One of three annual fundraising shows, Queer Heirlooms at Unassigned Gallery is also their third annual collaborative exhibition with Queer Love Collective. This year, featuring 100 artists on the dot, the exhibition explores memory and heritage, looking at what meaning we make and how we pass it on. The exhibition spans about every art form you can imagine – including the written word and medieval weapons made out of fabric – contains multitudes in how expansively “heirloom” was interpreted. The more I explored the exhibition, both on opening night and on a more relaxed weekday return, the grouping of works by loose theme seemed to pop out. There were explorations of kink, of queer labelling, sexual exploration, online worlds, fandom, and queer history among many others. In an open call exhibition, the breadth of work and skill is bound to vary, but three categories - photography, fibre arts, and the proliferation of renaissance adjacent imagery - stood out above the crowd.

If you read my writing on Held, Altered at No Vacancy a couple weeks ago, you’ll know I had tried to go to Bus Projects, but the world was truly against me getting there. Maybe I should have taken that as a sign, but alas I tried again this week, and actually managed to make it in to see us as stars, as horses. Featuring work by Sophie Coe, the show is a collaboration with Kamilaroi curator Tabitha Glanville.

Found objects, glass in fully saturated colours, and steel frames unite Dinette by Kostas Pavlidis, currently on show at Strawberry Gallery in Brunswick. Though I make a point to go in and see what the gallery has in store for me each time they pop up with something new, this is the first show I have seen from Pavlidis since his inclusion at Strawberry’s Spring1883 showing in 2025. Strawberry feels uniquely apt for this work. Both the show and the gallery seem to be held together by sheer force (the front wall of Strawberry consistently feels like a feat of engineering; Pavlidis’ works held together by welding). 

So here I am breaking the No Vacancy ban to write about Held, Altered featuring Grace Mitchell, Indya Pearce and Keely Vermalis. And I’m so glad that I’ve ended up here writing about this show, because I’m so pleasantly surprised how well these three artists work together in this space. At first glance, the through line between the work seems precarious. But spending time with the work in the space, I’m convinced. These works speak to each other through memory and time, and it almost feels like I’m walking into a private conversation being held between the artists.

I haven’t had many reasons to venture out west from my inner north bubble in the years I’ve been living in Melbourne, and I’m well aware of how much of a shame that is – especially as this was my very first time visiting the institution that is Trocadero Projects. There are currently three separate shows filling the gallery space which I had the joy of exploring before buying heading round the corner to pick up the weirdest assortment of groceries from Cheaper Buy Miles; Tent Theory by Hunter Smith, We live by inference from the Saluhan Collective and Discovering human-nature by Lan Anh Truong. 

Rereading Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? is an annual experience for me, often precipitated by a friend saying they haven’t yet pulled it up. A foundational text, if not the foundational text of looking at feminism(s) in art history, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists is an essay that is never far from my mind. From first reading it at 19 in ARTH101 in undergrad, I’ve variously argued for, against, outside of, and in need of redressing, Nochlin’s most famous work. As someone who comes to art through an art historical lens, rather than a hands on practice, I am always surprised with the gap between the theory and the history taught in art schools. I’m not saying this as a blanket statement – obviously everyone is a unique individual – but it is a piece of text that is so ubiquitous when studying art history, I cannot imagine writing about, critiquing, or even considering much of much of the art and exhibitions I see without a thorough knowledge of it in my back pocket.

Intended or not, I couldn’t keep the Catholic Church out of my mind at every Design Week event I’ve attended. Between the stained glass ceiling of the NGV’s Great Hall evoking cathedrals, and the inherent, site based religiosity of both Alpha60’s Chapter House playing host to Jon Goulder and the Abbotsford Convent, Christianity was omnipresent in a way that contemporary art and design eschews.

Jesse Boylan, Isabella Capezio, Jody Haines, Pia Johnson, Katrin Koenning, Christine McFetridge, Rebecca Najdowski, and Clare Rae are part of Correspondences, currently on view at Hillvale Gallery. The artists and their works blend - it was a breath of fresh air to have the works genuinely talk to each other, rather than yell from their own corners of a room.

Galleria Crocodillo has no art on their walls for the month of May. Instead they’ve staged a scavenger hunt across the streets of the affectionately known ‘Presevoir’ (Preston / Reservoir for those not in the know). The starting point is a $2 map purchased from a vending machine that blocks the door of the gallery space. This map gives you ten destinations across Plenty Rd in Reservoir and High St in Preston to explore. Each destination is matched with a clue. Not only is this a scavenger hunt, but it’s equally a puzzle; the clues are also riddles that have you searching high and low, and the prize in this case is the art from these local artists.

It is with full confidence that I can say not a single art gallery on Gertrude Street is lowbrow. I mean, it’s Fitzroy: of course they aren't. This week though, I went back to my art history roots, and took a look at A Seat at the Table from Art & Collectors. Spanning 101 years (the oldest work a floral still life from 1925, the most recent a self portrait dating from this year) the exhibition is a snapshot of female Australian artists. At first glance, the show is filled with the prerequisite floral still lives, self-portraits, and snippets of home life that come with the territory of a broad subject matter like simply “female artists.” It's when you look through the works, take them in one by one that you see that this is a show of echoes – artists are echoing each other and themselves, calling out through the decades to continue a conversation. 

You might be wondering, if we’re reading John Berger, why aren’t we reading Ways of Seeing? Quite frankly, great question and I’m glad you asked. Between the TV series (which I am not opposed to including in Bottom Shelf at some point) and how ubiquitous the text is in studying art and art history at any level, I don’t feel that I had much to add to the discussion. Permanent Red, on the other hand, was Berger’s first book, published in 1960. Reading his early criticism, his thoughts and arguments with himself, there’s a lot to identify with and unpack. Berger is an expansive author, winning prizes for his criticism and even the Booker Prize for his fiction, he’s also an author that feels unwieldy, so the beginning is where I will enter into the bibliographical fray.

After visiting Inter-narratives of hope: building catastrophe resilience at MADA and before reading the accompanying exhibition I called a friend and had a whinge about this show. I complained that I didn’t see a strong connection between the works on display. I grumbled that the curatorial vision isn’t strong enough if it’s unclear from viewing the show alone, and you should’ve have to read an essay to derive meaning from an exhibition. I whinged that the title of the show was an over intellectualisation from PhD candidates (which I still partly stand behind) and inaccessible for the public as a curatorial concept. I’d like to make a correction to what I said to my friend; this is a great show, and made stronger by its accompanying text. I feel blind for not reading it while in the space and for only being able to view the work with this lens in hindsight.

Forever Bedroom, Nina Seeburg’s ode to our quietest, most personal spaces is an intimate portrayal of the refuge found in our childhood bedrooms, the first rooms of our own. Greeting you up the stairs that lead to Changing Room Gallery is a vanity, littered with personal effects (clown, axe, and giant dildo included) a taster for the intimacy and clarity of theming that defines Forever Bedroom. 

Though Bec has covered it before, and I live less than a kilometre away, I had never been to George Paton Gallery before this week. The UMSU Gallery was a trove of artistic potential, but perhaps none more so than As Long As You Love Me, the video installation work by Alanna Baxter, Lara Oluklu and Naimo Omar. I couldn’t tell you how long the loop is, as I was so engrossed, walking back and forth between the three screens so as to not miss anything, that I didn’t think to note the timing. Simple on a surface level – three screens, a dark curtain, white text on black cutting between film snippets – Baxter, Oluklu, and Omar have made something totally their own out of an entirely borrowed script. 

Before this Wednesday, I’d never been to HAIR before – strange, given its proximity to my beloved Queen Vic Market. Across the street from the iconic facade, HAIR neighbours Sticky Institute, and this exhibition spoke directly to its location, and The Last Chance (Rock & Roll Bar), just a few hundred metres away. Millennial Kennels by Jordan Halsall and Steven J Hutton features four kennels made of plywood, printed with images of jeans. The jeans are definitively punk, variously featuring rips, paint, buttons, patches, mending, and distress.

Erin Hogan embarks on a solo journey across the American West in search of Land Art. The 2008 book is deeply reflective of current anxieties for arts in Australia, with funding cuts, a world in turmoil, and an internal search for place in an uncertain world.

The turn from sunny to thunderstorm on the day I went to Double Feature at Artemisia kept me lingering longer, taking it all in, mulling over my thoughts as I parsed through the over 100 works on show at the High Street gallery. The name of the show points to the theming of: “Diptychs, duos, partners & pairs” though for some of the artists, this throughline was lost.

Part video work, part installation, ENEMIES! at TCB Gallery is a send up of the Melbourne arts scene that’s as funny as it is true. I’ll admit, when I first walked into TCB and saw two coffins, my expectations plummeted. Death of the artist, death of creativity, death of art were the first things that crossed my mind. The computer, perhaps too reminiscent of those I’ve spent my career working on, did not beckon me in. I turned away and took a look at Emma Nicole Berry’s a week long waiting room, filled with colour and images and prose before contending with Brunswick's own corporate hellscape. 

To launch the new Lowbrow Art Book Club (tentatively titled Bottom Shelf, but we’re taking suggestions), which will be coming to you all on the last Tuesday of every month, I couldn’t think of a better exhibition to see this week than A Library of Libraries at Blindside. My first time at the gallery’s new North Melbourne location, I was welcomed in by the curator Grey Dear, and shown around the show that is a collection of collections. I wasn’t able to make it on opening night (like Charlotte was), but snuck in a day earlier to spend some time in the space reading a few of the many books on display.

As I enter the singular room of Craft Victoria and grab an exhibition sheet under the white spotlights,  my first instinct is to look at the artworks poking out of the ground. The annual show Fresh!, which has been running for 33 years, opened on Valentine’s Day at Craft Victoria. Like a geographical map, many of the works are spread out on the ground. I keep my head down; I’m an explorer that needs to make my way through the jungle of metal and glass. The artworks are either directly on the floor or lay on rustic wooden tables, and the one-dimensional works are attached without framing onto the wall. They are all interacting with the space given to them, directly in contact with either the floor or the wall. I feel like the curation strongly mirrors the common conveyed ideas of the eight graduates in the exhibition. The works are all revolving around connection; either between different materials, or within family, traditions, and queer communities.