Summer Daze - Off The Kerb
Shini Pararajasingham
I’m ashamed to admit I’ve never been to Off The Kerb before. The pay to play gallery model that Off the Kerb and other galleries like it use (PG Printmaker, fortyfivedownstairs, Brunswick Street Gallery, SOL) has perplexed me since I was in art school; not quite a commercial gallery, not quite an ARI, but a secret third thing that hovers between the two. Yet, they do hold an important place in the community for those ready to exhibit their work, but not in the stable of a commercial gallery. Their current exhibition, Summer Daze, is under the umbrella of Midsumma festival - Melbourne’s LQBTQIA+ arts and culture festival that plays out across the city through January and February.
I’m greeted in the gallery first by Shane McGowan’s work. I recognised his work from the show I wrote about last week at SOL gallery, also under the Midsumma umbrella. The Athlete holds a similar warm, hazy, dreamlike feeling as the drawings I saw at SOL, yet The Gentlemen and The Dinner Party have a different energy to them. These feel like moments held in time, not by joy like the other work I’ve seen from McGowan, but something perhaps more reflective and melancholic. Also in the front room of the gallery is The Attachment of Grief by Kyle Barnett, which sees 3D ceramic squiggles emerge from the hessian canvas, yet these are bound down to the surface by black bars. This sculptural painting writhes before your eyes, trying to break free of its constraints. Oil paintings Untitled and Fishy by Ada Grant placed either side of Bernett’s work frame it and continue the movement in their markmaking, tying the works of these three artists together through shape and colour.
In the upstairs gallery I find my four favourite works, and I think I like them all the more for their grouping together. Silence = Death by Elliott Fox on display next to Mediation to Meditation (does my arse look big in this?) by Jonathon Harris and on the opposite wall are Sign from life 1 and 2 by Falconeris Marimón. Marimón’s pair of paintings are bodies created in halftone and spray painted on reflective road signs. The yellow road sign shimmering and dancing under the oppressive black, making the depicted bodies come alive through the medium. Again, maybe it’s the screenprinter in me coming through here, but these are just awesome and I love them. These look back across the room to Harris’ glossy melting piece which drips horizontally off the canvas, as if the surface is being melted away and drawn into the room, and across to Marimón’s works on the other side. It feels almost like I’m featuring in a sci-fi film when standing in front of this piece. Next to this is Fox’s screenprint, the greyhound racing away between the words ‘Silence = Death’ which are lifted from a 1985 project in New York of the same name, whose mission was to raise awareness of the deadly AIDS crisis. Fox, Harris, and Marimón’s pieces work together, and speak to one another across the room creating a dialogue between them that’s hard not to get drawn into.
Coming downstairs I’m greeted by Drapery I by Marco Pennaccia at the bottom of the stairs, the soft folds feeling velvety and soft and comforting. This leads me into the back gallery, where Pink Orb Phenomenon #1 through #3 by Surej Sidhu float menacingly alienlike between grand mountain vistas. Though, Shini Pararajasingham’s three oil on panel paintings are what stop me in my tracks in this room. These paintings are delicate and soft and hazy memories of other times. They work so well as a triptych that I’m surprised to see that two of them have sold and not the third (which is my personal favourite).
Gallery director Shini has done an excellent job curating this show, these works flow from one into another, with distinct feelings curated in each room of the gallery, and the artists and their works feel very deliberately chosen. It’s hard to not compare this show to SOULS at SOL which I saw last week also apart of Midsumma. Much of the work in that show felt loud and proud, whereas Summer Daze feels quieter in its connection to queerness, which is an important note to hit.
Summer Daze is on at Off The Kerb on Johnston St until the 5th of February 2026.