True Love Travels on a Gravel Road
Set in a rural Victorian town, True Love Travels on a Gravel Road is play about broken dreams and choices. Jake has been patronised as the town “tard” all of his life but when he falls in love with the…
Pompeii, LA
A car-wreck on Hollywood Freeway, a former child star trapped inside. On a sound-stage somewhere the lights are dimming, the credits are rolling, and a volcano is bubbling – ready to explode. POMPEII, L.A. is a surreal, bitter paean to…
Bach Suites
Three centuries of interpretation. Three centuries of interpretation re-imagined. Bringing a designer, a dancer and a choreographer together with ANAM'S cellists, these performances explore the traces of movement and light resting in these iconic dance suites. Bach Suites for Solo…
Victorian Indigenous Art Awards 2012
An exhibition of the finalists of the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards 2012. The annual Victorian Indigenous Art Awards acknowledge the contribution and achievement of Indigenous artists in Victoria. The program aims to; present a current representation of Indigenous art practice…
exhibition proposals for the 2012 program
In the current round applications are invited from artists and curators for the large gallery space at fortyfivedownstairs for the following dates: 3 April – 21 April 2012 (3 week exhibition offered at a reduced rate equivalent to 2 weeks)…
Images of Home
Images of Home is a Community Cultural Development research project involving young people from Officer Primary School.The project is designed to engage young people living in growth corridors in Cardinia Shire to explore social connection and the meaning of ‘home’…
Dayne Trower
Despite their consideration, precision and intricacy, there’s an elusiveness to the works of Dayne Trower. Meticulously crafted from slender layers of plywood, they drift between disciplines, formal and conceptual directives; they occupy and eschew the tropes of the architectural floor…
Mike Hewson
On 22 February the 6.3 magnitude earthquake that hit Christchurch, New Zealand took lives, landmarks, roads, homes and buildings. One of the buildings greatly affected was an office block that served as a studio for several New Zealand artists. As…
Flinders Quartet
Flinders Quartet is a Melbourne institution on the chamber music scene and their free concert series introduces their remarkable music to city workers on their lunch break. Come to fortyfivedownstairs September 30 at 1pm to hear Haydn's String Quartet Op…
Celia Bridle & Aphra Perkins
'Painting to express movement, change and transformation' - Magnifying her black and white pen and pencil drawings, Celia Bridle was surprised to discover another world of images infinitely divisible and continual; flowing organic shapes, patterns, abstract and pictorial elements, plant-like…
Wendy Kelly
Wendy Kelly's approach to abstraction is influenced by Minimalism, a reductivist aesthetic and an "almost monochrome" sensibility. Materiality and process play an important role in her work. Incorporating subtle texture into the two-dimensional surface of her work, Kelly’s personal visual…
Gavin Brown & William Eicholtz
Gavin Brown and William Eicholtz are both unique artists who have resolutely followed their own aesthetics, quite outside the tides of fashionable movements. Their long careers have consistently defied categorisation, challenged accepted tastes and standards, and delighted dedicated collectors. Firm friends…
A Stranger In Town
Inspired by the original musical diary of Otto Lampel. Otto and his broken heart flee war-ravaged Prague crossing the Atlantic Ocean to a new life in Canada. He finds a fish, a lion, and a girl… but will the trembling…
Georgia Thorpe
In a celebration of light, Georgia Thorpe has created a series of unique woodcut prints – Large and bold on lightweight Japanese mulberry paper. Using materials that reflect an awareness of a sustainable art practice, Georgia builds the imagery with…
Anita Mertzlin
Skin - a covering, a containment that defines the shape of the subject. A membrane that acts as a barrier between exterior and within. A defence, but also a vulnerability. It can be cut, pierced, peeled and bruised, usually having…
Rebekah Stuart
Rebekah Stuart’s new work examines how fragments of the landscape and portraiture can be reconstructed to create pathways to new, imagined lands. She explores an alternative aesthetic to the Romantic and traditional landscape in which distortions of scale disorientate the…
Shannon McGrathis.gd
Shannon McGrath has been honing her skills over the last decade in the commercial world of architectural photography. In this series of large format photographic archival digital prints, McGrath references two of Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry’s major buildings in Spain…
Ding Liren
Contemporary painting and watercolour on paper from China. Ding Liren is now a professor in Art and Design at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology and a part time professor at Guangdong Industrial University. His works are represented…
Antonietta Covino-Beehre, Deanna Hitti, and Carolyn Lewens
Recent contemporary printmaking. Age-long practices, established methods and conventional techniques are overturned and re-interpreted with a fresh approach that brings new vigour to the medium. Printing techniques such as woodcuts, intaglio, collagraphs and cyanotypes are brought into a new light…
The Dollhouse
Nora and Torvald are cashed up and climbing: bespoke warehouse conversion, perfect children, and a shiny new job at a major bank for Torvald. Everything that Nora could want is due for Christmas. A classic play masterfully transposed to contemporary…
Arts Spring Clean
We’ve assembled a delightful dozen creative folk and they want to meet you! An eclectic mix of Melbourne creatives have been invited to partake in a collaborative cacophony at fortyfivedownstairs. Artists and makers of all persuasions will engage curious members…
The Boundlessness of the instant
Returning to Australia from Paris after his South‐East Asian tour Joshua Hyde will be presenting a program of new music with the help of Leigh Harrold, Winnie Huang and Anna Camara. This group of highly acclaimed musicians will be playing…
Coady Green
Coady Green is acknowledged as a major rising talent on the international concert circuit, having been described as “a virtuoso pianist with sensitivity, intelligence and charm”, and “accurate and exhilarating”, (Musical Opinion). Since early 2006 Coady Green has been based…
Tristan Lee
One of the few Australian musicians of his generation pursuing a successful career as a concert pianist in Europe, Tristan Lee returns to fortyfive downstairs for his yearly Melbourne recital. Once again, he will perform a diverse and challenging programme,…
Bronwyn Berman, Zhao Hongjun & Ding Bifan exhibition openings
Restless Coherence - Zao Hongjun & Ding Bifan The Intelligence of the Heart - Bronwyn Berman
Jo Daniell
An exhibition of colour photographs of the artist’s Antarctic experience extending the artist’s archive of work which includes image galleries from Australia, Africa, Asia, the Himalayas and Sahara. Image: Jo Daniell, 3 December 2010 0810 hrs, 2011, digital print, archival…
Pam Bain
Living, breathing, thriving: A visual story of pattern, shape, line and colour these paintings and works on paper redefine the City of Melbourne and its suburb boundaries as organic formations. Bain’s interest in fractal geometry and playful experimentation transform the current map of Melbourne into anthropomorphic conversations of form and effect. Presented in abstract and naturalistic stylings, these two dimensional re-interpretations are the result of the artist’s ongoing efforts to reorientate herself within a new city. Interlocking colourfully patterned shapes each maintain an individual identity while also functioning as a whole much like living organisms and cities of people do.
Trevor Mein
'When we think of an archetypal cloud, we think cumulus: the picture book clouds. The word ‘cumulus’ comes from the Latin for ‘heap’ or ‘pile’, and like a cloud slowly accumulating droplet by droplet, this collection of images is the…
Whiteley's Incredible Blue
'Dickins' distinctive, poetic script is rendered truly memorable by Pigot's nuanced, chameleon-like performance.' Kate Herbert - four stars in the Herald Sun read review here. What lies inside the imaginations of an artist and addict? The capricious genius of Brett…
Cyprus: A Fifty Year Old Republic at Risk?
A Public Speaking event hosted by Liberty Victoria with special guest Dr Van Coufoudakis. Dr Van Coufoudakis will focus on the achievements and challenges facing the Republic of Cyprus after fifty years of independence. The current state of the “Cyprus …
Two by Two
The rain hasn't stopped, the water is rising, and Carl and Jack are just about packed. They can see the boat from their window but haven't got a ticket. Yet. Two by Two is a play about the food chain…
The Haunting of Daniel Gartrell
Under an ochre sky something happened at Mt. Ragged. The incident inspired celebrated bush poet Daniel Gartrell’s (John Wood) most analysed piece of verse ... a poem that’s final verse has never been published. Now an enigma, Gartrell lives as…
Urban Display Suite
Urban Display Suite is a deliciously malicious musical satire on our national obsession with the property market. With Melbourne houses the most overvalued in the world, our city is awash with tandoori tanned real estate agents, tasteless architecture and boring…