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.
Events List
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Microcosmographia
Microcosmographia brings together five artists working with themes of science and nature, the earth bound and geology, cosmology, mythology and universal/cosmos sciences.
Visions
The Collide ensemble returns to fortyfivedownstairs with an energetic offering of colourful French delicacies.
Shepherd on the Rock
A concert of works for saxophone, piano and mezzo-soprano, including a transcription of Schubert’s late masterpiece, and a selection of beautiful original works.
Gods and Demons
From 'Pictures at an Exhibition' to 'Java Suite', from 'Islamey' to Piazzolla’s Tango, Chinese born pianist Yiyun Gu brings fantastic gods and demons together in a concert of magic and high imagination.
Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance
Gary Abrahams directs Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prizewinning drama of 1966 featuring a stellar cast.
John & Jen
A truly original musical set against the background of a changing world - a story about connections, commitments and the healing of the human heart.
Barry Jones & Friends Celebrate the Arts
Join us to celebrate the 88th birthday one of Australia’s most remarkable men, Barry Jones AC in an online performance curated and hosted by board member Julian Burnside AO.
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.
Visions of Love Online Exhibition
Visions of Love by Marisa Mu is the third solo exhibition of fortyfivedownstairs’ online Fragments series, and the final Fragment of 2020. The exhibition is a series of works on paper, all created recently as an act of defiance against the darkness enveloping us during Melbourne’s second lockdown.
Solicitude
What a way to welcome live performance back to the venue! A stunning program, performed by Coady Green and Justin Kenealy, featuring new commissions, Australian premieres and a sneak preview of a special new work.
The New Impromptu Quartet
Join us for an afternoon of summer jazz, exploring a world of styles and influences from jazz to Latin, funk, drum ‘n’ bass and soul.
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.
Unity
Collide will share with you their blend of colour, fervour, and spirit, with works of Mozart, Glinka, Milhaud
Shostakovich and Schumann
Kyla Matsuura-Miller, Madeleine Jevons, Molly Collier O’Boyle & Harry Ward are joined by virtuoso pianist Tamara Smolyar for one of Shostakovich’s best known chamber works, the G minor Piano Quintet.
Burn This by Lanford Wilson
Two unlikely strangers are brought together by a mysterious death, their connection sparks a chemistry too explosive to ignore
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.
The Anniversary
Multi award-winning creators of Die Roten Punkte, Clare Bartholomew and Daniel Tobias are back with a brand new murderously funny physical farce.
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.
RUNT
A play about the runts of the world: the lesser, the unwanted, the weak, those without clout, the insignificant; all the unders.
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.
Playreading: June by Patrick McCarthy
Following their critically acclaimed productions Grief and the Lullaby (2015) and The Sky Is Well Designed (2017), Fabricated Rooms present a work-in-progress reading of their third project, June.
Playreading: Underneath Ms Archer
A reading of a new play by Louise Siversen and Peter Houghton.
Trouble in a Monochromatic Town
A lush and gritty program inspired by a palette of shifting drones, acid house, electronics, Dada and silk scarves
Franz Liszt: The Complete Hungarian Rhapsodies for Piano Four Hands
The first complete Australian performance of this dazzlingly virtuosic set of pieces, known for their fiendish technical demands
The Trauma Project by Elizabeth Walley
An immersive composition for theatre crafted by Elizabeth Walley in response to her eyewitness experience of a homicide in her suburban street.
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.
Old Friends | New Beginnings
Luke Severn and Elyane Laussade will make their triumphant return to performing as a duo with a concert of some of their favourite works for cello and piano.
Kavisha Mazzella with Irine Vela
LIVE AT VENUE OR LIVESTREAM AT HOME
Kavisha Mazzella returns briefly to Melbourne for an intimate concert at fortyfivedownstairs with guitarist Irine Vela
Zoe Knighton/Pia Johnson Bach Project
LIVE AT VENUE OR LIVESTREAM AT HOME
Two iconic Melbourne artists join forces for a unique and magical collaboration