that is very primal. I especially like the use of the hessian in this work, its rough texture in opposition to the lovely fine shapes that the frayed edges make.

Lottie Consalvo, Pause Again, 2024, scrylic and hessian on canvas, 102 x 122cm. Courtesy the artist and Nanda\Hobbs (Gadigal Country/Sydney).

COMA (Gadigal Country/Sydney), Booth K4
Jane Yang D’Haene

I like works that play with the tension between technical mastery, experimentation and looseness. The glazes Jane has used on this pot are so warm, it has a gorgeous glow.

Jane Yang D’Haene, Untitled, 2024, stoneware, porcelain, glaze, 46 x 34 x 34cm. Courtesy the artist and COMA (Gadigal Country/Sydney).

Neon Parc (Naarm/Melbourne), Booth E1
Janet Burchill

I love the strength and political potency of Janet’s works. In my office I have two of her and Jennifer’s portraits of Simone Weil the French Philosopher. This series hits home hard as we collectively reckon with the devastating effects of climate change.

Janet Burchill, Topophilia, 2025, fibre reactive dye, calico on canvasDimensions:153 x 122.5cm. Courtesy the artist and Neon Parc (Naarm/Melbourne).

Don’t miss Melbourne Art Fair, 20 – 23 February 2025. Click here to secure tickets.

WATCH | Hannah Gartside on Creating Her ‘Bunnies in Love, Lust and Longing’

Presenting with Tolarno Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne) at Melbourne Art Fair 2025, Hannah Gartside speaks on her approach to making as ultimately rooted in articulating emotions. In expanding her series, Bunnies in love, lust and longing, Gartside transforms vintage gloves from her vast collection into small bunny sculptures which call on the viewer to empathise, opening a portal into their own longing, desired and sometimes buried feelings.

Watch the full video below.

Melbourne Art Fair, 20 – 23 February at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Click here to secure tickets.

Image right: Hannah Gartside, #53, 2025, found leather gloves, mixed media, 26 x 30 x 6cm, courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne).

BEYOND | Jahnne Pasco-White On Expanding Sensory Experiences and Her BEYOND Work

Jahnne Pasco-White’s expanded painting practice explores the interconnectedness between humans and our environment. Her work, Embodied watery entanglements II, will be presented at Melbourne Art Fair with STATION (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney), as part of BEYOND, the Fair’s sector for showcasing large-scale installations and spatial interventions. BEYOND is curated by Anna Briers, Curator, Len Lye & Contemporary Art, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (Aotearoa).

The Fair speaks with Jahnne about harnessing a watery approach to movement in her practice, working with recycled materials, and what to expect from her new work.

Continuous renewing, repurposing, reworking, and mark making seem to be integral aspects of your practice. What is the intention behind this process and the layers of authorship that you cover and uncover?

The expanded painting field has been a productive site for me to explore the relationship between humans and the environment. For this, I draw upon research in disciplines including ecology, feminism, and the field of human relations into conversation with material methods such as natural dyeing, staining, assembling, drawing, painting, collage and sewing. The resulting paintings, themselves often made from repurposed artworks and other recycled everyday materials, also come into relation with one another; both in the process of their making (i.e. I often work simultaneously across multiple works at a time) and compositionally when exhibited in the gallery (i.e. in how and where they are installed, on the floor to be walked on, for example). Put another way, I present works in exhibitions not as individual works but as a collective body of painting.

Into these many surfaces, I introduce segments of old paintings, cut up and reworked in an ongoing cycle of decay and renewal. I am interested in the generative process of creating, and the layers of authorship that are variously revealed and concealed by my continuous process of mark-making, as well as adding, subtracting and reworking old works into new ones. Through these varied approaches to painting what I hope to achieve with my work is an appreciation of the entanglements of the sustaining, contaminating and messy ecosystems that both human and more-than-human bodies inhabit and contribute. This interconnection emerges not only in the overlapping details of matter brought together on the surface but also in how works hang together as bodies and collaborators— cohabitating and intermingling. Composition spans beyond the individual to the collective painting ‘bodies’ where they are both mutating, feeding, and exchanging from one another through material, texture, line, form and colour.

Jahnne Pasco-White, Kinning with Lake 10, 2024, plant based crayons turmeric, oil pastel, watercolour, reclaimed oil paint, coffee, tea leaves, raw pigment, indigo dye, tempura, various plant dyes, acrylic, rice glue, paper, pen, hemp, silk, linen, cotton on canvas, 185.0 x 156.0cm. Courtesy the artist and STATION (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney).

What materials do you use in your work?

I collect and recycle old and tired textiles into my work like collage. I primarily work with natural textiles as I also work with natural seasonal dyeing. Hand dyed fabrics pigmented with organic materials gathered from my surroundings ­ including domestic debris and matter collected from the natural environment – are complemented by acrylic paint, oil stick, pastel, pencil, old drawings, watercolours, receipts, tags, plastic, flowers, plant matter, seeds, bamboo, felt, hemp, old cotton thread etc.

Recalling your work Milky ways for Maternal Inheritances and Embodied watery entanglements, their scale seems to envelop and immerse the viewer. Can you elaborate on the importance of scale in your practice?

In each of these site-specific installations I used a variety of textiles to expand the sensorial experience. These immersive installations aim to reconfigure the experience of painting beyond image making but to consider how one’s body relates to its environment. In this way attention between fine details through to the larger installation shifts constantly between the macro and micro scales.

Water is in a constant state of transformation just as bodies are. Harnessing this watery approach to movement, change and porosity has become core to my painting practice. Here, across exhibitions, studios and time scales paintings can resurface, sink, or float among each other. They can ingest, mutate, become a multitude, separate, and reinvent themselves. Like porous bodies being both absorbed by and absorbing the world, this painting practice is too. Moving between various scales, the detail and installation, these paintings, through their intermingling of layers, materials and collective gathering can offer ideas of regeneration, interconnectedness, decay and most importantly a method of continual questioning because I realise, my habitat is in movement.

Jahnne Pasco-White, Embodied watery entanglements, 2022, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA). Courtesy the artist and STATION (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney).

How do you approach a new body of work? Does it start with an idea, a material, a feeling? Or is it something different each time?

An old body of work is usually the starting place for the new body. Like the skin cicadas leaves as the head for the trees I usually pick up the scraps and that is the beginning of the new life. Sometimes its cutting old works up, other times its working on the opposite side, it might be a stained piece of material that becomes the way towards new work. I am interested in responding to particular spaces that inform how I think of the larger body of work as a whole. I think of my works as bodies; in this way they are ever changing, they are porous, have scars, watermarks and stories to tell. The painting bodies archive the many material encounters.

Can you expand on your interest in exploring the interconnection between humanity and our environment?

I am committed to an environmental position which situates my body as enmeshed and co-constituted with other living and non-living beings and things. I work with materials that have flowed in and out of use and disuse. For me, the fluidity of these material forms—the plant dyes, viscous rice glue, painterly washes, cutting up and re-using old works and feeding them into new paintings—all speak to the cyclical and porous flows that connect my body to the painting. Water is emerging as the connector between how I paint, why I am increasingly making work, and my environmental consciousness. By situating water as the connective flow through my work I embody the interconnection of all life, through temporal and material scales, aiming to mesh my environmentalism with material practice. This approach has shaped processes of art making that is underpinned by an attunement with currents of my ever-transforming environment. In the studio, water flows through the processes of natural dyeing, staining, assembling, drawing, collaging, and sewing to explore both the material and temporal limits of a painting practice. These processes connect colour to a surface and right back to layers of deep geological time that occurs within the development of mineral pigments where waters presence is vital. Water informs connections through the methods of making, environmental position, and my embodiment, revealing to me their entanglement with one another. To think and make with this watery attunement becomes a practice that intimately connects my existence with other living bodies and proposes a set of ethical questions of how my actions are implicated with others’ lives, both human and more-than-human.

Jahnne Pasco White, installation view, STATION. Photo: Jessica Maurer.

What can we expect to see from your work for the BEYOND sector at Melbourne Art Fair?

This body of work aims to be an immersive painterly encounter. The work is about including the smears, the stains of living, the Western concept of waste and inverting this into a vital component of the assemblage. It is a soupy gathering of the generative and toxic flows of living in the world today and putting into question how to co-exist. It’s a material engagement that seeks to prioritise the imperfections that make up the world. From soaking acacia seeds and flowers to boiling avocado stones in a pot of water to gathering the dusty pink hues, painting becomes a form of haptic engagement with the world, a method of archiving my material encounters like a digestive system. I think about the studio as fostering waves of compost where material in one form is gathered or accumulated, where under the right conditions they are transformed to a third form. There is no order over paint, sock scraps, or turmeric powder as it becomes more about what unfolds when they meet entangled upon or staining each other’s skins. It is painting in relation to other paintings which nourishes the idea that the individual does not operate without a larger eco-system. For me, painting is more than a pictorial image as it operates both with and beyond a visual register. It becomes a touching-feeling way of being in the world.

Melbourne Art Fair, 20 – 23 February 2025. Click here to secure tickets.

Fair Ambassador Henny Scott’s Guide to Naarm

The Stokehouse, St Kilda
Located just 10 minutes walk from my home, this gorgeous St Kilda beachfront has got to be my number one favourite spot to dine with loved ones. With stunning views of Port Philip Bay, consistency in flavour and great service, it is not hard to keep coming back whether for a special occasion upstairs, a casual fish and chips night or just some spritz and cicchetti to watch as the sun goes down. 

The Stokehouse. Photography: Gareth Sobey for Broadsheet.

Kirk’s Wine Bar, CBD
Kirk’s Wine Bar is a great meeting spot after hours of exploring art or a day of shopping. Headed by TV personality, Chef Ian Curley, this place has the vibes and wine list to match for boozing in the city.

Kirk’s Wine Bar. Courtesy Visit Victoria.

Your go-to for exploring art in the city?

National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), CBD

Melbourne Art Fair returns 20 – 23 February at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Click here to secure tickets.

WATCH | Kim Ah Sam On Representing Personal Journeys and Country Through Her Weavings

Kuku Yalanji and Kalkadoon artist, Kim Ah Sam’s works explore the connection between Country and the human body through sculpture. For Melbourne Art Fair’s BEYOND sector, Kim has produced Before & Beyond, Our Journey, a constellation of levitating sculptures which gently hover and spin, possessing a kinetic quality.

Speaking with Melbourne Art Fair, Kim provides insights on her self-taught, intuitive and improvisational weaving process, her use of recycled materials, and capturing personal journeys on Country through her works. Watch the video in full below.

Kim Ah Sam is represented by Vivien Anderson Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne)

Harnessing the monumental exhibition spaces within the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, BEYOND presents three large-scale installations and spatial interventions from leading contemporary artists. Melbourne Art Foundation supports the sector by providing a monetary grant to participating galleries. This year, BEYOND is curated by Anna Briers, Curator, Len Lye & Contemporary Art, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (Aotearoa).

Michael Cook On Sharing Knowledge Through Art and His New Series ‘Individuation’, Debuting at Melbourne Art Fair

Michael Cook’s magnificent hyper-real photographs often capture roles in reversal, histories re-written, testing viewers’ relationships to aspects of Australia’s colonial history, and to society’s tendency toward overconsumption.

This year, debuting his new ongoing series, Individuation at Melbourne Art Fair with Jan Murphy Gallery (Meanjin/Brisbane), he explores the societal forces that pull us toward materiality. Speaking with the Fair, Michael provides insight on his decades-spanning career, exploring Australia’s layered histories through his photographs, and more. Michael’s work will be presented by Jan Murphy Gallery, Booth B2.

How were you first introduced to photography?  

My older brother bought me my first camera when I was 14. He worked in a photography lab and introduced me to all the basics of photography and the darkroom. By the time I was 17, I was also working in the lab and 5 years later I opened my own photographic studio, mostly shooting weddings and fashion style portraits.

Michael Cook, Consumerism, 2024-25, from the series Individuation, archival pigment print on paper. Courtesy the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery (Meanjin/Brisbane).

Can you talk us through your transition from commercial photography to fine art? What influenced your decision to make this career shift? How does your experience in the commercial sector influence how you create your current work? 

By the time I was 40, I had already experienced various areas of photography, labs, darkroom, weddings, portraits, fashion, commercial photography, which all taught me things which I could apply to my artistic process. I always had my own projects whirring in the back of my mind so I decided to focus on making my own work for 12 months and see how it went. I made the Prime Ministers series and got gallery representation with Andrew Baker in Brisbane and I’ve been making major bodies of work ever since.

Much of your work interrogates the ‘what if’ – alternative histories, like in Majority Rule where the Indigenous population makes up 96% of Australia and the non-Indigenous 4% or in Fake, in which a white child is adopted into an Indigenous family – a reversal of your own personal history. Can you expand on your interest in communicating these alternative histories and thus interrogating those currently in place? What insights are you hoping that the viewer might gain? 

I grew up with a lot of questions about my identity. I was never taught any First Nations history at school, only about the ‘discovery’ of Australia. My work continues to question the ‘what ifs’ of our history and the impacts of colonisation, and I hope that it raises questions for the viewer too. I have a strong narrative element to my work but rather than coming from a place of moralising (or demoralising) I hope that I can highlight the complexity of our layered history. Art is a way of expanding and sharing knowledge, it provokes a different way of thinking about things. I’m proud that I get to tell my story – I’ve been making work for the past two decades, and hope that my work will still be here long after I’m gone.

Michael Cook, Authenticity, 2024-25, from the series Individuation, archival pigment print on paper. Courtesy the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery (Meanjin/Brisbane).

Each element in your work is meticulously and intentionally chosen and positioned, across the palette, subject and mis-en-scene, reflecting the overall narrative of a series. Can you expand on your process when creating a composition – from ideation to finished result? 

It all stems from an idea. It doesn’t matter the scale of production required to create the work, only that I need to tell a message. Sometimes it’s a large production with lots of people involved, sometimes it’s small. The thing that matters is being able to get the vision I see in my head onto paper.

What projects are you currently working on? What can we expect to see from your solo presentation with Jan Murphy at Melbourne Art Fair? 

My next series is titled Individuation and it is largely set in London. Following on from my last series Fake, this body of work continues to explore the psychology of conditioning and the contemporary forces that constantly prompt us towards materiality. The title of the series ‘Individuation’ was coined by psychologist Carl Jung to describe the process of developing an authentic individuality. As with most of my work, there is an autobiographical element woven into the story – I’m in my mid-life now and I don’t think I’m alone in seeking out what Indigenous cultures around the world had all along – a deeper connection to country, culture, spirit, community. The things that most of Western society seem to be lacking a little of.

Visit Melbourne Art Fair, on from 20 – 23 February at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Click here to secure tickets.
Michael Cook is represented by Jan Murphy Gallery (Meanjin/Brisbane).

WATCH | Ministry of Clouds on Crafting Wine and Collecting Art They Love

With extensive careers in the world of wine, Bernice Ong and Julian Forwood founded Ministry of Clouds in 2012 with the sole goal of crafting wines with gastronomy in mind.

The independent winery and Official Wine Partner of the Fair finds its home on 11 hectares in the McLaren Vale. Their modern Australian wines are crafted simply and traditionally, with complexity derived from many small ferments, either in traditional open vats or concrete eggs, with indigenous yeasts, multiple picking passes to retain acid, and a mosaic of distinguished vineyards to provide layers of flavour and tannin. The goal is transparency, balance and elegance, recognition of site and season, sustainable farming, and contemporary yet classic wines from the ancient vines and geology of their vineyard.

Melbourne Art Fair speaks with Bernice and Julian about their journey in wine, and their avid interest in art, showing us some of the pieces they have collected in their home over the years.

Visit the Ministry of Clouds Wine Bar & Bistro, designed and furnished by Dann Event Hire, at Melbourne Art Fair this month. Select from a McLaren Vale Dry Rosé, a Clare Valley Riesling or an Adelaide Hills Chardonnay and discover art from over 100 contemporary artists.

20 – 23 February at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Click here to secure tickets.

Noel McKenna: It is Ordinary to Love the Sublime, But Sublime to Love the Ordinary

Noel McKenna has a unique instinct for capturing often unobserved and underappreciated moments of the everyday with endearing clarity. His spare canvases hint at narratives beyond the picture plane, often movingly depicting the relationship between humans and animals. With an extensive career spanning over forty years, McKenna has exhibited his work locally and internationally. This year at Melbourne Art Fair, Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne) presents a solo presentation of works by the artist.

Speaking with Melbourne Art Fair, McKenna provides insight about his animal subjects and what we should expect from his presentation.

Your work often depicts elements of the mundane, leaving much to be said about the lives of the subjects depicted, as if a snapshot in a story. What is it about the seemingly unextraordinary that sparks your interest?

My attitude to the humbleness of the everyday world, I would best sum up by saying it is ordinary to love the sublime, but sublime to love the ordinary.

Noel McKenna, The two faces of January, 2024, oil on canvas, 46 x 37cm. Photo: Simon Hewson. Courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne).

Animals, particularly dogs, cats and horses, are often the focal subjects within your works, even when a human subject is present. Would it be appropriate to consider your own pets as your muses? Why is it that animals seem to gauge your interest more than their human counterparts?

My own pets I have used as subjects but for the most part, the subjects I use to begin a painting more than often comes from a photograph I have taken, from books, Instagram, many different sources. I have a genuine fondness for most animals believing they have a complexity that a lot of people do not notice. When you look into the eyes of most animals be it a horse, cat or dog one sees the soulful nature of them often.

Is it your hope to capture an animal’s likeness, demeanour or personality through your paintings? Or are they more concerned by an overall sense of a scene or story at hand?

I do not try to capture the likeness of an animal when I am painting. I try to make an important part of the narrative of the work their relationship to other things, people, in the picture.

What is your process when creating a new composition? Does each work start with an idea, image, or story? Can you describe a moment when a scene has caught your eye, enough to inspire a piece?

My paintings generally begin by putting one thing on the canvas: could be a chair, tree and I then may just paint something beside the chair: could be a lamp, animal. It goes through many changes when I may wipe out the lamp, the composition usually comes out of moving things around to find an interesting use of negative space between things. More instinct than strategy or planning, I enjoy being surprised when I am working on a painting.

Noel McKenna, Edith’s Diary, 2024, oil on canvas, 100 x 100cm. Photo: Simon Hewson. Courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne).

What influenced your transition from studying architecture to fine art? How has your practice evolved throughout your career?

I left architecture because the lecturers at Queensland University when I was there told me I would have trouble graduating as an architect. One of them advised me to go to art school, which I had not thought of at all. I came from a working class family of Irish heritage where art had no real place.

Can you tell us about what we can expect to see from your solo show at Melbourne Art Fair with Niagara Galleries?

The works I will be showing at Melbourne Art fair continue my exploration of the relationship between humans and animals.

There is in the works a sense of apprehension in some of the compositions. I have been reading Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith, by Andrew Wilson, the biography of the American suspense writer best known for Strangers on a train and the Ripley books. She was tortured, difficult, quirky and deviant. I have read many biographies of artists but I was very affected by this book. Drawn from her diaries from when she was very young, a psychological portrait of someone when you read from her childhood to dying one feels you almost know them.

Totally devoted to her craft, always striving for her best, her personal life suffered as a result. I reached times in reading things she had done and said that I had to stop reading as it was upsetting me.

Visit Niagara Galleries, Booth E3, at Melbourne Art Fair, returning 20 -23 February. Click here to secure tickets.

Portrait Photo: Antony Clare. Courtesy the artist and Niagara Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne).

BEYOND | Paul Yore on Wonderment and Conjuring Paradoxical Connections Through His Works

Harnessing the monumental exhibition spaces within the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, BEYOND presents three large-scale installations and spatial interventions from leading contemporary artists. As part of BEYOND, Paul Yore will present FUCK ME DEAD, a vibrantly mosaiced hearse, upcycled and modified from an iconic Australian car, the  ’70s Ford Fairlane. His new series, Souvenir, will also feature in a solo show at the Fair, presented by STATION.

Melbourne Art Fair speaks with Paul about his installation, facilitating a deeper engagement with works through the interplay between the macro and micro, and conjuring paradoxical associations through imagery.

Paul Yore’s work for BEYOND is presented by STATION (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney) and Hugo Michell Gallery (Tarntanya/Adelaide).

How did your work which will be exhibited for BEYOND, FUCK ME DEAD originally come about? 

The origin point for all my work is wonderment. I follow my curiosity about the world, about objects, forms and images, and I try to reveal what things are in themselves, their inner essence, and bring this feeling or sensation to the surface level of perception and experience. My process pivots around the logic, materiality, and methodology of assemblage, wherein multiple objects and forms are conjoined creating dynamic hybrids. I endeavour to communicate new possibilities of meaning by detaching things from their original context, exposing the material condition of things, and questioning the social production of forms and images within this particular cultural milieu.

Paul Yore, FUCK ME DEAD, 2022, mixed media assemblage comprising funeral hearse, found objects, glass, shells, LED lights, acrylic paint and plastic flooring. dimensions 592.5 x 379 x 149cm. Courtesy the artist and STATION (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney). Originally commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art for the survey exhibition WORD MADE FLESH, 2022.

The car in this work is listed as a found material. How did you source it and why was it chosen? What initially drove you to this idea? 

Found materials are a way to dialogue with world in a very immediate and direct manner. I am attracted to things that circulate widely and yet seem underexamined or overlooked. Consequently, the source of my artworks is often obsolescence and waste. As a child I was already an avid collector of things – I was drawn to coins, gemstones, seashells, feathers, fossils, and other trinkets. I have always felt there is a hidden reality behind surface appearance, and that the contemplation of objects can bring us into proximity with other times and places. In this regard, the car could be read as an allegory for the transportative potentiality of art. The automobile is recurrently associated with modernity, progress, momentum, mobility and individual freedom, and these are ideas that speak loudly to the project of art.

Can you expand on the car as a symbol of Australiana, traditional masculinity and death? 

Art takes place in the mind of the viewer, and I am most interested in what someone feels when they experience art and encounter its multiple possibilities. I see the work as a conduit for collective memory and unconscious associations, allowing a plurality of available interpretations to surface. I ensure my pieces are very open and speculative by setting up polarities within the work, holding seemingly paradoxical concepts in proximity. For example, the car may evoke an optimistic by-gone era of Australian automotive manufacturing or conversely may conjure up images of industrial decay and entropy. The piece may exude a phallic energy, but one underscored by a distinct femininity. Likewise, this sculpture undoubtable confronts death as an inevitable aspect of the human condition, but this only reasserts the primacy of existence, the here and now of life itself. All these potential readings are animated by their opposing or contradictory impressions and held in a dialectical tension.

You have previously spoken about influences from David McDiarmid’s quilts and religious iconography from the Byzantine period. Can you expand on these influences and why it is that you incorporate the mosaic in your work as a means of transformation? 

I admire the manner with which McDiarmid used reflective materials to play with light and produce compelling works of great pathos and profundity. The exquisite icons of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition similarly used glass, gold, and precious stones to imbue images with a sense of transcendental luminosity. In a contemporary setting, information is illuminated through electric signage and the brightly lit screens of television and digital media, and so light remains a captivating device for the transmission of visual information. Correspondingly, I use light to imbue my work with a sense of immediacy and urgency, to heighten its semiotic potency. The fragmentary surfaces of my works in mosaic are inlaid with thousands of hand-cut pieces of glass, plastic and shell, refracting light in multiple directions simultaneously. I consider reflection in both its meanings: as outward shininess but also in relation to inward contemplative thought. The word mosaic also seems to carry this dual connotation, etymologically relating to both decoration and the idea of the muse.

Paul Yore, Sydney Opera House (You Make Me Feel), 2024, mixed media assemblage on board comprising glass, crockery, Perspex, beads, glitter, found objects, synthetic fur, trim, ribbon, cotton thread, LED light, wood, adhesive, fixtures, synthetic polymer, enamel 173cm x 165cm x 12cm. Courtesy of the artist and STATION (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney).

Your large-scale works are often highly detailed, containing small fragments of collaged ideas, symbols and text. What is the significance of scale in your practice? How do you approach moving between macro and micro in your work? 

The interplay between the macro and the micro scale in the work is a strategy for increasing audience receptivity, creating multiple access points for the viewer to enter into a dialogue with the work. Meticulous attention to detail facilitates this deeper engagement with the work and enables a temporal shift – time seems to slow down as the viewer gets lost in all the intricacies of a composition. In everyday experience, we perceive things as neatly delineated objects, but on closer inspection we see the constituent parts of things or notice that the separation between individual entities is somewhat illusory or unclear. I am interested in the gap between the way reality seems to be (an expanded field of energy and matter in constant flux) and the way it is framed and represented by social and linguistic conventions (a linear series of relatively fixed and stable structures and categories). In my art, I am always trying to locate and exaggerate these internal contradictions between appearance and actuality.

What can we expect to see at your solo presentation with STATION at Melbourne Art Fair? 

I am excited to finally be unveiling a new series entitled Souvenir that has been in development for the past two years. The presentation is a study in folkloric images and forms, seeking beauty and mystery in the familiar. Deploying assemblage, mosaic, appliqué and embroidery, this new body of work extends my interest in the revival and adaptation of traditional decorative craft methodologies, artisanal techniques and vernacular forms. Engaging memory, nostalgia, and collective experience, my new pieces reimagine overlooked cultural symbols, transforming clichéd and naïve icons into monumental and mythic tableaux imbued with sincerity and gravity.

Paul Yore in studio. Photo: Devon Ackermann. Courtesy the artist and STATION (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney).

FUCK ME DEAD will be exhibited in the heart of the Fair as part of BEYOND.  STATION will also present a solo show of Paul’s works within the Fair, Booth K5.
Click here to secure tickets to Melbourne Art Fair this February.

Victorian First Peoples Art & Design Fair Showcase Artists and Program Announced

In 2025 MAF welcomes the Victorian First Peoples Art and Design Fair Showcase Exhibition, a preview of the upcoming Victorian First Peoples Art and Design Fair, which will officially launch in 2027

An Opening Ceremony creatively produced by Jason Tamiru (Yorta Yorta) and Nathan Lovett-Murray (Wamba Wamba, Dhudhuroa, Baraparapa, Dja Dja Wurrung, Yupagalk, Wergaia, Yorta Yorta, and Wiradjeri) will officially mark the start of the VFPADF Showcase Exhibition and feature a historical narrative, smoking ceremony and cultural dance performances.

The exhibition showcases the rich cultural and creative diversity of Victorian First Peoples contemporary art and design, and features new and recent work by twenty independent Victorian First Peoples artists and designers: Moorina Bonini (Yorta Yorta, Wurundjeri, Wiradjuri)l, Lorraine Brigdale (Yorta Yorta), Glennys Briggs (Yorta Yorta, Taungurung, Wiradjuri), Janet Bromley (Yorta Yorta), Bradley Brown (Gunditjmara, Gunai Kurnai, Bidawal), Trina Dalton-Oogjes (Wadawurrung/Wathaurung, Gunditjmara), Talgium Edwards (Taungurong, Yorta Yorta, Muthi Muthi, Boonwerung and Palawa), Deanne Gilson (Wadawurrung), Tammy Gilson (Wadawurrung), ENOKi (Dja Dja Wurrung, Yorta Yorta), Gail Harradine (Wotjobaluk, Djubagalk, Jadawadjali), Kelly Koumalatsos (Wergaia, Wemba Wemba), Glenda Nicholls (Waddi Waddi, Ngarrindjeri, Yorta Yorta), Ray Thomas (Gunnai), Zeta Thomson (Wurundjeri, Yorta Yorta), Kim Wandin (Wurundjeri), Lewis Wandin-Bursill (Wurundjeri), Peter Waples-Crowe (Ngarigo), and Lisa Waup (Gunditjmara, Torres Strait).

In addition, seventeen artists and designers are represented by Victorian First Peoples art centres. Baluk Arts, from Mt Eliza will exhibit Adam Magennis (Bunurong) and Iluka Sax-Williams (Taungurung); Kaiela Arts, from Shepparton will exhibit Jack Anselmi (Yorta Yorta), Ally Knight (Yorta Yorta, Dja Dja Wurrung, Kamilaroi),  Norm Yakaduna Stewart (Kwat Kwat, Wurundjeri, Yalaba Yalaba, Moira) along with a Ceramics presentation by Cynthia Hardie, Laurel Robinson, Amy Briggs, Rochelle Patten, Lyn Thorpe, and Melinda Solomon; Perridak Arts, from Ballarat will exhibit Donna Blackall (Yorta Yorta, Taungurung) and Adrian Rigney (Wotjobaluk, Ngarrindjeri); and The Torch, from Naarm will exhibit Alfred Carter (Gunaikurnai), Stacey Edwards (Taungurung, Boon Wurrung), Ash Thomas (Yorta Yorta, Wiradjuri), and Robby Wirramanda (Wergaia, Wotjobaluk).

Co-curators Janina Harding and Dr Jessica Clark said, “The Victorian First Peoples Art and Design Fair Showcase Exhibition will be a first glimpse as we build up to a full-scale presentation of the event in 2027. We are working closely with twenty independent First Peoples artists and four arts centres whose artwork and culture are unique to the South East, and we’re so excited to share and profile their incredible talent with Melbourne Art Fair collectors, buyers and the sector more broadly.”

Additionally, the inaugural VFPADF Commission has been awarded to Mitch Mahoney (Boon Wurrung, Barkindji) and will premiere as part of the Melbourne Art Fair COMMISSION program. 

Alongside the Victorian First Peoples Art and Design Fair Showcase Exhibition, the public program offers opportunities to connect with and hear directly from Victorian First Peoples artists through daily tours, artist talks, weaving workshops and panel discussions.

The VFAPDF exhibition celebrates the incredible breadth of creative and cultural practice by Victorian First Peoples artists and designers while providing a unique opportunity to meet, connect with, and hear directly from them. Collectively representing more than twenty Victorian First Peoples language groups from across all regions of the state, the artists attest to the strength, resilience and continuity of culture in Victoria.

Melbourne Art Fair takes place 20 – 23 February 2025. Click here to secure tickets.
Click here to explore the full Fair Program.

Image: Ray Thomas, Jerail Ceremony of the Gunnai, 2021, acrylic on canvas, Jirra skin and redgum, two panels 60cmx140cm each. Courtesy the artist.

WATCH | How Camille Laddawan Explores Language Through Coded Bead Weavings

Camille Laddawan is an artist working primarily with Japanese glass seed beads, coded and woven into tapestry-like works which explore systems of language. Each bead can be seen as an individual agent, acting within a much larger system, where the final work can be decoded and read as a script or a score.

Presented by BAProjects at Melbourne Art Fair, Camille’s weavings will be exhibited alongside paintings by Umatji Tjapalyi, one of the founders and senior artists at Mimili Maku Arts.

Visiting her home studio, the Melbourne Art Fair team speaks with Camille to learn more about her intricate coding and weaving processes.

Melbourne Art Fair 2025 returns 20 – 23 February at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Click here to secure tickets.

Contrived Casualness: How Zoe Young’s Work Spans the Ordinary and Extraordinary

Transforming everyday settings and objects into idyllic scenes that hold unique emotional depth, Zoe Young’s work connects individual stories with broader human emotions. Showcasing a solo presentation with Sophie Gannon Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne) at the Fair in next year, Melbourne Art Fair speaks with Zoe about how she creates her still-life compositions, honoring her voice, and what she’s currently working on for the event.

Your paintings often elicit feelings of nostalgia, leaving the impression of a personal memory or a film still. What draws you to these everyday domestic scenes?

I think of my work as contrived casualness. On the surface, it might look effortless or ordinary, but it’s carefully staged—my studio becomes a set, and life beyond it is edited into moments that feel suspended in time. Beauty has the power to freeze things, and painting lets me rearrange those fragments. Sometimes, it feels uncanny—I’ve even lived out scenes from my paintings. The ordinary and extraordinary blur in ways I can’t fully explain. There’s an alchemy to the process.

Courtesy Zoe Young and Sophie Gannon Gallery.

Are your paintings often based on scenes in your personal life? Do you see painting as a form of journaling or recording personal histories?

In a way, yes. At first, I doubted whether anyone cared about my perspective, but I realised the personal is political. Growing up, I struggled to believe in my own voice—I even wanted to take my father’s name, Butch, because Zoe felt too soft. Painting has become a way to claim and honour that voice. I often find that the more sincere and personal the work, the more it resonates with others. Having spent a big slice of my childhood on Sydney Harbour, there are glimpses and rituals that are quintessential to my experience that I hope are an echo for others of our entwined lives.

Can you describe your process when forming a still-life composition, from ideation to final outcome?

For this show, still life goes beyond the studio walls. Instead of arranging flowers or books, I’m composing with streets, clouds, yachts, terraces—all the motifs of my misspent youth: dawdling about, loitering with friends, walking up back laneways, and sunbathing my life away like I had all the time in the world. I think about Pamela Anderson’s no-makeup photos, and I want to reveal Sydney in the same manner—give her some time, scratch the surface, rip off the facade, and she’s actually even more beautiful.

Courtesy Zoe Young and Sophie Gannon Gallery.

How has your practice evolved throughout your career?

Painting has always been how I make sense of things. In high school, my catchphrase was, “Do you get what I mean?” and every painting I make is still asking that question. I’ve always had an insatiable appetite for expressing the slightly indefinable. I really want to get to the core of something—the essence—whether it’s a person, place, or side dish in a restaurant. I’m just really interested in doing the best painting I can of whatever I’m trying to define at the time.

What can we expect at Melbourne Art Fair in 2025?

It’s a love letter to Sydney, from someone who knows her,  without her makeup on. It’s a tribute to all the years of loitering about the harbour, weaving through the lounges, lingering in the kitchens, where the scent of salt unites every window. I’m trying to bring all these ideas I’ve been hoarding in my mind since childhood about the harbour to life—collaging decades and incarnations into scenes. I’m trying to distil the essence of the harbour, the subtle aroma of Moreton Bay figs, the swell on the dock, the faded shirts on the weathered bodies, the glistening of time as people pass from youth to age about the bays.

Melbourne Art Fair returns 20 – 23 February 2025 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Tickets are currently on sale here.

Melbourne Art Fair Partners With LOEWE To Launch The LOEWE x Suna Fujita Collection And Ceramic Exhibition

Ahead of its 18th edition in February 2025, Melbourne Art Fair is proud to announce a dynamic new partnership with LOEWE, a global leader in luxury fashion lauded for its artistry and commitment to craftsmanship since 1846. 

Melbourne Art Fair joins LOEWE to celebrate a world-first preview with the debut of Jonathan Anderson’s reprised collaboration with Kyoto-based ceramicist duo Suna Fujita in Australasia. Exhibited for the first time with an intimate viewing experience exclusively within LOEWE’s Melbourne Collins Street store, a selection of twenty delicate and playful pieces from the Suna Fujita ceramic studio were unveiled alongside the new series of bags, ready-to-wear and accessories. 

“This partnership is a reflection of Melbourne Art Fair and LOEWE’s shared commitment to supporting living artists and creatives, and an exciting precursor to the 18th edition of the Fair, which promises to be one of our most dynamic and anticipated showcases yet,” said Fair Director Melissa Loughnan. “Melbourne Art Fair is thrilled to partner with LOEWE in celebrating the playful launch of the LOEWE x Suna Fujita collaboration.” 

Launching today in stores and online, the LOEWE x Suna Fujita collection brings to life the work of the acclaimed ceramicists, known for their miniature hand-painted scenes. Featuring whimsical characters—from ocean creatures to cosmic animals—the collection transforms everyday pieces into dreamlike works of art across LOEWE accessories, ready-to-wear and mesmerising facades. 

The debut of the LOEWE x Suna Fujita collection arrives just ahead of the 18th edition of Melbourne Art Fair. Taking place 20-23 February 2025 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Melbourne Art Fair will bring together 60 of the region’s most exciting galleries and Indigenous art centres to showcase works by new and iconic artists, with a focus on solo and tightly curated presentations, and works of scale and significance. 

Standout Solo Presentations Coming to Melbourne Art Fair in 2025

The 18th edition of Melbourne Art Fair returns in the Victorian summer, 20 – 23 February 2025, to present new and iconic artists. With a focus on solo shows and works of scale and significance, the Fair supports the exhibition of thoughtfully curated presentations that offer an in-depth exploration of artistic practice from Australasia’s leading galleries and Indigenous art centres. 

Ahead of the 2025 edition, discover a selection of upcoming solo shows coming to the Fair next year.

Michael Cook
Jan Murphy Gallery (Meanjin/Brisbane)

Past, present and future collide in Michael Cook’s works, home to both vast chasms of disparity and intense points of connection. Cook’s photographic works critically examine the historic and present-day treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia. He employs the camera as the supreme intermediary device – the ‘third eye’ which can bridge European and Indigenous worlds and perspectives. The photograph is, for Cook, that imaginary place of possibility where we can be invited to experience the other side of the coin, roles in reversal, worlds inverted, histories re-written. The images promise imaginative pathways through minefields of associations, as we sense potential unravellings of historical consequence. 

Cook has exhibited extensively, nationally and internationally. His artworks are held in all major Australian collections, and in significant international collections, including the British Museum, London; The Museum of World Cultures, Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Utrecht; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; and the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, USA. 

Michael Cook, Welcome Sign, archival pigment print on 310 gsm paper, various sizes. Courtesy the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery.

Kenny Pittock
MARS Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne)

Pittock’s playful practice draws on the iconography and nostalgia of quotidian Australia. Hand-crafting the everyday ephemera and experiences of collective memory, Pittock’s works are humorous microcosms of the greater anxieties that face our world today. By creating tangible representations of transient objects and encounters, his visual language reminds the viewer to locate a constant in the fleeting, melding the timeless with the timely. 

At the Fair in 2025, MARS Gallery will present Poems and Portraits, showcasing a new series of Pittock’s unique ceramic shopping lists.  Inspired by the real text on one anonymous, discarded  shopping list recovered by Pittock, Poems and Portraits, reminds us of the universality of the mundane. 

Pittock has held solo exhibitions in Italy, Singapore and Aotearoa / New Zealand, as well as in many public institutions throughout Australia. His work has been a finalist in many prizes including the 2024 Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the 2024 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize at Geelong Gallery, and his artworks are included in many collections including Artbank, Bendigo Art Gallery, the University of Queensland and the National Gallery of Victoria. 

Kenny Pittock, Burger Bread Rye, 2024, Acrylic on ceramic, 21cm x 7.5cm. Courtesy the artist and MARS.

Reko Rennie & Harriette Bryant
Ames Yavuz (Gadigal Country/Sydney, Singapore)

Next year, Ames Yavuz will present two dynamic solo exhibitions featuring newly created works by esteemed artists Harriette Bryant and Reko Rennie. Both artists bring powerful narratives and visually compelling styles that examine and challenge perceptions of Aboriginal identity, power structures, and cultural history within an Australian and global context. The presentations aim to highlight the strength and significance of their individual practices while drawing meaningful connections between their approaches to storytelling and artmaking. 

Rennie will present a series of vibrant new paintings and intricately crafted stone sculptures. The new body of work continues to explore and assert Aboriginal identity within a contemporary setting, pushing the boundaries of visual language. Through his signature blend of street art aesthetics, bold use of colour, and symbolic iconography of his Kamilaroi heritage, Rennie’s paintings carry a narrative of cultural pride, resilience, and the assertion of Indigenous presence. 

Reko Rennie, RR-RS, 2024, acrylic and pigment on linen, 150 x 150 cm. Courtesy the artist and Ames Yavuz.

Emerging artist Harriette Bryant from Mimili Maku Arts in the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands will showcase a series of wall–bound assemblages of vintage serving plates to create a profound recount of the Aṉangu experience of atomic testing, and the devastating effects of nuclear weapons testing by the British at Maralinga. Bryant’s autobiographical practice pieces together different storylines related to her extended family, often working with found materials and content, creating equally sinister and humorous retellings of Australian history. 

Installation view of works by Harriette Bryant, 2024. Courtesy the artist, Mimili Maku Arts and Ames Yavuz. Photography by Jessica Maurer.

Drew Connor Holland
Nasha Gallery (Gadigal Country/Sydney)

Returning to Melbourne Art Fair next year after a standout solo exhibition of works by Mark Maurangi Carrol, Nasha Gallery will present three drafts of the same poem by Drew Connor Holland – a continuation of the exhibition of the same name presented by the gallery in December 2023. Of the exhibition Holland writes “When I was asked to describe these works I saw them as a Reformation of heartbreak— symbols of an alchemic spiritual repentance eroded with the passage of time. The Lutherian sensibility reframes things. How might one heartbreak look after a thousand years of merciful transformation? How would an archaeologist understand the notes app? How would my search history make someone feel in the deep future?” 

Holland’s work is about how we catalogue memories: in digital archives, in junk drawers, in our heads. He sees his work as contemporary archaeologies, collating our experiences of love and anxiety through the transformation of hoarded data. Every piece is rendered as fragile; each differing surface absorbs or rejects elements of the image depending on their material qualities. Instead of slick and new their finish is battered and old — like a crumbling fresco or tapestry. In this state they force a gentle hand and ask for care. 

Drew Connor Holland, angels keep empty spaces where something can be left, 2023, synthetic polymer, marble dust, damar, watercolour, ink on birch panel, 14 x 14 cm, 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. Courtesy the artist and Nasha Gallery.

Hannah Gartside
Tolarno Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne)

Tolarno Galleries will premiere 40+ new small sculptures from Hannah Gartside, made from worn antique and vintage women’s leather gloves. These new sculptures of anthropomorphised rabbits form part of Gartside’s ongoing series, Bunnies in love, lust and longing, which began in 2016. Gartside expands on the series, “The gloves have been manipulated to depict bunnies cuddling, hanging out, pleasuring themselves and each other. After years of functioning as protection against impropriety and cold weather, these gloves now bring to life little experiences and relationships. Bunnies… use the intrinsic human practice of interpreting hand-gestures and body language to convey secret feelings and hopes, desires, and elicit empathy and recognition in the viewer.” 

Hannah Gartside works across kinetic sculpture, installation and quilt-making. Characteristically sensual and poetic, her works transform and, in some cases, animate, found fabrics, clothing and ephemera to articulate experiences and sensations of longing, tenderness, care, desire and fury. 

Recently, Gartside won the 2024 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize and was announced as a recipient of the prestigious Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship for 2025. Recent commissions include Forest Summons (for Lilith) at the Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria for Melbourne Now, 2023, and Loie, Lilith, Sarah, Pixie and Artemisia for Primavera 2021: Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art. 

Hannah Gartside, from the series: Bunnies in love, lust and longing, 2024, found leather gloves, wire, cotton and wool fabric, weighted curtain cord, thread, 13cm L x 9cm W x 7cm H. Courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries.

Chunxiao Qu
FUTURES (Naarm/Melbourne)

Chunxiao Qu is an artist and published poet whose work folds pointed humour into conceptual making with irreverence and serious intent. Her wide-ranging practice spans installation, sculpture, painting, neon, print-making, poetry and fashion. Both her poetry and art embrace play in language, provoking her audience and testing truisms regarding art and life. Her ‘tributes’ to conceptual artists copy and adapt key works in art history while shifting meaning beyond satire. Humour’s tricks of contrast and surprise are employed, yet irony lives side-by-side with sincerity, as bedfellows in disguise. 

Select solo exhibitions include Art is a washing machine that is washing itself, FUTURES, 2023; An artist doesn’t need a label, Curated by Amelia Wallin, LRI Biannual Façade public Art Commission, La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo (2022-2023); COPY, Curated by Chelsea Hopper, 99% Gallery, Melbourne(2022); Chunxiao Qu, Lon Gallery, Melbourne (2021); The title is no longer relevant, curated by Chelsea Hopper, Trocadero ArtSpace, Melbourne (2021). Select group exhibitions include Person, woman, man, camera, TV. Curated by Chelsea Hopper, BLINDSIDE, Melbourne (2022); White Night Bendigo, 2022, Bendigo (2022); Everything That Is Outside Of Us, Curated by A Constructed World, Palazzo Vai, Prato, Italy (2017). She has published two poetry collections: This poetry book is too good to have a name & Logic Poetry (Discipline, 2022) and Popcorn, Porn of Poetry (no more poetry, 2021). She is currently a studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary. 

Chunxiao Qu, Wig shoes, 2017, shoes, synthetic wig, 45 x 15 x 32 cm, unique. Courtesy the artist and FUTURES.

Melbourne Art Fair returns 20 – 23 February 2025, taking place at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Click here to secure tickets, on sale now.

Leading Contemporary Artists Yona Lee and Dawn Ng Awarded Two Major Commissions

Under the Melbourne Art Foundation 2025 commission program, two ambitious new works from leading international artists represented by Australian galleries, will be presented at Melbourne Art Fair, 20 – 23 February 2025.

In partnership with Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) celebrated Singaporean multi-disciplinary artist Dawn Ng, represented by Sullivan+Strumpf(Gadigal Country/Sydney, Naarm/Melbourne), will exhibit a new moving image work exploring the tenor and trajectory of time via a hypnotic cascade of falling colour. Ng’s presentation at the 2025 Melbourne Art Fair is supported by The Ritz-Carlton Melbourne.

Additionally, in partnership with the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre, Auckland-based artist Yona Lee, represented by Fine Arts, Sydney (Gadigal Country/Sydney), will develop a large scale installation, calling into question what it means to make sculpture comprised of found objects in the networked digital age. Lee’s commission at the 2025 Melbourne Art Fair is supported by Artwork Transport. It is the first time a Melbourne Art Foundation Commission will be in partnership with an international institution.

The two major new works will be gifted to the permanent collections of the respective partnering institutions.

Reuben Keehan, Curator, Contemporary Asian Art, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery Modern Art (QAGOMA) commented: “Dawn Ng’s mesmerising video The Earth is an hourglass 2024 is the central component of her striking installation in the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial. It is also a significant work for Ng, marking the first time that she has experimented with a deep black ground, adding cosmic and metaphorical scope to her evocations of the elasticity of time. With Melbourne Art Foundation’s generous support and collaboration, it will join QAGOMA’s deep and wide-ranging collection of work from across Asia and the Pacific as an enduring document of strength and diversity of art from the region, and of this edition of the Triennial.” 

Dr. Zara Stanhope, Director of Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre, shared her enthusiasm for the collaboration: “This is a significant event as the first collaboratively supported artist commission between an institution in Aotearoa and one of the most important art fairs in the region, and an opportunity for South Korean, Aotearoa-based artist Yona Lee to reveal new developments in her creative practice. Internationally known for her large-scale installations blending public and domestic spaces, this commission provides the chance for Lee to take creative risks and engage audiences in new ways.”

Subsequent to the Melbourne installation, Lee’s work will enter the Govett-Brewster Collection and be exhibited as part of Direct Bodily Empathy – Sensing Sound, a major group exhibition as part of the celebrations for the 10th anniversary of the Len Lye Centre.

Melbourne Art Fair returns 20 – 23 February 2025, bringing together 60 of the region’s leading galleries and Indigenous Art Centres, spanning 10,000sqm at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

First Release tickets are on sale now. Click here to buy now and save.

Image Credits: (Left) Yona Lee. Photo: Seowon Nam. Courtesy of Art Sonje Center ⓒ 2024. Art Sonje Center all rights reserved. C/o the artist and Fine Arts, Sydney. 3 (right). Dawn Ng, Photo Credit: Paulius Staniunas | All Is Amazing.

Melbourne Art Fair Appoints Rachel Ciesla as Curator of VIDEO 2025

Melbourne Art Fair is thrilled to announce the appointment of Rachel Ciesla as Curator of VIDEO for the 18th edition of Melbourne Art Fair, returning in 2025.

VIDEO offers a dynamic presentation of thought-provoking and highly collectible contemporary works in moving-image art, featuring emerging and established artists from around the world.

VIDEO at Melbourne Art Fair 2024. Photo: Griffin Simm.

Rachel Ciesla is the Senior Curator for The Art Gallery of Western Australia’s Simon Lee Foundation Institute of Contemporary Asian Art in Boorloo (Perth). She has curated and co-curated exhibitions, including Look, look. Anna Park (2024), Ayoung Kim: Delivery Dancer’s Sphere (2024), Daisuke Kosugi: Invisible Touch (2024), Me: Also me: (2024), Özgür Kar: GOOD NIGHT (2023), Farah Al Qasimi: Star Machine (2023), Art Display (2023), I have not loved (enough or worked) (2022), Wong Ping: puberty (2022), Kawita Vatanajyankur and Pat Pataranutaporn: Mental Machine (2022), Stanislava Pinchuk: Archaeology of Loss (2021), Leyla Stevens: Dua Dunia (2021), and BODIED (2020). She has published on the work of contemporary artists including Salman Toor, Anna Park, Farah Al Qasimi, Jack Ball, Stanislava Pinchuk and Leyla Stevens.

The now annual Melbourne Art Fair returns in the Victorian summer, 20 – 23 February 2025 at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre. Tickets on sale and galleries announced 1 October.

Image (right): Rachel Ciesla, VIDEO curator, Melbourne Art Fair 2025. Photo: Tülay Dincel.

How Michael Georgetti Personifies Painting

Michael Georgetti eschews traditional methods of hanging works, favouring his custom-constructed silver and brass frames that bring his paintings off the wall, activating the spaces in which they inhabit. Often incorporating elements of sculpture, luxury branding and textural collage, his multidisciplinary practice assimilates modernist aesthetics into a contemporary context, offering a critique on the politics of display.

Michael brings news works to his solo presentation, A Love Supreme, exhibiting at The Renshaws‘ (Meanjin/Brisbane) until 12 October.

Melbourne Art Fair speaks with Michael at his home studio about his multidisciplinary practice and creating works which hold contemporary currency, while capturing a special preview of his new exhibition.

Michael Georgetti is represented by The Renshaws’ (Meanjin/Brisbane).

To enquire about Michael’s works, and to explore A Love Supreme, click here to contact The Renshaws’.

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Melbourne Art Fair returns in the Victorian summer, 20 – 23 February 2025, at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Participating galleries and artists announced in October 2024.  

Kieren Seymour on Floating Heads and Artificial Intelligence in His New Otherworldly Exhibition

For the artist’s third solo exhibition with Neon Parc (Naarm/Melbourne), Kieren Seymour presents a new series of paintings which evoke a nonsensical, dreamlike world inhabited by mythical creatures and motifs. Interested in the dichotomy of utopia and dystopia, Bitcoin, AI and more, Melbourne Art Fair speaks with Kieren about Sins of the Cloud and the inspirations behind his idiosyncratic human-mythical characters.

Sins of the Cloud is exhibiting at Neon Parc’s Brunswick location until 24 August.

There is a sense in this body of work that they are all connected in one dystopian and sometimes utopian universe, complete with floating heads and distorted characters. Can you expand on some of the motifs you use in Sins of the Cloud?

There are some recurring motifs such as floating heads, distorted anatomies and human and non-human forms, a blend of dystopian and utopian elements that explore an imagined future reality, it’s a world to make a show in. I’m curious about making a picture that connects with people, its mysterious how/if that works, it’s not logical, and it’s not assisted by language, it’s on its own terms, in it’s own realm.

Kieren Seymour, Sins of the Cloud, exhibition view, 2024, Neon Parc (Naarm/Melbourne).

Kieren Seymour, In 2034 Our Boss Became Increasingly Impatient, 2024. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 150 x 260cm. Courtesy the artist and Neon Parc (Naarm/Melbourne).

The characters in your paintings are often human-animal hybrids or mythical creatures, or an amalgamation of both. Can you give some insight into your artistic (or otherwise) influences when creating these characters?

My characters, sometimes human-animal hybrids are often, not really planned, they are always just ‘figures’ in some sort of event/scenario, doing something that seems important at the time. My influences are varied, Edvard Munch, Rose Wylie, Otto Dix, Jutta Koether, Captain Beefheart paintings, Philip Guston, cave paintings, anime, science, ai, engineering, and importantly things that happen in day to day in life, oh, and also probably my main area of interest macroeconomics, and Bitcoin.

Fighting And Making Money features sprite-like creatures in a peaceful composition despite the title’s suggestion of a duel. What significance do you find in the contrast of conflict and harmony in this piece?

The motif of heads crashing/joining together has been kicking around for a few years now. Sometimes you have an idea and just need to keep using it until it makes sense. I often don’t understand my characters completely at the start and/or the end of the process, but it’s okay, I don’t think I have to, I think these two are making wealth/money together, its under great pressure but worth the process for them. I wanted it to be abundant which is why their wealth is different kinds of precious jewels. I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about money, currency, wealth and economics, in some ways I feel like it’s the human soap opera on a macro level, on the other hand I believe it’s the most prescient humanitarian issue of our lifetime.

Kieren Seymour, Fighting And Making Money, 2024, acrylic and watercolour on canvas, 150 x 260cm. Courtesy the artist and Neon Parc (Naarm/Melbourne).

You describe creating this body of work as similar to writing science fiction or fantasy. Can you expand on your exploration of Artificial Intelligence and its possible impact for our future in Sins of the Cloud?

I’m very curious about the duality of Artificial Intelligence as both a transformative force and a potential threat, reflecting on its capacity to enhance efficiency and decision-making while also posing ethical and security challenges. The idea of my pictures being like sci-fi or fiction is new, but a comfortable one, I’m not so interested in making predictions about things, in 2013 I made works about housing prices escalating rapidly and 2015 and 2021 about Bitcoin, they could be perceived as predictions and I don’t like the idea so much, my work over the last few years has forced me to accept an immutable aspect of reality, the moment after this one is uncertain. Like sci-fi, I like playing with the material, ideas of ‘now’, imagining anything I want with the current reality. I mean this current show has humans that travel on a single atom, lol, and giant red humanoid-ish AI that turn us into snails as their workers. Neils Bohr stated “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future”. Haha, brilliant and funny guy. The process of working in your own world is greatly freeing and joyful, a great place for creativity to flow.

Kieren Seymour is represented by Neon Parc (Naarm/Melbourne).
To enquire about Kieren’s works, click here to contact Neon Parc.

Subscribe to the Melbourne Art Fair newsletter to receive monthly updates on leading Australasian gallery exhibitions, artist interviews, insights and more throughout the year.  

Melbourne Art Fair returns in the Victorian summer, 20 – 23 February 2025, at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Participating galleries and artists announced in October 2024.  

Melissa Loughnan On Her Ambitions For Melbourne Art Fair

Melbourne Art Fair’s newly appointed Fair Director has experienced both sides of the coin. From exhibiting in art fairs internationally with her former gallery Utopian Slumps, to private art consultancy with government and corporate clients, Melissa Loughnan brings with her a wealth of experience and credentials to the role.

Following on the success of the 2024 Fair, Melissa shares her insights on what we can expect from the now annual premier summer event, returning 20 – 23 February 2025.

How do you think your experience as a gallerist, art consultant and advisor with Utopian Slumps will influence Melbourne Art Fair and your creative ambitions for the show?

As incoming Fair Director, I hope to bring my understanding of art fairs from an exhibitor’s perspective to the role. Having participated in numerous Australian and international fairs, I have gained a good understanding of what it takes to stage a high calibre presentation that reflects the voice of the artist while appealing to collectors, institutions and broader audiences.

I will bring my curatorial lens to the programming of the fair and hope to engage the networks that I have developed in Australia and abroad over the last 20+ years that I have worked in the arts industry.

My most recent work has been outside the gallery sector as an art advisor to government and corporate bodies. I hope that my experience in communicating and propagating the arts outside of the industry will influence how the fair evolves over the coming years to gain a broader audience appeal.

Lauren Berkowitz and Starlie Geikie, exhibition view, 2014, Utopian Slumps (Naarm/Melbourne).

Knowing both local and international art scenes quite intimately, how do you feel an art fair contributes to, and helps to cultivate a city’s cultural scene?

An art fair provides a snapshot of the city’s cultural sector in one place. It allows the visitor to gain an understanding of what is coming out of the city’s local galleries in a national, and increasingly international, context. The art exhibited at an art fair should provide some insight into the issues, themes and production methods that artists are currently concerned with and reflect what is happening within and beyond the commercial sector.

With a focus on works of scale and significance, the Fair presents sectors which showcase installation, artistic experimentation, performance and moving image. Curatorially, what excites you about the potential these sectors can offer within the Fair model, and can you expand on your ambitions for their futures?

Melbourne Art Fair’s sectors enable visitor engagement with monumental, moving and performative artworks. These sectors not only allow our exhibiting galleries to showcase works of greater ambition than what is possible within their booths, but also engage curators, non-profit and institutional spaces to enable the presentation of impactful works. Our CONVERSATIONS program provides the opportunity for discourse, giving further insight into the context surrounding artistic production and the issues affecting artists today. The Fair’s sectors provide visitors a broad perspective of Melbourne’s art scene in the context of what is happening nationally and internationally. I have every intention to maintain the fair’s commitment to these sectors, and hope to implement more resources and dynamic programming, including for our youngest visitors.

1. VIDEO sector at Melbourne Art Fair 2024. Photo: Griffin Simm. 2. Victoria Lynn in conversation with premier artist Julie Rrap, Melbourne Art Fair 2024. Photo: Griffin Simm.

What might Melbourne Art Fair learn from other Fairs, local and international, to maintain and grow its appeal? How do you hope to further distinguish it as unique from other fairs in the region?

Having exhibited in, and visited, a number of fairs around the world, each fair has its own energy and unique qualities. I am sure that some of the best experiences that I have had of fairs will impact the programming at Melbourne Art Fair: from the lively parties and pop-ups in Miami; to the academic discourse and exchange in Berlin; to the conversation between contemporary art and old masters in London; and to a focus on the arts of the region in Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

In terms of its uniqueness, I think that it is important for Melbourne Art Fair to maintain the sectors that enable artists’ broader participation and exchange. The fair should not shy away from the issues that are affecting artists today; it should encourage discourse, and truly be reflective of what is happening in our industry at this time. It is not just a place to find an artwork for your collection, it is a place to gain an understanding of the context in which the artworks are made, and for artists to have a voice.

Melbourne Art Fair 2024. Photo: Griffin Simm.

Melbourne Art Fair returns in the Victorian summer, 20 – 23 February 2025. Tickets on sale and galleries announced in October 2024. 

Change in Leadership at the Melbourne Art Foundation: Mary Wenholz Appointed CEO 

After 7 years at the helm, Melbourne Art Foundation CEO Maree Di Pasquale has announced she will leave her current role to explore the next phase of her career.    

Maree Di Pasquale has led the Melbourne Art Foundation through a period of dynamic development, spearheading the revitalisation of Melbourne Art Fair, the introduction of new cultural fairs, and the expansion of the organisation’s commissions program.  

The Melbourne Art Foundation Board would like to thank Maree Di Pasquale for her longstanding commitment as CEO. At the same time, the Melbourne Art Foundation is pleased to announce the appointment of Mary Wenholz who has held the post Director of Events and Operations from 2022 – 2024.   

“Under the leadership of Maree Di Pasquale, Melbourne Art Fair has developed into one of the region’s most prestigious art fairs and a progressive forum for art ideas”, states Peter Jopling AM KC Chair of the Melbourne Art Foundation Board. “Our thanks go to Maree for her immense personal commitment, her uncompromising vision and her notable successes in the strategic positioning of Melbourne Art Fair and new cultural initiatives and programs introduced under her direction, including the William Mora Indigenous Art Centre Program, expanded MAF Commissions program, the BEYOND installation sector, and international moving-image program VIDEO.”

Peter Jopling adds, “On behalf of the Melbourne Art Foundation Board, I am delighted to be welcoming Mary Wenholz to the role of CEO. We are confident that Mary’s commercial and arts industry experience, and extensive relationships within Australasia’s cultural sector, will be instrumental in further developing the Melbourne Art Foundation and delivering on the organisation’s plans for growth.” 

Maree Di Pasquale joined the Melbourne Art Foundation in 2017 as CEO and Fair Director. “Following the successful delivery of the 17th edition and announcement of a now annual summer model, I am leaving the Melbourne Art Foundation on a high.” Maree Di Pasquale said.  

“Having relaunched Melbourne Art Fair, rebooted the Melbourne Art Foundation commissions and grants program, launched the Melbourne Design Fair in partnership with the NGV, and led the Melbourne Art Foundation through a global pandemic, it has come time to entrust the legacy of MAF to a new leadership team. I am thrilled that my talented friend and colleague Mary Wenholz has been appointed as CEO to lead the organisation during this next stage, and with the exceptional Melissa Loughnan supporting as Fair Director.  

Maree Di Pasquale continues, “I would like to thank my extraordinary team, artworld colleagues and partners for their support and commitment to MAF during my tenure. It has been an absolute pleasure and career highlight working with you all.”  

Mary Wenholz brings near two decades of experience to the role having worked at a senior level across some of the region’s most significant art fairs and commercial galleries.  

Mary Wenholz CEO Melbourne Art Foundation says, “I am honoured and delighted to take on the role of CEO and commit to tirelessly advocating for the support of living artists and the commercial gallery sector which represents them. I would like to thank the Melbourne Art Foundation Board for their confidence in me as well as Maree for her leadership during a period that has seen Melbourne Art Foundation rebuild and flourish. This marks a thrilling time in the organisation, as we embark on an ambitious period of growth and refinement as the region’s most connected and impactful nonprofit in support of commercial galleries and their artists.” 

The next edition of Melbourne Art Fair takes place 20 – 23 February 2025 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. 

Mary Wenholz, CEO, Melbourne Art Foundation  

Having worked across a global network of art fairs and some of the region’s most significant commercial galleries, Mary Wenholz has developed extensive relationships across Australasia’s cultural sector. Mary joined the Melbourne Art Foundation in 2022 in the post of Director of Events and Operations, overseeing the successful launch of the inaugural Melbourne Design Fair delivered in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria. Mary has also been involved in the successful delivery of seven editions of Sydney Contemporary (2015-2022), in addition to contributing to fairs internationally including Art Central Hong Kong (2014, 2015, and 2017), Art16 London (2016), and the Melbourne Art Fair (2014). As Event Manager, Mary delivered a city-wide program for Art Month Sydney (2016 and 2017). Prior to this, Mary was the Associate Director at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney, overseeing the staging of significant exhibitions including Erwin Wurm, Candice Breitz and You promised me, and you said a lie to me, curated by Alexie Glass Kantor. From 2008 – 2013, Mary was Associate Director at Gallery Barry Keldoulis, managing the gallery’s relationship with artists and collectors, and its participation at Art Basel Hong Kong, Art Stage Singapore, Korean International Art Fair (KIAF) and the Melbourne Art Fair. Mary has a BA (Hons) and MFA from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney.

Melbourne Art Fair Appoints Melissa Loughnan as Fair Director for the Annual Summer Show 

Building on the soaring success of the 2024 Fair and its move to a new annual summer model, the Melbourne Art Foundation has today announced the appointment of prominent artworld figure Melissa Loughnan as Fair Director for Melbourne Art Fair 2025 and beyond. 

Australasia’s premier fair and progressive forum for contemporary art and ideas, Melbourne Art Fair  presents over 60 of the region’s most significant galleries and Indigenous art centres each February at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Under the leadership of CEO Maree Di Pasquale and the Melbourne Art Foundation board, the Fair has seen unprecedented growth in recent years, which has driven Loughnan’s appointment. 

Renowned as a visionary of the Melbourne arts industry and around Australia for the best part of two decades, Loughnan brings with her a wealth of credentials and experience to the Fair Director role. In 2007 she founded the legendary not-for-profit Collingwood gallery Utopian Slumps before transitioning to a commercial model in the CBD in 2010. Loughnan has provided public and private art advisory and freelance curatorial work since 2015, including the development of large-scale public art installations and major art projects for various government, corporate and private clients. 

Melbourne Art Foundation Chair Peter Jopling AM KC commented on the appointment: “Melissa’s extensive knowledge of the Australian and international art scene will make her vital, driving further growth for the revitalised Melbourne Art Fair now staged annually in February. She brings a wealth of experience to the role which will see her leading the direction and development of the Melbourne Art Foundation’s flagship cultural event.” 

Melbourne Art Foundation CEO Maree Di Pasquale says: “This appointment demonstrates our commitment to delivering the highest standard of commercial art fair that the region has known. Melissa’s curatorial expertise and extensive relationships within the Australian and international collecting community will be instrumental in further delivering on Melbourne Art Fair’s ambitious plans as the dominant Australasian art fair.” 

Commencing the position in late-August, Melbourne Art Fair Director Melissa Loughnan says: “I am honoured to be taking up the role of Fair Director for the prestigious Melbourne Art Fair. It is an event of great cultural legacy, and I look forward to leading its direction in this new and ambitious chapter, with the support of the Melbourne Art Foundation board and our vibrant arts community.” 

Melissa Loughnan’s organisation Utopian Slumps participated in numerous local and international art fairs, including Melbourne Art Fair, Sydney Contemporary, Auckland (Aotearoa) Art Fair, Art Stage Singapore, Art Forum Berlin, Art Fair Tokyo and Art Basel Hong Kong. She then shifted the business to a consulting agency in 2015, with a focus on public art advisory projects. Loughnan self-published Utopian Slumps: The Collingwood Years in 2011 and authored Australiana to Zeitgeist: An A to Z of New Australian Contemporary Art, Thames and Hudson, 2017. She has presented at various curatorial symposia and participated in panel discussions across Australia and internationally. She recently served a six year term on the Board of West Space. 

Melissa Loughnan will be Fair Director of the now annual Melbourne Art Fair, returning 20 – 23 February 2025 at the Denton Corker Marshall designed Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.  

Tickets on sale and exhibiting galleries announced 1 October 2024. 

Tia Ansell On Translating Architectural Details To Abstract, Intricate Weaving-Paintings

Tia Ansell’s intricate weaving-paintings thread together narratives of observational patterns that exist within her urban surroundings, exploring the nature of weaving as surface and structure, and creating abstract compositions from architectural references.

Melbourne Art Fair speaks with the Aotearoa/New Zealand-born artist about her process and her current solo exhibition at Gallery 9 (Gadigal Country/Sydney), Coda, open until 27 July.

How did you initially become acquainted with the loom and weaving as a practice?

I began with weaving while I was at art school in Melbourne, Victorian College of the Arts in 2015. First semester of the first year we had a project to remove traditional painting methods as a response to mapping out a location. I made a weaving frame, for the warp to be wrapped around with the style of weaving more like building a picture, as simple as that. This expanded into a larger frame. In third year I acquired my first floor loom which changed the way weavings are created – quicker, finer and more complex weaving patterns. Later on in the year, Summer of 2018, I spent time in Ecuador where I learnt how to weave on a backstrap loom, as well as spinning and dyeing yarns.

Weaving is a quintessential human culture, first found samples (bear in mind textiles are very fragile and degrade quickly) date back 30,000 years in a Georgian cave, and in more recent history have been found in almost every single culture independently- think Viking sails, silk road, Quipu recording device, linen wrappings for mummies and so on… ‘cloth is the original technology’ (Wayland Barber, Prehistoric Textiles).

Clothing is the most obvious use for textiles, but it’s in almost everything we use daily – electronics, in the home, on transport, in space, the invisible support structure of a painting. There is no escaping it. Back to the beginning, I simply could not avoid becoming fascinated with the support structure of weaving.

Tia Ansell in her studio. Photos: Cristina Ulloa Sobarzo.

Can you describe your process in generating codes for your geometric weavings and their significance in your work? Do you think about the subsequent possibilities of adding paint to the work and how both mediums will interact during this process?

I must explain before describing the importance of code in my own work, that the very structure of loom weaving is rooted in coding. The preparation of the warp threads, the chosen ply, thread types, and colours, the application on the loom – the sequence on heddles and finally at the weaving stage- the introduction of warp threads, the ratio of warp weft structure and the sequence of the treadles. These decisions all impact the structural texture and visual pattern making. With this in mind, weaving is highly ordered and organised. I plan the woven work before it’s made, as there is not much room for improvisation. The set up of the loom is most important, and must be perfect.

I feel like I’m spilling my secrets now, however, I begin a work by creating a sequence of code, typically it’s a number between 20 and 60, then I repeat this to the desired width of the final stretched work. The code is taken from a cross section or slice of a chosen location, each number or thread representing the amount of space an element or material occupies. The coded thread may have varied materiality- linen, cotton, silk, bamboo, be various ply sizes 2 to 8, and be varied in colour. I tend to weave in 1:1 warp weft facing, and weave commonly in plain, twill or diamond twill. The weft can be the same sequence of the warp, or I can introduce another code.

The relationship between the initial location and the final linear pattern of the final woven work becomes very diluted. The weaving aspect of my practice is an extrapolation of the location, generated into a code for the sequence of threads. The painted element focuses on design or architectural elements from the initial location, and are applied in a smooth and geometric manner. These two elements emphasise the structure of the location, yet create a whole new abstracted image.

Matiere, a word of French origin, is understood to describe the surface appearance of material- smoothness or roughness, its grain, gloss or matte-ness. Matiere has to be approached like colour, with a receptive eye and mind to discover meaning in its language. The dual relationship of material surface and material structure are bound together within the act of weaving painting. They both exist in balance and the transition from one to another, “like a pendulum that swings from artistic interest to industrial science” (Anni Albers, On Weaving).

What sort of works can we expect to see at your upcoming show at Gallery 9?

The exhibition at Gallery 9 is titled ‘Coda’. The show includes weaving paintings that explore the language of abstraction, symbolism, material culture and architectural structures.

As it’s my first exhibition at Gallery 9, and a solo at that, I’ve made a varied body of work. There are eight small works, five medium and one large. The small weavings were made while on residency at Lottozero in Prato Italy last year, and finished in my studio this year. The remaining were made in my studio. All the works are based on important social and historical structures in Northern Italy that I visited on my research trip before and after the residency. These structures are the marble work inside Cappelle Medicee in Florence; the modern Perilli tower in Milan; and 5th century Mosaic works of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia Ravenna and Castelvecchio in Verona. These locations speak of architectural triumphs, historical importance and celebration of life and death.

What details do you look for, in your immediate and further surroundings, when conceptualising a composition? Can you expand on the significance of architecture in your work and how it contributes to the textures and patterns you develop through thread and paint?

Great question. Honestly everything. What draws me towards a particular landscape or building that I find fascinating might be it’s social history, an interesting detail or may hold sentimental value. I also consider a central theme for a body of work or for an exhibit at its conception.

The significance of architecture loops back to its inherent relationship with weaving. Weaving in its construction are immersive webs and structural networks that exchange information on its substrate. Unlike most modes of making, weaving in its textilic form has a surface which is its structure and its structure is its surface, and any pattern embedded in its substrate are still organically part of its surface structure. Each thread creates a whole meshwork surface that doesn’t have an inside or an outside, but are both at the same time as they shift from revealing and concealing its form. The addition of paint walks along this line too. The combination of the blocked out, flat and geometric paint with the highly patterned mesh break the sequence, to vibrate and leap from their fibre substrate.

Once the chosen location is made, and the fabric is woven and stretched, the painting brings the importance of the location back into the work in a more direct and obvious way. This may include a tiled pattern, the layout of a marble wall, the mosaic detail or window layout, to name a few. The combination of thread and paint explore the language of abstraction, symbolism, material culture and architectural structures.

You have previously spoken about your interest in psychogeography. How do the cultural markers and rich architectural and socio-cultural histories of the places you have worked in and referenced around the world influence the outcomes of your work?

Psycho-geography is a situationist term that describes a psychological experience of an urban-geographical landscape, in which this space reveals and responds psychologically. A drifter with the agender of walking is grounded and an advocate for the becoming trajectory to better connect with a space. It’s not about the beginning or end, but the space between. The trajectory and the journey in which one may be able to get lost. They move along and cross these lines, they pause, turn back and loop. It’s a happen-chance flow.
I love the romanticism of psycho-geography. However, even though it’s no longer a central concept of my practice, I do continue using my interest in drifting and observing urban structures. I translate these observations and transfer the experience on to fabric that has their own pre-determined organisational surface structures.

Tia Ansell is represented by LON Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne) and {Suite} Gallery (Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland).

To enquire about Tia’s works, click here to contact Gallery 9.

Subscribe to the Melbourne Art Fair newsletter to receive monthly updates on leading Australasian gallery exhibitions, artist interviews, insights and more throughout the year.  

Melbourne Art Fair returns in the Victorian summer, 20 – 23 February 2025, at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.. Participating galleries and artists announced in October 2024.  

Jacqueline Stojanović on Colour Ways and Weaving as a Vessel for Preserving Cultural Heritage

When looking at paintings, Jacqueline Stojanović is more interested in how the canvas was first constructed rather than the painting itself. Her curiosity with preliminary and foundational tools for construction extends through her artistic practice of weaving, and combining unlikely materials such as steel frames with wool, and coloured pencil on wooden blocks.

Jacqueline’s solo exhibition Colour Ways is currently on view at Haydens (Naarm/Melbourne), initially as part of Melbourne Design Week, and open for an extended period until 22 June. Melbourne Art Fair speaks with Jacqueline about the challenges of continuing traditional weaving practices in a contemporary Australian context, her interest in the foundational construction of things, and the meeting of three bodies of work for Colour Ways.

Are you able to expand on the conviction, firmly present in your practice, of weaving as an ancient carrier of culture? 

Weaving was one of our primary technologies as humans. It’s a practice that we all share a history with, and for some the history is more distant than for others. In my own case, the traditions continue in my familial context, and I reflect on the weaving practices of my parent’s homelands in former-Yugoslavia and Vietnam. In particular, the Pirot carpets of Serbia, which have acted as talismans in my home in Melbourne. These handmade textiles are portable fragments of our biographical home on the other side of the world. When borders dissolve and people migrate, these woven folk objects such as carpets, bags, clothing, and shoes allow us to carry culture with us in a visible way. They become physical representations of a broader landscape usually accessed through memory alone. Culture is formed through daily practices, and while hand weaving is no longer widely practiced, these objects of the past can carry with them the stories, landscapes, economies, architecture, ecology, as well as shifts in social, geographical and political movements of the hands that wove them. In this sense I view them as vessels of cultural heritage and pathways to lost knowledge.

Jacqueline Stojanović, Adria (installation view), 2024, wool, cotton, satin on steel mesh, 180 x 540cm. Courtesy the artist and Haydens.

How does your exploration and appreciation of weaving practices from diverse cultures – including former-Yugoslavia and Vietnam – inform your contemporary practice?

I began to consider weaving within my contemporary practice after spending time with the women weavers at Damsko Srce in Pirot, Serbia. This town is famed for producing handmade Pirot carpets, but upon my visit I understood that this practice was dying before my eyes. Currently there are only six women who continue to weave there, a significant decline from the nearly 2,000 who lived and worked in Pirot four decades ago. I felt a sense of urgency in continuing the practice in this instance. The carpets are protected as UNESCO world heritage artifacts and can only be considered Pirot carpets if they are made in the town of Pirot with the wool of the pramenka sheep which grazes on the nearby mountains – also an endangered species. Aside from the geographical limitations, very few people these days understand the meaning of the motifs depicted on the carpets, and without their meanings they become abstract to the viewers. This is a specific example, but not an uncommon situation within the wider practice of traditional arts. I was really fascinated by this, and moreover I continue to feel perplexed, that while I’m Serbian and can weave on a Pirot style loom with traditional motifs, any carpet I make would never be considered a Pirot carpet because of this geographical certification – a clear roadblock in continuing cultural practice for nations with far reaching diaspora. So, while I cannot make the carpets themselves, I continue to explore the themes embedded in the carpets, such as abstraction and mnemonic landscapes, as well as their formal attributes of the foundational gridded structures of weaving and Byzantine perspective. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve been just as perplexed to see the situation with the textile industry in Vietnam, which grows rapidly with the global demand for skilled labour and competitive production costs. A situation that spurs on the consumption of fast fashion. It’s a kind of double-edged sword for the local economy and I’m beginning to consider these themes around shifts in social and material values through my contemporary practice as well.

What drew you to weaving, both by hand and through the loom, as a channel for artistic expression? 

Very simply some things feel more natural than others, and for me this was weaving. But more broadly, I am curious about the foundational construction of things. When looking at paintings I’m more fascinated with how the canvas is made than covering it up with oil and pigment, as well as works on paper. I’m curious about the paper itself, which historically has been made with waste fabrics. My first loom was gifted to me by my mentor John Nixon, who encouraged my sensibility towards weaving. Through his mentorship I came to learn about the histories of weaving practices at the Bauhaus, within Modernism and in architecture. These histories also felt foundational to me and helped in paving a clear path for me to pursue weaving as a medium for artistic expression.

 (Left) Jacqueline Stojanović, Pistil II, 2024, lacquer on wood, 17.5 x 17.5 x 2.5cm. (Middle) Jacqueline Stojanović, Column II, 2024, coloured pencil on wood, 20 x 5 x 2.5cm. (Right) Jacqueline Stojanović, Rampart II, 2024, coloured pencil on wood, 17.5  17.5 x 2.5cm.

In addition to weaving, your multi-disciplinary practice draws from abstraction to create carefully assembled compositions using a variety of materials. Can you speak to the kinds of materials you use and the significance of incorporating these in your works? 

The materials I select to work with share a thread in their common usage as preliminary or foundational tools. In Colour Ways these materials include steel mesh, which is commonly used for reinforcing concrete in the context of construction; wooden blocks, which are associated with early development, building, and play; and graph paper, which is used in planning woven textile designs. Each of these materials foreground gridded structures, which become natural compositions for me to assemble my ideas around. The grid is at the core of woven textile design and through practicing weaving it has become a device second nature to me for inscribing visual language. There is an honest element of exposure through using these materials as well, their rudimentary nature leaves no questioning in their making. They simply are, and there is something very satisfying and curious to me in merging materials that are unlikely to be coupled together, like wool and steel, or coloured pencil and pine. This material language draws on memories, motifs, folk traditions, and landscapes, funnelling them into my own interpretations through physical processes.

Can you describe the significance of ‘arrangement’ in Colour Ways, how does the colourway term reflect within the exhibition? 

A colourway is a term ordinarily used within a design context to refer to the available arrangements of colour for a particular design. It’s my view that each person has their own colourways, and perhaps this can change over time, but what interests me is why we’re drawn to some colours over others. Where do our associations of preference stem from? In my practice I find colour to be an intuitive exploration, often evoking memories of experience and place or sounds. But the exhibition title takes a second meaning as well, referring to my process of making, whereby one colour leads to the next, and to the next, and so on, leaving even me surprised when finished and viewing the colourway as a whole. This process in part removes the element of design from the term, exploring the relationship between colours themselves, and providing the work with its own pathway to completion – a way through colour.

(Left) Jacqueline Stojanović, Untitled (1mm squares), 2024, coloured pencil on graph paper, 29 x 20cm. (Right) Jacqueline Stojanović, Untitled (1mm squares), 2024, coloured pencil on graph paper, 29 x 20cm. Courtesy the artist and Haydens.

To enquire about Jacqueline’s works, click here to contact Haydens.

Subscribe to the Melbourne Art Fair newsletter to receive monthly updates on leading Australasian gallery exhibitions, artist interviews, insights and more throughout the year.  

Melbourne Art Fair returns in the Victorian summer, 20 – 23 February 2025, at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.. Participating galleries and artists announced in October 2024.  

Melbourne Art Fair Appoints Anna Briers As Curator of BEYOND

Melbourne Art Fair is thrilled to announce Anna Briers, Curator Len Lye & Contemporary Art, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, as Curator of BEYOND in 2025.

Harnessing the monumental exhibition spaces within the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, BEYOND presents large-scale installations and spatial interventions from leading contemporary artists. Melbourne Art Foundation supports the sector by providing a monetary grant to participating galleries.

Anna Briers is Curator Len Lye and Contemporary Art at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre (Aotearoa/New Zealand), and guest Curator at The University of Queensland Art Museum (Meanjin/Brisbane). She has twenty years curatorial and project management experience, working across both institutional and freelance contexts. With a focus on contemporary art that addresses the eco-critical and techno-political questions of our time, each exhibition presents a research based, cross-disciplinary approach. Many projects respond to site and context, explore sonic or performative outcomes, or have an element of relationality that promotes audience collaboration towards the production of meaning. 

She has produced ambitious large-scale group exhibitions featuring Australian and international contemporary artists as well as artist surveys and new commissions. Key exhibitions include: We Are Electric: Extraction, Extinction and Post-Carbon Futures  (2023), UQ Art Museum; the two-part series Conflict in My Outlook featuring Don’t Be Evil  (2021), UQ Art Museum, and We Met Online  (2021), online;  Craftivism: Dissident Objects and Subversive Forms (2018-2020), a two-year national touring exhibition with Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) and NETS Victoria (co-curator);  I hope you get this: Raquel Ormella  (2018-2020), a two-year national touring exhibition with SAM and NETS Victoria (co-curator);  Cover Versions: Mimicry and Resistance  (2017-18), SAM; Cornucopia  (2016), SAM; and Nell  (2016), (co-curator) SAM. She holds a Master of Art Curatorship from The University of Melbourne, a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam, The University of Auckland.  

A recent publication, Conflict in My Outlook, was published with Perimeter Editions, Melbourne and launched at the Brisbane Writers Festival at QAGOMA. Focused on the techno-politics of our time, this edited anthology of texts includes Australian and international scholars, thinkers and interlocutors who have written on themes such as digital intimacies and surveillance capitalism, artificial intelligence and the internet as a neo-colonial force. 

The 18th edition of Melbourne Art Fair takes place in the Victorian summer, 20 – 23 February 2025 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Galleries announced and tickets on sale in October.

Jazz Money On The Power Of Poetry In Non-Traditional Forms

Jazz Money (b. 1992, Wiradjuri) is an artist, poet and filmmaker. Their cross-disciplinary practice speaks to language, narrative and First Nations’ legacies of place.

Jazz is currently exhibiting at the 18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Inner Sanctum until 2 June with their work, This is how we love. In collaboration with members of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir, they transform the poem and vocal arrangement into a multichannel sound installation. Melbourne Art Fair spoke with Jazz about their practice, and their neon installation work which was created for the BEYOND sector, curated by Shelley McSpedden and presented by The Commercial (Gadigal Country/Sydney) at the Fair last month.

Although your practice is centred in poetics, you work widely with visual art, film, audio and performance. How has your practice evolved to arrive at this multidisciplinary point? Have you always been drawn to creating works through a range of mediums?

I originally trained as a film maker and have a particular love of film editing. I think that interest in the way that image, story and form meet really informs my poetry practice. In particular, I really enjoy thinking about the way that poetry can be used as an access point for subtext in physical environments and built world settings.

I’m really fascinated by the ways that poetry allows us to see and understand the world. Poetry has the ability to hold together the very complex and the very simple in ways that can reveal our world anew. As a Wiradjuri person I see poetry as an extension of the oral tradition that has always existed on this continent, and I’m curious about the multitudes of form that form can take.

Jazz Money, infinite iterative piece, 2023, three-channel digital video with sound, video infinite duration, audio 9:25 duration, installation view Between Waves, ACCA, Melbourne, 2023 (photo: Andrew Curtis). Courtesy the artist and The Commercial. 

Can you describe your creative process – how do you go from ideation to a completed artwork? How do you decide which medium is best to convey a certain idea or feeling?

I typically begin by thinking about the purpose of a piece, what it’s trying to achieve intellectually and emotionally, and from there find the medium that makes sense. There are mediums I’m comfortable in and others I’m curious about, but it’s all form as function in poetry, so I try to be situated in that thinking.

Your work has been described as “an energetic vessel for the oral tradition of story-telling of First Nations cultures, which over millennia has been the living instrument of care on and for this continent”. How do you interrogate the meanings associated with First Nations legacies, narrative and storytelling within your work and your efforts in continuing the traditions of your Wiradjuri culture?

I exist in the world as a Wiradjuri person and make all my work from that positionality. I’m curious about the intersecting legacies that inform our current reality, and I see those intersections from a queer Wiradjuri lens. I see my role, and the role of poetry and art more broadly, as something that is in dialogue and disruption with systems of power, a way to offer complexity and beauty while speaking back dominant narratives. I am less interested in interrogating First Nations legacies as I am with honouring the systems that have kept Country and all its inhabitants cared for since the first sunrise.

Your work for BEYOND at Melbourne Art Fair titled Three Pieces of Light uses poetry and transforms it into a large-scale piece. Can you describe the work and how visitors at the Fair might experience its monumental presence?  

Three Pieces of Light is a poetic intervention that uses neon text to invite audiences on a journey through fragmented lines of poetry. The three short lines of text are scattered so that they can be read and reread in different formations to give different meaning.

Each line asks us to consider the very small and the very large, across images of dawn, stars, song and ‘small spectacular moments’ the words invite their own interpretation for each visitor to understand in their own manner.

Jazz Money, Three Pieces of Light, 2024, neon, edition 5 + 1AP, 622 x 80cm. Melbourne Art Fair 2024. Photo: Griffin Simm.

How do you find poetry – when used in conjunction with other disciplines like film or presented in non-traditional ways such as the installation for BEYOND – affects the reader’s experiences as well as your own experience as author?

Western pedagogies have tried for centuries to decouple the mind from the body, which I think is very dangerous. I believe knowledge is held bodily and enacted communally. As such, I think introducing poetry, story and narrative into non-traditional mediums, including installation, invites audiences to have an embodied experience with story and as such, with Country. It really excites me to be able to work in ways that challenge preconceived notions of how different forms and mediums should interact, because I do not see culture as existing in any one form.

Richard Parker Award Announced

Melbourne Art Fair is delighted to announce Tammy Kanat, represented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert (Gadigal Country/Sydney), the recipient of the Richard Parker Award. With a focus on excellence, The Richard Parker Award is a new initiative supporting development in the arts.

Founder of Melbourne Art Fair official partner RATIONALE, Richard Parker brings a deep commitment to the support of contemporary art to all endeavours. Viewing art as inseparable from the function of daily life and culture, RATIONALE believes in the intrinsic value of artmaking and the paths of connection it forms across our lives. Explore Tammy Kanat’s work alongside works from 60 galleries and Indigenous art centres on MAF Virtual, where the Fair continues. Click here to discover.

Tammy Kanat is a Melbourne-based fibre artist and weaver whose practice investigates colour, rhythm and balance. Having begun her career in the arts as a jewellery designer Kanat repurposes her understanding of harmony, colour and form into wool, silk and yarn. She approaches each work with a sense of curiosity and playfulness; allowing her intuition to guide her through each colour choice and each warp and weft. Her approach to weaving is intuitive and rhythmic, never forced, premeditated or contrived, thus imbuing a sense of body and rhythm into each work. As Kanat explains: “I often find it’s not until the work has finished, that I think, oh, that’s what came out. That’s what that may have been.”

Click here to learn more about her practice, and new bronze works.

WATCH | Dane Mitchell On Exploring Vanishings, Extinctions and Future Solar Eclipses

As part of the BEYOND Program for Melbourne Art Fair, Dane Mitchell presents Future Eclipse (transmission) (2023) and Future Eclipse (broadcast) (2023), a collaborative sculptural work created in collaboration with Japanese musician, Keiji Haino.

The Fair spoke with Dane about his large-scale sculpture, working beyond the physical in the form of radio waves and why the ‘unseen’ can often be a seething presence. Dane’s work for the Fair is represented by The Renshaws’ (Meanjin/Brisbane).

 

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Future Eclipse (transmission) is comprised of a brass antenna which functions as a FM radio station, producing a field of transmission that stretches beyond the visible — extending the boundaries that artworks traditionally maintain by entering the FM ‘narrowcasting’ bandwidth as a transmitted radio signal, spreading itself thin and wide across the airwaves. 

The broadcast from Future Eclipse (transmission) is captured and broadcast by a coupled object, Future Eclipse (broadcast). This work functions as a receiver and makes use of surface transducer speakers, which turn brass discs into speakers, through which the transmission can be heard. 

The sound broadcast from Future Eclipse (transmission) to Future Eclipse (broadcast) is a 6 hour composition produced by Dane Mitchell in collaboration with seminal Japanese composer and musician Keiji Haino. The composition is produced from one list among the hundreds built by Dane Mitchell for his work Post hoc, which is made up of unfathomably long spoken word lists which call up vanishings, extinctions and disappearances. The list broadcast in Future Eclipse (transmission) is titled Future Solar Eclipses, and reads the dates and times of future moments when the Sun is eclipsed over the next 3000 years. 

Keiji Haino’s percussive accompaniment to the list is performed on a ‘two dimensional’ instrument which enfolds and at times subsumes the reading. Performed on a Polygonola — an instrument built and devised by Naoki Sakurai that is based on second dimensional vibration theory which produces undertones that vibrate and at times swallow whole the reading of the lists. Throughout the reading, Keiji Haino’s summoning of vibrations — in theory and practice — seek to both incapacitate and complicate the logic of list making, whilst ratcheting up the anxiety eclipses once caused. 

Melbourne Art Fair takes place 22 – 25 February 2024 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Tickets are available here.

VAULT Talks Presents Conversations with Leading Contemporary Artists

VAULT Magazine invites fairgoers to their booth (G2), for a series of inclusive and inspiring one-on-one conversations with preeminent Australian contemporary artists across the four days of the fair.

Join VAULT Editor Alison Kubler and Fair-presenting artists James Drinkwater, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran and Edwina McLennan as they speak about art, practice, community and what 2024 has in store. The VAULT booth will be an open space for the facilitation of drop-in community conversation and collaboration at all other times during the fair.

Alison Kubler in Conversation with Edwina McLennan:
Friday 23 February, 3:30-4:00pm

Edwina McLennan, Full Moon Rising, 2023, acrylic and sublimation dye print on velvet and sequins, thread, interfacing., Framed in white surround frame, 134 x 211cm.

Edwina McLennan’s work is positioned at the intersection of textiles, painting, consumerism, and digital culture. Originally trained in fashion design at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, Edwina deconstructs imagery of mass consumption, sourced largely from fashion magazines. Employing a combination of handmade, mechanical, and digital processes, her works take the form of reconstructed Surrealist landscapes, occupying a liminal space between the natural and digital worlds and serving as a commentary on the impact of consumerism upon identity construction. Her solo exhibition at the Fair is presented by The Renshaws’ (Meanjin/Brisbane), Booth E4.

Alison Kubler in Conversation with Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran:
Saturday, 24 February, 12:00-12:30pm

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Undergod, 2023 at Sullivan+Strumpf, Naarm/Melbourne. Photographer: Christian Capurro.

Sri-Lankan born, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran is a contemporary artist. He is interested in global histories and languages of figurative representation and their intersections with issues relating to the politics of idolatry, the monument, gender, race and religiosity. He has specific interests in South Asian forms and imagery. While he is best known for his inventive and somewhat unorthodox approach to ceramic media, his material vernacular is broad. He has worked imaginatively with a range of sculptural materials including bronze, concrete, neon, LED and fibreglass. Ramesh’s work is presented by Sullivan+Strumpf (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney, Singapore), Booth C7.

Alison Kubler in Conversation with James Drinkwater:
Sunday, 25 February, 12:00-12:30pm

James Drinkwater, Head in the sand, Montauk NY, 2023, oil on linen, 70.2cm x 122cm.

James Drinkwater is a Newcastle based painter and sculptor. He studied at the National Art School, Sydney (2001) and has held 30 solo exhibitions since 2004. A major survey exhibition, ‘The Sea Calls me by Name’, was held in 2019 at the Newcastle Art Gallery. In 2016, Monash University’s engineering faculty commissioned a major sculpture / relief from the artist which spans fifteen metres, hanging permanently at Monash University’s Clayton Campus. In 2017 James collaborated with iconic Australian fashion house ALPHA60 to produce a capsule collection. In 2022 he was included in the seminal exhibition ‘Singing In Unison – artist’s need to create on the same scale that society has the capacity to destroy’ curated by Phong H. Bui and Cal Mckeever from The Brooklyn Rail along side Sean Scully, Julian Schnabel, Lauren Bon, Ron Gorchov and Dorothea Rockburne. At the Fair, James’ work is presented by Nicholas Thompson Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), Booth K1.

Explore the full Melbourne Art Fair Program here.

Explore & Collect With Alexie Glass-Kantor

Alexie Glass-Kantor is a curator, an advocate for the arts and the Executive Director of Artspace, Gadigal Country/Sydney. Since 2014 she has led the opportunity for co-curated and artist-led projects with peer institutions in 14 countries, including: Jonathan Jones: untitled (transcriptions of country), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2041); UN/LEARNING AUSTRALIA, Seoul Museum of Art (2021) and more. Alexie was the curator for artist Marco Fusinato for the Australian Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia (2022), and since 2015 has been the curator for Encounters which is the large-scale installation sector for Art Basel Hong Kong.

Melbourne Art Fair spoke to Alexie about her most anticipated artists and galleries coming to the Fair.

Blackartprojects (Naarm/Melbourne), Booth I2
Betty Campbell

Betty Campbell (Pitjantjatjarra / Yankunytjatjara) is an artist and community leader living in Mimili in the APY Lands of South Australia. Betty’s works are absolutely mesmerising, she’s a storyteller who uses her works to share women’s stories that cannot be spoken, which she translates through painting and dancing. Her profoundly beautiful paintings hold layers of accumulative mark-making–indicative of those used for body painting–which suggest scores for movements, time, and connection.

Betty Campbell, Minymaku Tjukurpa (Women’s Story), Our Country (580-23), 2023, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 152cm x 122cm. Courtesy the artist and Blackartprojects.

Sullivan+Strumpf (Gadigal Country/Sydney, Naarm/Melbourne, Singapore), Booth C7
Julia Gutman

Experiences of intimacy, vulnerability and empathy are intrinsically woven through the expanded textile works and installations of Julia Gutman. She is an emerging artist whose works have already drawn recognition, including winning the Archibald Prize in 2022. I first worked with Julia as part of the 2020 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship at Artspace, and over the past four years the conceptual scope of her practice has deepened. As one of Artspace’s current One-Year Studio Artists, Julia is in the studio every day and the works featured at Melbourne Art Fair have been developed in-residence—it will be wonderful to see these ambitious and nuanced works shared with audiences.

Julia Gutman, Maybe there is a beast, maybe it’s only us, 2024, found textiles, embroidery and oil pastel on canvas
200cm x 80cm. Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf.

1301SW/STARKWHITE (Naarm/Melbourne, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Tāhuna/Queenstown), Booth A3
Jelena Telecki

Jelena Telecki’s surreal paintings are evocative and enticing, existing in a strange place of in-between – neither here or there – where there is a quality of compression and a powerful sense of release. Underpinned by performativity, I have long admired how her paintings and installations have a sense of dramaturgy and as the viewer you become complicit, implicated through the act of looking upon someone or something caught in the act. Articulating that fraught space of ambiguity and testing thresholds of representation, are ways in which Jelena teases at the most self-conscious outer limits of relationships and subjectivity.

Jelena Telecki, Mistake, 2021, oil on linen, 154 x 137 cm. Courtesy the artist and 1301SW.

COMA (Gadigal Country/Sydney), Booth K2
Shan Turner-Carroll

Poetry, symbology, and myth are strewn through the dreamlike mise-en-scènes created by Shan Turner-Carroll in his images, assemblages and installations. Eerily alluring and often confronting, I am interested in how Shan initiates social exchange, and interactions between community and participation, to depict relationships that are non-linear and shapeshifting. Although highly staged, his works are imbued with family ties, memories, elements of nature, and personal attributes, inviting the feeling that what you are encountering is familiar, but yet, so unfamiliar.

Shan Turner-Carroll, Waiting for night to jump, 2024, archival digital ink jet print, 130cm x 87cm. Courtesy the artist and COMA.

OLSEN (Gadigal Country/Sydney), Booth A4
Jacqui Stockdale

Jacqui Stockdale is an artist I’ve followed for over twenty-five years and her engagement with feminism and the occult have been defining themes. I am drawn to her inimitable curiosity, her flair for the dramatic, and her courage in directly confronting the unfailing complexities and taboos of sex, death, and belief. Jacqui plays expertly with absurdist theatres of desire and teases out latent satirical tensions; indeed, her theatrical works are uncanny, leaning as they do into the shadowy realms of the unconscious and subconscious. For Melbourne Art Fair, I am particularly enamoured by Smoko (2024) and the whimsical, almost comical, nature of the work.

Jacqui Stockdale, Smoko, 2024, oil on linen, 165cm x 195cm. Courtesy the artist and OLSEN.

Melbourne Art Fair takes place 22 – 25 February at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Secure tickets here.

WATCH | Dane Lovett On Crafting Illusions With Paint

Melbourne Art Fair seized the opportunity to visit Dane Lovett in his studio and gain insight into his practice. He spoke about his use of a restrictive colour palette, creating illusions by warping imagery, and coming from a long line of artists.

 

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His paintings are precisely crafted observations of familiar subject matter – from domestic plants and flowers to music and popular culture ­– echoing art historic traditions of still-life painting, yet taking on new meaning through the act of repetition.

At Melbourne Art Fair, he is presented by STATION (Naarm/Melbourne, Gadigal Country/Sydney) in a group show alongside artists, Clare Milledge, Tom Polo and Julia Trybala.

Melbourne Art Fair takes place 22 – 25 February at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Secure tickets here.

Explore And Collect With Pascale Gomes-McNabb

With a bold take on design, Interior Designer and Director of PGMD and Fair Ambassador Pascale Gomes-McNabb is influenced by the exploration of architecture, art, travel, food, nature and culture.

An ex-restaurateur, she has created some of Australia’s most respected, award-winning establishments including, Cumulus Inc., Cutler & Co (her own places) and for others; Penfolds’ Magill Estate Restaurant and Stokehouse among others.

Melbourne Art Fair spoke with Pascale about her most anticipated artists;

Arts Project Australia (Naarm/Melbourne), Booth H5
Anthony Romagnano 

I love these works by Anthony Romagnano – they are punchy and humorous! There is an abstract cartoon quality to his work yet the images are highly stylised. The saturated colouration deployed is sophisticated and fun, as are the subjects depicted. 

Anthony Romagnano, Untitled, 2019, pencil on paper, 37.5cm x 56cm. Courtesy the artist and Arts Project Australia.

Tolarno Galleries (Naarm/Melbourne), Booth D4
Wanapati Yunupinju

I saw Wanapati Yunupinju’s work at the Melbourne Art Fair in 2022 and sometime at the Art Gallery of NSW. The level of detail within the works is exquisite. The juxtaposition of his engraving by hand his ancestral Gumatj clan diamond design on found objects is incredible.  

Wanapati Yunupiŋu, Gumatj fire Gurtha Wanapati metal, 2023 Mixed media 91 x 60.5 cm. Courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries.

MARS Gallery (Naarm/Melbourne), Booth E2
Dani McKenzie

There is a lush, seductive yet a pensive quality to these works. Created by the warm colours and (precise yet ever so slightly louche) painting style, they depict everyday almost mundane, innocent scenes of life’s goings on. 

Dani McKenzie, Date Night. Courtesy the artist and MARS Gallery.

THIS IS NO FANTASY (Naarm/Melbourne), Booth C4
Ali Tahayori

The reuse of mirror that has evolved into a craft and the inclusion of images from another place and time, create a seductive hybridisation and melding of elements and layers of culture, material, history and meanings. That represent to me the idea that we interpret life in a myriad of ways. 

Ali Tahayori, Untitled 17 (Archive of Longing), 2023, archival photograph printed on glass, hand-cut glass, silicone, on aluminium di-bond, 85cm x 104cm x 2cm. Courtesy the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY.

Melbourne Art Fair takes place 22 – 25 February at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Secure tickets here.

Howard Arkley’s Last Ever Work

Howard Arkley: Untitled [house] 1999 

This impressive late painting, one of Arkley’s last completed canvases, carries particular fascination and significance, like the final works of many other creative artists. Clearly a major artistic statement on the suburban theme that preoccupied him during his mature years, it also exemplifies his later tendency to keep repeating some subjects, experimenting with different stylistic possibilities while continually refining and clarifying the central artistic ideas. His large-scale freeway paintings (1994-99) are the clearest examples, but the point is also made by this work, the last in a sequence begun some 13 years earlier.  

The subject, as with all Arkley’s suburban exteriors, originated in a simple real estate outline drawing of the type common in real estate pages in 1980s-90s newspapers. The first painting to reference it was the large 1986 canvas Our Home, hinting at the darker dimensions of suburbia through its heavy black sprayed detailing of brickwork and looming foliage, closely echoing the naïve source. Then, from 1994 onwards, Arkley reprised the image repeatedly, zooming in on its central elements: the garage door, window with striped blind, and foreground shrub. In Spray Veneer, one of the ‘Pointillist Suburb’ canvases he exhibited at Tolarno Galleries in 1994, overlapping stencilled patterns in variegated colours threaten to overwhelm the outlines of the house altogether. Conversely, a calmer unity is achieved in several smaller late 1990s versions on canvas and paper, through a combination of softer hues and grey sprayed line-work. 

The present painting brings those earlier experiments to a striking climax, while also contributing significantly to Arkley’s remarkable record of achievements in his final year – including the National Portrait Gallery’s enigmatic Nick Cave (Arkley’s only true portrait); his last furniture installation, Homezone (private collection, Melbourne), the sophisticated culmination of decades of previous thought and work; and his critically-acclaimed exhibitions in Venice and Los Angeles, still on show when he died. 

In this final variant of the subject he first painted in 1986, Arkley expanded the composition to grand scale – the canvas is over 2 metres tall – while distilling its essence. The vividly coloured planes of the building abut in sharp contrasts, articulated through muscular black line-work, the striped blind echoes the pink roof, the sky pulses beyond, and the shrub has morphed into a playful, abstract cut-out. The result is a lucid and monumental masterpiece.  

Written by John Gregory, 19 June 2023 

John Gregory lectured in art history and theory at Monash University. He has taught and written extensively on both European and Australian art. His major monograph on Melbourne painter Howard Arkley was published by Cambridge University Press in 2006.  

Discover Untitled [house] and more works by Howard Arkley presented by Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art at Melbourne Art Fair. Booth B1.