Flux is a showcase of Anni Hagberg’s research into the use of unpredictable and fluid combinations of materials in art making and the implications it has on understandings of authorial control. In her ceramic practice, Hagberg fires clay and a range of ‘waste’ materials such as broken glass, discarded steel and dried out glaze to encourage a range of dynamic and unexpected results.

On the one hand, the abstract forms Hagberg produces through this process imitate rubble or decaying architectural features, thereby betraying the secrets of their composition. On the other, they are as familiar and beguiling as any decorative art object, bearing flourishes of colour and captivating textures and patterns.

By approaching materials and processes as co-contributors, Flux seeks to question the idea of individual creative genius, highlighting the gulf that can lie between what an artist intends or imagines their work will look like and what it ends up being. As well, by elevating materials that are otherwise valueless to the status of desirable or contemplative object, it contributes to a broader cultural conversation around excessive consumption, waste and equity of access to resources.

Exhibition opening

Featuring opening remarks from Manningham Mayor Cr. Andrew Conlon, as well as Anni Hagberg in conversation with Manningham Art Gallery curator, Davey Warnock, and concurrent exhibitor Rhys Cousins.

When: Saturday 28 August 2.00pm to 3.30pm.
Cost: This is a free event but places are limited.

Ceramics Masterclass: Making Art From Waste

Join ceramic artist Anni Hagberg to discover a whole new world of ceramics. This two-session workshop for adults will encourage the participants to play and experiment with techniques of combining clay with discarded materials and 'waste' to create unique ceramic art.

Workshop Dates:

Saturday 11 September, 2.00pm to 4.00pm

Saturday 18 September, 2.00pm to 4.00pm

Price: $40 full / $32 concession. 

All visitors to Manningham Art Gallery will be required to register their attendance via QR Code upon arrival and comply with current COVID-19 guidelines, including social distancing and the wearing of face masks when social distancing cannot be practiced.

For more information, contact Arts Manningham on 03 9840 9382 or via gallery@manningham.vic.gov.au

Images: Anni Hagberg, Flux XI (detail), 2021, porcelain, raku, steel, glass, stain, fibreglass, glaze, 21 x 23 x 25cm and Reciprocity, 2021, Raku, glass, steel wool, glaze. Photos by Janelle Low.

More Information

Manningham Art Gallery

Located at the entrance to MC Square, Manningham Art Gallery presents a diverse range of contemporary art exhibitions and related public programs throughout the year. See all upcoming exhibitions.

As part of Australian Heritage Festival 2024, Doncaster Templestowe Historical Society presents an exhibition of kitchen implements, tools and appliances used from the mid-1800s through to the early part of the 20th Century.

Play with optical filters, colour and light to create a blossom that will delight.  

Join the creative team Skunk Control for a fun workshop to create small flower sculptures. You will use optical filters that cast colour shadows in sunlight and create a flower about to bloom. 

In 2023, Skunk Control will be creating a public artwork for a new park in Hepburn Road Doncaster. As part of this project, they are engaging with the community to create these flowers.  

The flowers will be displayed at MC Square and planted for a time at the new park as part of the public artwork.  

Ages: Suitable for those aged 10+

Ramak Bamzar, a Melbourne-based Iranian photographer, blends art historical influences with a meticulous focus on colour, texture, and lighting. Her work explores themes of gender identity, geographical determinism, culture, and environment, all characterised by thoughtful compositions.

In these striking works, the Moustachioed Women and Rhinoplastic Girls from Bamzar’s 2022 series burst out of their imprisoning frames to capture a moment in the ongoing struggle, intertwining with the essence of Iranian culture and heritage. Through the integration of poetic motifs, epic themes, and historical allusions, the images go beyond mere documentation, offering a profound insight into the resilience and determination of Iranian women.

The Vigil – Crying for a Man I Never Met, 2022. Ramak Bamzar. Image courtesy of the Artist.

A one-off workshop exploring the use of mixed-media in painting, driven by Gidley's passion for vibrancy and colour in art. Suitable for painters of all ages and abilities.

Presented by the Doncaster Templestowe Artists Society.

Supported by Manningham Council's Community Grants Program.

Come on down to the Doncaster Playhouse over the September/October school holidays for Playhouse Pantomimes’ original musical adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk. 

There will be songs, audience participation and lots of laughs for the whole family.

Presented by Playhouse Pantomimes.

The Warrandyte Historical Society invite you to come and learn about the discovery of gold in Warrandyte and how it shaped the township and community.

Warrandyte is justifiably proud of its place in the gold history of Victoria. Gold was first discovered at Anderson's Creek in June 1851. It was the first officially published goldfield, named the 'Victoria Field', in honour of the new Colony. It was also the first place in the Colony to issue gold mining licences.

This exhibit celebrates the 170th anniversary of the first discovery by Louis John Michel and his team. You'll find interesting and colourful banners on display inside and outside the Museum, showcasing
 the discovery of gold and how this has shaped the township and community. They share the lure of gold and excitement around the discovery that continues today. 

You can visit to see the outside banners placed on the fence-line of the Museum at any time during the Heritage Festival. To access the banners inside the Museum, please see the exhibition times.

This exhibition is open from 18 April to 22 May 2022.
The indoor exhibition inside the Museum, is open on Sundays, from 1:30 pm to 4:30 pm.

There is both on-street parking, and off-road car parks available on Yarra Street.

Artist Paul Handley’s Pillars of Déplacement traces his journey through the migrant settlement camps of Europe to the island shores of Lesbos, variously between 2016 and 2019, a period of social and political flux for the region. Geopolitical tensions and conflict at this time in countries including Syria and Afghanistan led to the displacement of thousands of people who were forced to seek refuge in foreign lands.

Despite it being a fundamental human right to seek asylum, this flow of refugees destabilised social fabrics across multiple communities and led to a wave of resistance from governments and local communities in the areas where the refugees sought asylum.

This exhibition represents the artist’s firsthand experience of this tension through a collection of documentary images, objects and artworks that stand as symbols hope, such as his sculptures inspired by the life-jacket graveyards of Lesbos. The exhibition acts as an artistic shrine to all the displaced and lost across the globe and throughout history, spurring reflection on migration and people movement and the ramifications it has on communities and countries.

Exhibition opening

Featuring opening remarks from Manningham Mayor Cr. Andrew Conlon, as well as Paul Handley in conversation with Manningham Art Gallery curator, Davey Warnock.

When: Saturday 17 April, 2.00pm to 3.30pm.
Cost: This is a free event but places are limited. 

Artist talk

Join Paul Handley for a conversation about his experiences travelling through the migrant camps of Europe and the process of translating those experiences into artworks.

When: Thursday 22 April, 11.00am to 12.00pm.
Cost: This is a free event but places are limited. 

Portable Protest Pod - workshop for youth (13-18yrs)

In this workshop for secondary school-aged youth, participants will discuss the history of protest and the art of creating impactful signs and performances.

When: Saturday 1 May, 3.30pm to 5.30pm.
Cost: Tickets are $5 per person. Places are limited. 

Image: Paul Handley, Pillars, 2021, wallpaper pigment print, 240 x 360cm.

More Information

Manningham Art Gallery

Located at the entrance to MC Square, Manningham Art Gallery presents a diverse range of contemporary art exhibitions and related public programs throughout the year. See all upcoming exhibitions.

Join JamFactory ICON artist Angela Valamanesh for an engaging walk through her exhibition About being here. Learn more about the life view that informs her artistic exploration of the interconnectedness of human, animal and plant life.

Inspired by the symbiosis between science and poetry, Angela Valamanesh’s artworks elicit intrigue and a strong sense of personal investigation as she manipulates seemingly familiar anatomical, botanical, and parasitic forms in beguiling and unusual ways.

Held as part of the exhibition JamFactory ICON Angela Valamanesh: About being here, on now at Manningham Art Gallery until Saturday 17 September 2022.

Other public programs

Ceramics Workshop with Holly Phillipson

Available sessions:

• Friday 2 September, 10.30am to 1.30pm
• Saturday 3 September, 3.00pm to 6.00pm

Tickets: $40 general admission, $30 concession

Find out more and register online.

Manningham Art Gallery is excited to present Gosia Wlodarczak's A Space of Facial Deconstruction. 

Over a five-day onsite performance, Gosia will create a large-scale drawing installation spanning across the interior of Gallery One. 

The gallery environment and self-portraits submitted by Manningham residents are translated into shapes through Gosia’s senses. In a continuous process of meeting, overlapping and collision - in endless movement, the ongoing change and exchange will create a drawing installation over the period of the performance.

The result will be a stunning group portrait of the Manningham community.

View the performance

• Visit the gallery between 11.00am to 5.00pm from Tuesday 29 November to Saturday 3 December to watch Gosia's drawing performance

View the completed artwork

• Visit the gallery during regular opening hours up from Wednesday 7 December to Saturday 17 December to see the completed artwork.

During your visit to the gallery, you can also explore A Fragment of the Infinite Magnificence by Zahra Marsous in Gallery Two. 

For further information on submitting your self-portrait and getting involved, please visit Gosia Wlodarczak: A Space of Facial Deconstruction.

Photo Credit: Longin Sarnecki

Manningham Art Gallery presents two exhibitions of tactile, abstract works that recontextualise commonly encountered materials, celebrating the everyday and unpredictable process driven experimentation. 

Anni Hagberg’s Trace Encounters employs foraging practices, ceramic processes, and experimental installation to explore uncertainty as a contemporary human condition.

Rejecting linear understandings of progress, foraging practices embody a sense of agnostic curiosity. Opportunistically engaging materials, which present themselves within the environment through the process of being discarded by one and found by another, foraging encourages lively interaction with the environment.

Rhys Cousins work homes in on otherwise ordinary and ignored surfaces that one might expect to encounter on any given day. It acknowledges life as complex sensory jigsaw, but deliberately strips away the smells, sounds, language, and colour of that puzzle to explore only touch and the external physical qualities of the myriad materials that make up the urban places we live.

Examining the importance of touch as a physical and emotional experience - helping us to make sense of the world, the work also highlights how texture is made as much through presence as absence, with the solid bumps and ridges in a surface playing as great a role in creating its overall texture as its voids, crevices, nooks, and cracks.

Cousins and Hagberg’s works are activated across Gallery 1 and 2. 

Installation View, Manningham Art Gallery, March 2022. Photo by Charlie Kinross. 

Playhouse Pantomimes are pulling some strings for their original musical
adaptation of the classic tale of ‘Pinocchio these school holidays.

Originally created by Carlo Collodi in 1883, their version tells the story of a puppet boy in
Italy with songs, audience participation and laughs for the whole family.

Presented by Playhouse Pantomimes.

Nani Puspasari is a Chinese-Indonesian visual artist based in Naarm (Melbourne). Her latest exhibition Childhood Cheeks, Grown-Up Madness is an emotive exploration that beckons viewers into the subtle interplay between innocence and experience.

The canvas unfolds as a vibrant narrative, with expressive paint strokes sharing tales of enthusiasm and introspection, while whimsical clay forms add a tangible layer to the storytelling. This artistic journey transcends mere observation, offering a profound reflection on the paradoxical nature of the path to adulthood.

The installation stands as an emotional proof to the delightful chaos inherent in the shift from carefree childhood to the intricate realities of grown-up life. It urges individuals to embrace the enduring beauty found in the inherent madness of growth and self-discovery, even within the complexities of life, creating a space for a heartfelt exploration of the multifaceted layers of personal evolution.

Image courtesy of the Arts Manningham. Photo by Charlie Kinross. 

A Fragment of the Infinite Magnificence, explores connections between our private worlds and nature through dreamlike, intimate, interior scenes. A conveying of otherworldly moments that may not be perceived thoroughly by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and/or tasting.

“I want to take a part of it home, frame and keep it forever at the corner of my heart, inside my mind, in front of my eyes, or rather, become one with it. I am now reflecting a fraction of all that greatness. Anyone who looks at me will see her and her glory and beauty. Now we are one. She is in my home and, I am in hers. She has always been my haven.” - Zahra Marsous

Zahra Marsous (b.1987 Tehran, Iran) is a visual artist based in Melbourne, Australia. She was awarded a BA in Painting from Tehran University of Art in 2010 and a Diploma in Painting from the Visual Art School in Tehran.

Zahra has held several solo exhibitions in Iran and Australia and participated in numerous group exhibitions, festivals, and biennials. She is interested in the female form and its relationship to nature, emotions, and feelings.

Photo by Charlie Kinross. 

Meeting Date: 30 May 2017
Meeting Time: 7.00pm
Location: Council Chamber, 699 Doncaster Road, Doncaster

I Fall to Pieces brings together artworks by two Naarm-based artists, Matthew Harris and Nicholas Currie. The exhibition traverses topics of mental health and healing. 

Rich and differing First Nations materials and processes are deployed along with key tenants of Western Abstraction, offering conceptual and immediate encounters with paint and form.

Matthew Harris, of mixed European and Koorie descent, debases dominant hierarchies through socially critical painting and sculpture. Nicholas Currie is an emerging artist, curator, and descendant of the Mununjali clan of Yugambeh people of Brisbane and Beaudesert.

Matthew Harris is represented by FUTURES. Nicholas Currie appears courtesy of FUTURES.

Image credit: Nicholas Currie, Big Purple, 2023, acrylic on linen, 200 x 250 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and FUTURES.