SMALL! 2019
The second annual community-based small works exhibition at fortyfivedownstairs.
Events Calendar
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Glowry
A glow-in-the-dark installation commenting on ideas about identity, colonialism and adventure.
The Delusions Run Thick
Mark Chu embraces the power of fantasy, hollow ambition, and absurdity, in a series of large scale, self-portraits depicting the plural nature of who or what a person can (and cannot) be.
reconstructed landscapes
Annie Burns' paintings engage with the sublime natural world and our relationship with it in the face of destruction.
Sensitive Sweethearts
Sensitive Sweethearts is an art exhibition for those who wear their heart on their sleeve.
1.5 Degrees
A group exhibition responding to the challenge of the global community to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. It is about the science of climate change, communicated in diverse and intriguing ways.
give me shelter
An exhibition of screenprints based on landscapes that were noticed, photographed, and forgotten. Memories are captured, but the viewer moves on. Changes that occur to the landscape are out of sight and mind, and missed. But the environment is screaming for us to take notice.
Between Horizons
A collection of new and delightfully peculiar small sculptures. They are fantastical watercraft, knotted, woven, and welded together with materials gathered on the artist's travels around Gippsland.
Microcosmographia
Microcosmographia brings together five artists working with themes of science and nature, the earth bound and geology, cosmology, mythology and universal/cosmos sciences.
Faceless People
David Hirst traps emotions, memories and ideas in his abstracted painting and sculpture, to be shared with or re-interpreted by others.
Pochades 2010-2020
Peta Cross presents a series of approximately 400 small Pochades created between 2010 – 2020. Pochade painting has been the practice of many painters since the Impressionists. They are quickly executed sketches in oil paint.
Stiff Upper Lip
An analytical still life painting project that explores complex psychological states such as containment, austerity and isolation.
QUIETUDE of the land, the figure and the flower
A series of landscape, figurative and floral paintings celebrating contemplative, gentle and meditative actioned marks.
Seasons
Through the ceramic medium, this exhibition explores the concept of ‘Seasons’ in relation to individual life experiences and the shifts that seasonality and change presents.
Transformer
Transformer explores ideas relating to liminal space through the transformation of well known Australian landscape paintings.
3000 Streets
3000 Streets is the photographic trace of Mike Reed’s near and far wanderings in the worlds’ arteries, always with a lean towards the unusual and quirky.
SHORT STORIES
With a great love for books, Lisa Sewards explored short stories during Melbourne’s 2020 COVID-19 restrictions. Each book turned into a capsule of reflection and hope and has led to this new series of printmaking and painting works that celebrates the short story genre in Australian literature.
all / most / some / none
Utilizing a system whereby the ruled grid becomes the vessel for a lexicon of hand-drawn symbols, the principal theme in Madeleine Joy Dawes' work is the utilization of iterative mark making as a temporal site to record measured and psychological time.
elemental
A collection of new paintings exploring facets of landscape and abstraction by Joan Blond, Aliki K, Bev Plowman and Jo Carroll.
Travels With My Wife: Painting Hong Kong from the Water and Air
A new series of small paintings exploring bustling harbour and airport scenes in Hong Kong.
A Pilgrim’s Progress
A series of paintings and digital collage works exploring the discarded and lost clothes that crossed the artist's path on the pilgrimage trails she has covered throughout Europe, especially Spain.
Iteration
Iteration presents two series of Margaret Manchee’s recent work: etchings using Spirograph; and mixed-media paintings and collages.
Making Nonsense
An unapologetic, wildly exaggerated, absurdist conflagration of installation, large- and small-scale paintings, paper works, textiles and hand-sewn soft sculptures with bold explosions of colour.
cCORDA
cCORDA represents a journey through the meditative motion of cutting and consequently assembling cardboard, jute and hexcel paper within a confined, framed space. The essence of the composition is fully revealed when finally embalmed with chosen encaustic colour.
Retreat
An exhibition of paintings exploring local landscapes and private domestic environments which have become increasingly important spaces of both refuge and of tension over the last year.
Greedy Pixiu
Greedy Pixiu are a pan Asian chimera to accompany us back from a difficult pandemic year.
Emerging Artist Award 2021
2021 submissions open!
King & Wood Mallesons Contemporary First Nations Art Award
In its second season, the Award is a biennial competition established by KWM to promote and encourage the highest standard of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art practice in Australia.
HERE again
HERE again is part of fortyfivedownstairs' Fragments online series. The exhibition brings together artists from the fortyfivedownstairs community, many who have had exhibitions affected by Melbourne’s six lockdowns to date. This is a chance to experience new work created in these challenging times, as well as sneak peeks into forthcoming exhibitions.
Step. Float. Fly
Step. Float. Fly has been formed through a warm and sometimes mysterious observation of people and animals as they engage within everyday activities and moments of contemplation.
Silence #1.6: The Beauty in Death
Silence #1.6 is a philosophical study of mindfulness that all metaphysical conditions co-exist, and that death can provide a beautiful insight to understand and appreciate life.
Capturing Moments – People and Places
An exhibition of sketches, paintings and drawings capturing people and places.
Tales from the Greek: Myth, Beauty and Brutality
Tales from the Greek is a new exhibition and book launch by award winning international artist Marco Luccio who has once again united with award winning and Miles Franklin shortlisted author John Hughes.
Coastline
A series of paper cuts, collages and paintings depicting the Victorian southern coastline in the context of climate change and rising sea levels.
Entering the Subconscious: The COVID Works
Entering the Subconscious is a series of ink paintings that began at the beginning of COVID-19 in March 2020 and continued during the ongoing lockdowns in Melbourne in the intervening months. These works in sequence chart a journey as time in lockdown progressed.