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. 

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

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. 

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. 

Meeting Date: 27 February 2018 
Meeting Time: 7.00 pm 
Location: Council Chamber, 699 Doncaster Road, Doncaster

Council meeting livestream

After last years huge success with High School Muscial, Wendy Samantha Productions are proud to return to the Doncaster Playhouse and perform the next chapter!

Based on a Disney Channel Original movie written by: Peter Barsocchini

Music adapted, arranged and produced by: Bryan Louiselle

Presented by: Wendy Samantha Productions

Barbara Hepworth was one of the leading British artists of her generation and the first woman sculptor to achieve international recognition.

Barbara Hepworth: In Equilibrium brings her remarkable achievements to Australian audiences for the first time.

Forty works from prestigious international and national collections, including sculptures in stone, wood, bronze and other metals and a select group of paintings will be on display.

Developed in consultation with the Hepworth Estate, the exhibition has been designed by award-winning architecture firm Studio Bright.

Entry to Heide is free for Manningham residents.

Image by Clytie Meredith.

Dracula comes to Manningham! 

Playhouse Players' “Dracula the Play” opens on World Dracula Day on Friday 26 May at the Doncaster Playhouse.

Local Director, Peter T Nathan is bringing to the stage Bram Stoker’s iconic work adapted by Steven Dietz. 

Dietz’s 1996 version remains faithful to Bram Stoker’s original story. It evokes the same chilling tone created by Stoker and emulates the style of language common at the end of the 19th Century.

There will be special prizes on opening night for best dressed and themed food and drink. 

The Unfinished Business exhibition reveals the stories of 30 First Nations people with disability.

Their deeply personal stories are complex and intertwined with Australia’s political and social history, which has resulted in today’s unacceptably high rates of disability in Australia’s First Nations communities. This was a collaborative project between participants and Artist and Social Documentarian, Belinda Mason Knierim OAM.

With thanks to Australian Museum for loaning Unfinished Business to Manningham.

Warning: First Nations Peoples should be aware that this exhibition contains images, voices, or names of deceased persons.

Image: Standing Tall, Uncle John Baxter, Latja Latja/Narungga man. Board Member Reconciliation Victoria and First Peoples Disability Network, Aboriginal Partnership Coordinator - Brotherhood of St Laurence / NDIS. Photo by Belinda Mason Knierim OAM from the series Unfinished Business. Image courtesy of the Artist.