I’m writing this feeling a little bit dusty after our first Lowbrow happy hour last night; a lovely evening meeting irl with some of the people we’ve written about and connected with online. You’ll be seeing more in person events from us moving forward (anyone keen for crit 24th October??) The night before our happy hour however, we were invited to ACCA’s NEW26 opening. Which feels like a big deal - recognition of our work and what we’re doing, the niche we’re filling with our writing and how it ties to ACCA’s newest show.

We went to see Weightless Matter at Oddaný directly after visiting the Affordable Art Fair. Let me tell you those two experiences couldn’t be further apart even if they tried. But I’m decidedly not going to tell you about the Kmart stock room we found at the exhibition building masquerading as “affordable”, instead I’m going to tell you about Ava Nunan’s poetic responses to Max Frances’ abstract paintings currently on show at Oddaný.

Warsan Mohammed crafts a palpable narrative about longing and belonging in her solo show To Ourselves. Hillvale Gallery’s walls have been painted a deep burgundy for the occasion, bringing out the rich colours in the photos. In an age where we can hardly see what’s happening in our movies and TV shows with their dark and moody colour palettes, Mohammed’s warm deep colours are heartfelt and true. These are fantastically crafted images that have a depth that’s difficult to create in a still.

KINGS Artist-Run is a gallery we’ve sorely neglected here on Lowbrow for the year we’ve been publishing. The gallery, now solidly a West Melbourne staple, started 23 years ago in the CBD and has a rich history for being the proving ground for many artists who have gone on to be acquired by institutional collections, or come full circle as the lecturers now teaching the current group of exhibitors at art school. Currently on at KINGS are three shows; Pith and Seed curated by Gabriella Bartolo-Kanellopoulos, Surplus Pleasure: Load from last checked point.dat by Barcode People, and Do you remember? by Panisa Ongwat.

Beckoning you in is Pao Pao (the goldfish from Kelly Yu’s Endling) set against a white wall, blocking the exhibition from sight. Being on a plinth, against a stark wall, in a sparse tank, Pao Pao is loneliness in its most raw form. Once recovered from my aquatic animal-related existential crisis, I dutifully read the opening didactic (with a prerequisite Olivia Laing quote on loneliness supplementing the introduction) and finally faced the cavernous hall. ACCA feels almost supernaturally massive inside; a size and scale well suited to an exhibition capitalizing on loneliness, and the inherent connection we all have through those moments.

Counihan Gallery, on Sydney Road in the heart of Brunswick, is a council gallery for the people. Currently on view are four shows, each entirely their own: Colour My World by Joshua Hede, Not a fine artist, just a "fine" artist by Judy Kuo, Mulana by ENOKi, and Things I Carried Quietly by Nani Puspasari. The exhibitions did not feel connected, but they did not need to be. Counihan knows their space well enough that each holds its own, no encroaching or overshadowing, despite the airiness of the gallery.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.