Wilderness: A Natural Response
Renowned contemporary watercolourist Terry Swann’s Wilderness: A Natural Response, is a unique perspective of the contrasting landscapes of remote Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Events List
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Once was Paradise
A series of oil paintings highlighting the artist's passion for the natural environment and horror at seeing the ongoing effects of climate change.
REFINED by Katy Warner | Creative Development Presentation
Join us for the first development presentation of AWGIE-winning writer Katy Warner’s REFINED
SMALL! 2019
The second annual community-based small works exhibition at fortyfivedownstairs.
Punk Rock by Simon Stephens
From British power-house playwright, Simon Stephens, Punk Rock is a violent and urgent examination of contemporary adolescence.
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.
As One
One of the major works of American opera in the 21st century has its Australian premiere as part of the 2020 Midsumma Festival.
A Night of Songs and Scenes for Bushfire Relief
An evening of songs and scenes for bushfire relief.
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.
The New Impromptu Quartet
A performance exploring a world of styles and influences from jazz to Latin, funk, and soul.
Belinda Hanne Reid: Love, Rorem
From the extravagances of 1950s Paris, to the devastation of New York in the 80s and 90s, composer and diarist Ned Rorem captured the essence of what it meant to be an artist and in love.
Shake ‘n’ Blake
Shake ‘n’ Blake - The Sonnets of Innocence and Experience. Blending the Good Works of Williams Shakespeare and Blake into a Lesson in Love in all its aspects.
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.
The Curtain by Daniel Keene
Daniel Keene returns to fortyfivedownstairs with The Curtain, written with his sharp ear for poetry and play.
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.
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.
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.