skip to Main Content

Terry Swann Online Exhibition

In the first solo exhibition of fortyfivedownstairs’ Fragments series, artist Terry Swann - one of Australia’s foremost contemporary landscape watercolourists - takes us on a journey from the Kimberley to the Pilbara.  Since living in the Yarrabah Aboriginal Community, Far…

Read more

HERE Online Exhibition

We're very pleased to announce HERE, the first exhibition in our Fragments online series, open now! Click here to view the exhibition. HERE brings together 25 accomplished Victorian artists, including Judy Holding, Chris Orr, Lisa Sewards, Marisa Mu, Gavin Brown, Naomi Bishop, Tom Gerrard, Mark Chu and more. The online…

Read more

Flashback: Resident Alien 2016

Thursday throwback to 2016 and the remarkable production of Resident Alien by Tim Fountain - produced by our very own Cameron Lukey. Paul Capsis was captivating as Quentin Crisp, the legendary author for whom no topic is off limits. Expertly directed…

Read more

Join Janno’s Corona Girl Project!

We're so looking forward to Janno McLaughlin's upcoming exhibition Making Nonsense at fortyfivedownstairs later this year (dates to be announced soon!). Janno has been incredibly busy on many projects these last few months, including this exhibition, with Rose Lang as…

Read more

Stage Whispers review of As One

Suzanne Sandow Monday 27 January 2020 AS ONE is a beguiling, absorbingly unique contemporary opera experience.  The music is sublimely hypnotic and the singing exquisite. It portrays an intense, very personal and individual reassignment of gender, from puberty to young…

Read more

The Age review of Punk Rock

★★★★ Cameron Woodhead Thursday 12 December 2020 Simon Stephens’ study of adolescence takes us into a Manchester grammar school, where seven students wait for their final exams. We get a fly-on-the-wall portrayal of teenagers in their natural habitat – a…

Read more

The Age review of Fly

Fly review: an emotional slice of Australian opera history Bridget Davies August 26, 2019  ★★★½ If there is an art form where one is to be commended for bucking trends, it's the grand old world of opera. And it's a…

Read more

Reservoir Dogs

Four perfect killers. One perfect crime. Now all they have to fear is each other. Human Sacrifice Theatre presents a one off live cold reading of Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic Reservoir Dogs. Some of Australia’s finest actors have volunteered their…

Read more

A Night of Poetry for Barry Jones **SOLD OUT**

Barry Jones is one of the more remarkable politicians to have sat in the House of Representatives in Canberra, a much loved and respected figure on both sides of politics.  As a tribute for his birthday, the Chair of fortyfivedownstairs,…

Read more

Angus McDonald

India’s Disappearing Railways: A Photographic Journey is an intimate and humorous portrait of life on the sub-continent’s narrow-gauge railways, evoking the very soul of India. Australian photojournalist and travel writer Angus McDonald spent several years documenting the railways with pen…

Read more

Janice Gobey

Janice Gobey’s paintings always sit within duality.  Like the fur they depict, they are beautiful but ominous. The latest collection of works for the exhibition The Haunting, again reflect this duality but even more so with a new use of…

Read more

Beethoven at 245

Celebrating Ludwig van Beethoven’s (245th) Birthday. Pianist Tristan Lee returns to fortyfivedownstairs,  to round off our year by celebrating Beethoven’s 245th birthday with a dazzling recital that represents three distinct periods in his life.   These four sonatas, all very different…

Read more

Bottomless (reading)

Dan Lee is a 2014 R E Ross Trust Playwrights' Script Development Award recipient. Join us for a rehearsed reading of winning play, Bottomless. Bottomless is set in the Broome sober up center. It’s been an unusually long build up…

Read more

Cantations

Cantations features the historically accurate performance of leading Monteverdi scholar and harpsichordist John O’Donnell and the singers of Accademia Arcadia.  The program features works from Monteverdi’s 7th and 8th book of Madrigals, as well as his contemporaries Giovanni Picchi and…

Read more

Variations

Press, Play invite you on an impassioned musical and visual journey as words, sounds, and images collide and coalesce. Led by critically-acclaimed pianist Sonya Lifschitz, contemporary ensemble Press, Play takes the sensuous splendor of Monteverdi’s madrigals as a departure point…

Read more

Janno

As happens in life, we get thrown the unexpected. Look up has ballooned and taken on its own uncharted journey, exploding into a defiant shout for life. It continues to be a body of work about humanity and reconnecting with…

Read more

Fundraising event

This fundraising concert features the beautiful nostalgic Laika and Rembetika songs of pre 1970 Greece, performed by Melbourne's fabulous Greek singers. Featuring Anthea Sidiropolous, Maria Papathanasiou, Jenny Theologidis and Helen Yotis Patterson, accompanied by a premier Greek band led by…

Read more

Someone Like Thomas Banks

Presented by Platform in collaboration with Straightjacket Productions, Someone Like Thomas Banks is a one-man show featuring performer, writer and disability advocate Thomas Banks. This is Thomas’ story of courage and defiance, a young man searching for love and claiming…

Read more

CANZONE – Music as Storytelling

We are pleased to present an exciting program of free events over the course of the exhibition CANZONE - Music as Storytelling. The Art of the Word: Floor talk and presentation by Angela Cavalieri and Dr Colin Holden Thursday 8…

Read more

The One

'keen, savage and funny' 'Kaczmarek is brilliant…. Prendergast is beautifully restrained…. Tomlins’ nervous energy is completely captivating' High praise for all three performers from Byron Bache of the Herald Sun. One couple. One night. No rules. The One is a…

Read more

Stephen Williams

9000 vinyl records displays artist Stephen Williams' personal collection of original first pressing soul records and record sleeves, combining them with a complete indexed catalogue, text, video and recorded music which relate directly to the records themselves. The exhibition explores the…

Read more

Terry Swann

Contemporary watercolourist Terry Swann’s exhibition Off Track – On Site is a journey of exploration into the heart of remote Australia. From the technicolour desert country along the Oodnadatta Track to the blackened remains of bushfire-affected NSW and on to…

Read more

TRIUMPH

Inspired by a constellation of strange real life situations - group suicide in Japan, a woman who famously faked her survival of the 9/11 attacks and Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, a disorder in which parents make their children sick in…

Read more

CANZONE – Music as Storytelling

fortyfivedownstairs in association with the Melbourne Festival presents: A magical dream of Venice comes to Melbourne with the combination of music and art inspired by Claudio Monteverdi, master of music at St. Mark’s Basilica from 1613. Multi award winning artist…

Read more

Company

It’s Robert’s birthday - he's turning 35 and his closest friends are throwing him a surprise party. Witty and well-liked, living in the heart of New York and dating three gorgeous women, Robert has it all ... so why can’t…

Read more

James Yuncken

The Drawing Room is an exhibition of prints, drawings and bas reliefs created by James Yuncken at intervals over a period  between 1990 and 2009. At each interval a different creative impulse prevailed. The Drawing Room is set up to…

Read more

PICNIC

"Like a Michael Leunig cartoon, mysterious and pregnant with meaning..." - Chris Boyd, The Australian, 21 August 2015 Celebrating a return to the solo stage after the highly successful production THE COLLAPSIBLE MAN, Gerard Van Dyck presents a new, intimate dance theatre…

Read more

Mark Chew

Narendra Modi was sworn in as Prime Minister of India on 26 May 2014. As a child, he helped his father sell tea at the Vadnagar railway station. He is now the democratically elected leader of 1.21 billion people. This exhibition…

Read more

Go, said the bird

“Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has…

Read more

Carousel

The carousel turns and with each revolution comes an evolution, as familiar views are given fresh insight. And so it is in contemporary jewellery and object, as new generations of artists climb aboard. From old ideas spring new revelations, familiar…

Read more
Back To Top