fortyfivedownstairs gallery

'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.

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.

fortyfivedownstairs is proud to present SMALL!, our sixth annual community-sourced exhibition of small works. Submissions will open soon!