NotFair Art Fair
Zali Morgan and Zamara Zamara
Walking down High St, the gnarled hands in the window were my first clue I was in the right place. The second was the canary yellow paste-ups papering the side of the building. At 83 High St in Prahran, an old, abandoned office building has been transformed into an art-filled haven, office-standard concrete and carpet notwithstanding. The hands were simultaneously flipping me off and beckoning me in, and were a great taster for what I would find inside of the fair, which for 2026 is aptly titled “Lust for Life.” There was never a time in the show that any one artist’s practice could have been confused with another. The curation was such that each inclusion was singular; the works spoke to each other but never repeated what the other was saying.
The gnarled hands, as I would come to find out, are Zamara Zamara’s creation. They were the first of two ceramic series that caught my eye in the fair. The hands (claws? talons?) took up much of the central area of the first floor. On tables (that were also doors) I wanted to reach out and grab them, mostly to see if they were going to grab me back or pull me through. Jo Shand’s earthenware was similar only in material. Shand plays with Australiana, making you feel like you’ve stumbled across a truly great vintage treasure. The wall mounted works are bright and tactile, edged with native plants around distinctly Aussie scenes, if ones you would not expect to see on ceramics. Below them is a tangle of blue and white painted bones, each painted with a different wreck lost off the coast in the colonial era.
I knew several of the artists in the show; Peter Milne is a Melbourne photography mainstay, similarly Kyle Archie Knight also crops up time and again. Knight’s photographs were bright, immersive scenes. Underwear hanging on a line, a colour drenched urinal, and ‘twink’ spelled out across empty shop windows teemed with life — though the series was devoid of any figures.
I was excited to see Lily Walker’s name in the program. Rehanging works that were included in Blindside’s programming at the end of last year, Walker’s figurative snapshots felt new to me in their home around the kitchen/bar of the fair. Reading like hazy photographs on a long forgotten roll of film, staring up at the works hanging above the kitchen cupboards gave the series more context and dialogue between each other. I liked them at Blindside, but adored them here. They’re the snapshots of your friends you keep on your fridge to keep them close. My favourite remains the detail painting, Flinders Prawns. Walker’s works are oil paintings for the instagram photo-dump era, shots of our favourite moments and the space in between.
Going from Walker’s works at the base of the stairs, to Nina Radonja’s Girls Girls Girls beckoning you up, and then to Knight’s just beyond the threshold lead me on a road to Jesse (Jincheng) Deng’s Durian Butt. There was such a dialogue between the works, an appreciation of colour and saturation and play that is so often missing in art these days. Radonja’s series drew direct parallels to much of Petra Collins’ work, especially her neon series. Radonja’s mastery of painting astounded me — the subtle glow of neon tubing, the painters tape, and the obfuscated portraits were stylistically singular, borrowing from still life, street art, and photography.
Scout Milsome’s paintings play with the uncanny. Taking up the mantle of the weird and slightly surreal, you’re looking through a funhouse mirror. Everything is identifiable, but just so slightly off. The silhouettes in all kinds of love was my favourite example of this. There are three silhouettes and a swan, but who are they? What are they cut into? Why the playing cards? Milsome is an artist that I would have loved exploring in an academic setting, hearing every take of exactly what we were looking at.
The Hermeneutic Machine Variations from Karen Ann Donnachie & Andy Simionato is so playful for a work that is so monochrome. The inflating and deflating of the cone and the absurdity of the size of the sphere played so well with the incongruity of the corporate setting. The inflatable black shapes are whimsy in goth mode. More than anything, the work drew a direct parallel to the NGV’s 2025 Kusama retrospective. Donnachie and Simionato eschew the colours and the dots, and make an inflatable world of their own. Entirely immersive from the subtle sounds of the motors to the record playing in the middle of the space. Ziyi Wei played with immersion on a much smaller scale with The Return of Spontaneous Circulation. With a video work in the corner alongside the sound of the mechanical artwork, the small corner office was overtaken in a way that called to the inflatable room downstairs. Wei’s sculptural silver mechanical piece was exquisitely detailed, the flowers and adornments glinting in the limited lighting.
Rebecca Diele’s mohair and paper works pushed textile arts into paper arts, using mohair thread to embroider paper. Diele’s works are a 1960s dream, between the texture of the mohair, the earthy colours and copper, and the geometric designs she plays with. Diele has total control over her practice. Both parts of her showings had me leaning in closer, admiring the precision and planning needed to execute her vision with such exactness. Also in the realm of fabric is Boorloo Bidi. The set of three fabric works by Zali Morgan read like maps, with the prints on the wall nearby as the landmarks they lead to. Without extended explanations or didactics, Morgan weaves her narrative with a clarity that I envy.
NotFair isn’t an anti-Melbourne Art Fair, so much as it is in its orbit. Describing itself as a "satellite" to MAF, NotFair has been going since 2010. The artists were great and the curation was impeccable. Playing with the former office building, the installation was fun and had me feeling like there was so much to be discovered, rather than just another white cube. It was a fair unlike any I have experienced, a palate cleanser that got me so excited for all the art there is to come in the next year.
NotFair 2026 is on at 83 High Street, Prahran until February 23.