In lieu of a review this week, I’m looking back at some of the art that stuck with me this year. I won’t lie to you and say these are all strictly things covered for Lowbrow or Lowbrow-esque (the AGNSW was my first gallery of the year), but they are my picks, and I am inherently lowbrow. Please enjoy my top 11 picks from 2025 in chronological order (of course I couldn’t whittle it down to just 10).

January 3: Just like drops in time, nothing by Ernesto Neto at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The installation of this 2002 work overtook my senses. For the first time in my life, I smelled an artwork before seeing it. The stockings, filled with spices poured onto the floor, overtaking the space with their smell and colour. Having just been in San Francisco at the SFMoMA days before, I was immediately reminded of Ruth Asawa’s sculptures in the shape and feel of Neto’s installation.

Round 2 of the RMIT grad shows left a lot to be desired. For whatever reason, most works felt like I had seen them before, not in the sense that they felt warmly familiar, but that I was being shown the same exhibition time and again. I’ll also admit I had higher expectations for this post-graduate exhibition. I generally liked most of the work, but not much of it jumped out to me as favourites. Lots of it blended into each other. This could be due to grad show fatigue of sorts? Seeing so much graduating student work in such a short amount of time, it’s impossible to not compare it all to each other. 

The thing that stuck out to me about the 2025 VCA grad showwas theswathes of space each artist had. Some had whole walls, others had whole rooms. It definitely seemed like each grad had probably about four times the amount of room that each of the RMIT students had in their recent grad show install. I heard through the grapevine (gossiping with other ex-students I ran into) that the painting department only had 20 graduating students this year, in comparison to 35 last year. Considering the starting cohort sits around 40 students, this is a huge drop out rate. This is a trend across all departments (although painting definitely has the biggest difference in numbers), which makes me wonder why exactly the drop out rate was so high for the class of 2025.

I went into the MADA Grad Show with no expectations. The campus is foreign to me, I don’t know any of the grads, and the people I know who go to Monash are in the music department. I was blown away. Given all the artists are BFAs or Honours, and my somewhat chaotic experience of the RMIT show, I expected a similar experience- in fact I skipped out on opening night in the hopes of avoiding chaos. I regret that, and will not be making the same mistake again. The show feels almost airy. Each artist has space to breathe, the building is gorgeous, with ample light and wooden floors. With limited exceptions, each artist felt like they had taken full advantage of their time at art school, producing works that felt like the full culmination of an undergrad. 

The opening night of the RMIT grad show was sticky, heaving, and a good reminder that my clubbing days are behind me. Bec and I trekked to Swanston street twice to view it, once in all its opening night chaos, and then the next morning for a more relaxed, albeit agenda driven visit. 

I’d be lying if I said attending the RMIT Grad Show opening was an enjoyable experience. It would’ve been an awesome party for the graduates whose work was on show, surrounded by their friends, family and fellow students. But as a punter it was not- it was hot, we were shoulder to shoulder packed like sardines in some rooms, and there was so much art on display that it became overwhelming. Charlotte and I had to leave after seeing about half the work and come back the next day to be able to actually take anything in. Although the amount of graduating student work was overwhelming, the sheer number of pieces on display allowed lots of it to fade into the background and that allowed my favourites to stand out to me.

Limitless Play is the group show currently on at No Vacancy. The title does not disappoint; the show is full of joyful, playful work that feels a bit like a party. The work feels whimsical yet well matched, with a cohesive visual style that works well together from all five artists. I imagine the opening would’ve been even more of a party with live music and movement performances over two nights, as well as a magazine launch (HOISZN issue 007) in the space on a third night. Also notably drinks sales on Performance Night and from the HOISZN launch event, plus some merch sale revenue (totalling $550 so far!) is to be donated directly to the Victorian Aboriginal Child and Community Agency. This is admirable, especially when considering the whopping gallery hire fee which totals over $2k per week, in addition to the 20% commission No Vacancy takes on artwork sales. I didn’t manage to make opening night or any performances for this show, but maybe that’s for the best considering Charlotte’s dry cleaning bill after the red wine incident at the last opening Lowbrow attended at No Vacancy.

Now in its third year, Ants at Unassigned Gallery feels like a cornerstone of their calendar, the embodiment of the community focused gallery in Brunswick. The show is one in a number of small works exhibitions either on or coming up on the Melbourne arts calendar at the moment, though this iteration of the genre feels distinctly community minded, as most shows at Unassigned do. The show runs the gamut of genre, medium, and style, though there are a few recurring themes (namely the titular insect). With the smallest work measuring at just centimetres, it’s an exhibition that firmly shows you size isn’t everything, and that even the smallest works can pack a punch. The show is massive - 183 artists - but not unruly. The size made me focus on the details, in which I was too wrapped up to be bogged down by the sheer number of works on display.

I was working in a bookstore when Poor Artists hit the shelves and it was one that was mildly contentious in where it should be shelved. Fiction or non-fiction, in the art section or in biography? Poor Artists is like nothing I’ve ever read before in its structure. Co-authors Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad (who I’ll call G&Z from here on out) remind us at the start of the book that this is a piece of art criticism, but I see it more specifically as criticism of the culture that surrounds art instead. Which I guess is exactly what art criticism is.  G&Z have been running a UK-based arts and culture commentary site The White Pube for ten years and published Poor Artists as a somewhat expansion of that in 2024.

Days are getting shorter (false), trees are changing colour (in full bloom), and there’s a chill in the air (depends on the day: it is Melbourne). Lies though these all may be, down Tyler Street in Preston there’s an art exhibition that could convince you it just might be true. With just eight artists in the show, this exhibition takes up the interior window space of Video Days, a vintage movie store trading in nostalgia. 

I ducked out of the rain earlier this week to check out Holly Goodridge’s The Shape of Rest at Mailbox Art Space. The show fills nineteen repurposed wooden mailboxes in the foyer of Pawson House on Flinders Lane in Melbourne’s CBD. Mailbox Art Space is a hidden secret for those who know about it, and I love being able to share it with friends who would otherwise walk past the unassuming building. I’ve written about Goodridge’s work previously, as part of the Convergence group show at Blindside and I’m so glad to be able to revisit her work in a place where it’s not competing for space against the rest of a student exhibition.

There’s something in the air, or is it in the oven- food has been a trend all over clothes (why are we so obsessed with tomatoes, and lemons, and canned fish?) that is now bleeding into the art world. For me (and most of us) food has shaped my life.An unconventional (read: international) upbringing exposed me not only to art at a young age, but a wide variety of foods. I grew up counting down the days towards meals- Canadian Thanksgiving (immediate family, Mum’s brûléed sweet potatoes), Christmas Eve (California, Auntie Lynn’s kielbasa hors d'oeuvre), Christmas (flaming plum pudding), Easter (ham), and Mother’s Day (Les Fougeres’ house salad). It was these moments at tables that made up the year more than the holidays themselves. In so much of the art I’ve seen lately, these links have been reflected back to me. Cooking and art are labours of love, they feed us, and often don’t get the appreciation the time and effort deserve. 

Personally, I’ve been a longtime Hillvale Photo fan. I've been dropping my film to be developed by the team there for years - since they had a lil’ tiny shop on a slightly different Brunswick back street from where they now operate their much larger lab and gallery. The Photo Trophy is Hillvale’s annual photography competition, where they print and display all entries in a salon style hang that completely fills the walls of their gallery space. There’s something to be said for a gallery that only showcases one particular art form, and especially photography, which so often gets overlooked in group shows.

For four nights (and four nights only) Collingwood Yards was the home to Entangled Worlds, a Melbourne Fringe Festival activation by the Centre for Projection Arts. Curated by Yandell Walton, the event put the site into a new light (pun intended). I spent the night looking up, around, and all over in pursuit of the ephemeral artworks. The exhibition put a spotlight on the Centre’s Art Residency program, with all eleven of the featured artists either currently taking part or alumni of it. 

This is my first time writing a review for a show, thank god its someone I know! Harmonising With My Kitchen Fan is a group show curated by Iona Mackenzie, featuring herself, Madeleine Minack, and Hayley Does at Oddany Gallery in Brunswick. I always love coming into Oddany, I love the drapes, high ceilings and candles scattered about, it is a character in its own right.

Amanda Western’s Ways Through opens with an explanation of the linocut process, with her tools on a plinth, arming you with the knowledge that each print on show is the result of years of practice, and dozens of hours of painstaking carving. After that, you immediately encounter  the block and artist print for her Country Lane work. Between the size and the detail, it’s an apt greeting to an exhibition that runs the gamut of print sizing and detail, and a warm welcome to a show about the quiet moments and everyday places.

87 artists would be an ambitious group show for a large gallery. Even in an airy space like No Vacancy it felt overwhelming at points- with the sheer mass of the crowd for the opening I had to return the next day to get a full grasp of the show (and to take it in, while not covered in red wine). Wine-gate occurred right in the middle of the speeches announcing the winner, and was so obvious that I was recognised at the very next opening I went to as the girl who wore the wine at No Vacancy (I am so sorry to the bartender for bringing this up, it could have happened to anyone). After dropping my pants off at the dry cleaners, I returned to the scene of the crime to find out who actually won. The winning work, Horse Shell Tell Tale by Natalie Bessell won a solo show in the gallery space. Ruby Archer’s intimate oil on pine work Drive got the honourable mention.

Mary Cherry Contemporary is my pick for best named gallery in Melbourne. It’s just fun to say. Currently on at the Collingwood space is Jen Valender’s solo show Null is Not an Object. The exhibition feels intimate and meticulous, each work key in telling a wider story. It’s an homage to Valender’s early job as a cinema projectionist- a return to working intimately with celluloid film.

Curated by British born RMIT lecturer Jennifer Conroy Smith, Sensory Clay does not break boundaries as a group show, but does showcase promising artists from RMIT’s talent pool. On the whole, I found the show exciting. Ceramics is an under-represented field, but something I find is gaining more and more traction as emerging artists gain support. In particular, artists playing with form and blurring the barriers of materiality will be my enduring memory of this show.

In the nook of First Site is Xinshuo Zhuo’s Unnatured. Presented alongside three other exhibitions, Zhuo’s is the quietest. The works did not strike me at first sight, it was only in sitting with them- getting closer and truly taking my time that the detail and nuance struck me. Going back through them, finding the motifs (the butterflies, the obscured sun, the faceless woman, the hair) I wanted more. What Zhuo captures with analogue photography feels like nothing that could be imitated with modern means. There is a delicacy to the exhibition.