For Chelle Destefano, 'Aural Transferences' is an ongoing process of exploring the memory of sound from childhood as a native Deaf-from-birth person. Destefano has been using her artistic process to meditate on those memories and to transform them into colour, line and movement.

An emerging contemporary artist, Anthea Vayonitis works with dance and meditation practices to create gesturally embodied immersive paintings. “In the silence between our heart beats” is an activation of works that includes the same titled 1.7 x 15m painting that was channelled whilst on a residency in July-August of 2025 in the Blue Mountains.

'Unicellular' originated from a research residency spanning Victoria and South Australia's western Wimmera and Limestone Coast, during which Kate Hunter gathered field recordings from subaquatic sites. The exhibition positions microscopic, non-human, single-cell organisms as active participants in an expanded attentional field. Drawing on the artist's theatre-making, performance, sound-design and painting practices, 'Unicellular' intersects personal stories with sounds and images that reflect the barely-visible and the easily overlooked.

This group exhibition showcases the work of 17 artists who are currently part of the Melbourne Studio School. Their pieces encompass a wide range of themes, from figuration to abstraction. The exhibition highlights various skills learnt through their training, including manual dexterity in mark-making, an understanding of compositional language, and an exploration of colour theory.

Led by Charlotte Ivey (abstract artist) and Lana Daubermann (landscape artist), these workshops are designed to inspire painters from beginners to those with more experience. This series of six fortnightly workshops can be booked individually, or as a complete set. All materials are supplied, so all you need to do is turn up (in clothing you don't mind getting paint on!), and be ready to explore.

“Windless Night” by Kate Butler centres on a collection of ceramic sculptures inspired by the stillness, light, and movement of the night sky, as well as archetypal landmarks that help individuals orient themselves in space. Represented on a smaller scale, these motifs reflect the personal process of grounding and finding one’s orientation.

In celebration of NAIDOC week, curators E Salmon and Tre Turner have asked a selection of queer Blakfulla artists based around Narrm to showcase their work. This exhibition is a coming together, celebrating eachother, the gifts they share, the gifts they receive from their ancestors, Elders and mob, and the gifts they are yet to give.

fortyfivedownstairs is proud to present the eleventh Emerging Artist Award, a prestigious award and exhibition showcasing exciting talent from emerging artists.

In 'Now: Embodied Expressions', eight women artists offer works shaped by years of life, practice and attention. Their art holds the textures of experience while remaining vividly present. Each work invites us into a moment where seeing and making meet.

This exhibition celebrates the long-standing friendship between artists Sal Cooper and Trudy Clutterbok, showcasing the ongoing dialogue in their respective studio practices. Both artists explore the intimate landscapes of history, love, memory, and experience.

Victoria McCaffrey's exhibition explores mark making as a form of storytelling, where every line, gesture, and trace carries emotion, memory, and intention, inviting viewers to bring their own interpretations and narratives to each work. The artist presents marks as enduring records of presence, meaning, and shared experience across time.

Barbara Rozenes' exhibition reflects a lifelong journey of caring, advocacy and devotion to family, culminating in a rediscovery of self through art. Through expressive portraits, still lifes and works in oil and watercolour, she celebrates the freedom, joy and renewal she has found in painting, capturing the stories, beauty and humanity that continue to inspire her.

'Twin' is a collaborative exhibition by twin sisters Anne Dash and Emma Dash. Working across painting, embroidery and sequinned textile, the project approaches twinhood not as duplication but as relation - shaped through closeness and exchange.

'sex death country' brings together new paintings and sculptures by Ian Bracegirdle and Ponch Hawkes.

Ian Bracegirdle is a multidisciplinary artist whose work engages with natural and geopolitical landscapes. In this exhibition, these themes evolve into the personal and singular in the form of large-scale portraits looking at friendship, masculinity and invisibility, alongside sculptural works addressing diaspora, dispossession and conflict.

Celebrated photographer Ponch Hawkes makes her first foray into painting with a new body of work centred on the symbolic figure of the bear. Inspired by the animal’s capacity for hibernation and its remarkable ability to maintain bone density and muscle mass while dormant, Hawkes explores the bear as a figure that moves between waking and dreaming worlds.

Submissions are now open for fortyfivedownstairs' sixth annual community-sourced exhibition of small works: SMALL!. Entries close Monday 9 November, 5pm.

Kate’s practice has long been focused on the symmetry and beauty of natural forms. In distilling plants and landscapes to their essence, she finds order in a disordered world. The works in 'Cosmic Forms' are meditations on order within disorder, examining our connection with all living things - from plants, to animals, to each other.

‘PRIMARY INSTINCTS’ is an annual thematic group exhibition presented by the Polish Art Foundation. In a world increasingly mediated by technology, systems, and rational frameworks, the exhibition invites artists to interpret the idea of ‘Primary Instincts’ and consider what remains immediate, embodied, and unfiltered.
Established nearly five decades ago, the Polish Art Foundation supports artists of Polish heritage in Australia while fostering artistic exchange and dialogue across Polish, Australian, and multicultural communities.

Robert Lee Davis' 'Community Art Card Project' returns to fortyfivedownstairs for a fourth consecutive year, offering visitors the chance to engage in collaborative art-making by using large playing cards as their canvas to create an installation in the gallery.

St Michael’s Grammar School presents 'Twelve', an exhibition celebrating the Visual Art and Design Graduates of 2026. Through the artforms of drawing, painting, photography, mixed media and design, the works showcase the breadth of creative exploration undertaken by these emerging artists and designers.

Perth based artist Suzanne .k. Franklin (sue.k.) returns to Melbourne with a new body of work. Further exploring her materialist positioning as an artist, the development of the work for Slivers of Time adhered to strict rules of format and composition with the motifs of a single sphere and a horizon line becoming simply devices for navigating space. Freed is the exploration and discovery of the material of the medium of Inktense Pencil.

'Slipping Sideways' explores the experiences of elderly women experiencing homelessness and the ways society overlooks those who fall outside its norms. Through the hybrid, ambiguous forms in her oil paintings, Lipmann seeks to find the extraordinary within the ordinary, embracing uncertainty, displacement and the unconventional. The exhibition also connects human vulnerability with environmental destruction through depictions of the exploited landscapes of the Pilbara.

In 1993 six artists: Jennifer Fletcher, Lisa O’Keefe, Carolyn Roberts, Chris Rowe, Jill Symes, and Dee Waterhouse, came together for the exhibition Form, Figure, Fragment, at Caulfield Arts Complex. From this meeting of minds, an enduring friendship developed and in 2013 there was a further group show. Following the passing of Dee Waterhouse, the remaining five friends have come together again for one more display of collective energy - a celebration of friendship through art.

This solo exhibition presents the culmination of Lea Rose’s practice-led PhD research, bringing together extensive fieldwork undertaken at Direl (Lake Tyrrell). Combining moving image, installation and archival research, the exhibition reflects the relationship between the landscape and colonial histories.