As part of Craft Contemporary 2023 we are presenting: 

Soil Clay, by Vivian Qiu 

The Soil Clay Project is an ongoing exploration of the artist’s jewellery designs through her experience living and studying in China, Australia and Sweden.

Vivian uses her observational insights and collection of natural materials and common objects to mould into wearable artworks. She incorporates soil, fallen leaves and flowers, grass and rice to act as a binding agent for her work.

She establishes a connection between the wearer to place, time, and culture through materials and the ancient symbolism of oracle bone script.

Artworks from Vivian’s residency in Sweden will be on display.

@vivian_qiu_studio

Check out our other exhibit Are you Procrastinating? by Carol Yang or explore the full Craft Contemporary program guide. 

_{This exhibition is part of Craft Contemporary 2023, an annual festival delivered by Craft Victoria – the largest celebration of craft and design in Victoria. The festival brings together practitioners, educators, industry, and craft lovers to explore material practice as it is today. See, touch, experience and be inspired by 150+ art experiences, including exhibitions, talks, demonstrations, workshops and open studios.}

Progeny is a collection of dynamic works, spanning video, sculpture, painting, and digital media by Edwina Green. The works collectively highlight Green’s creative practice and research interests across recent years (2019-2023).

Progeny in its direct meaning is to be ‘the descendants of a person, animal or plant; offspring’ and pulls from the artists continued connectivity between ancestral lines, intergenerational discourse, and concurrence of being both ancestor and descendant.

Informed by her identity as a Trawlwoolway First Nations woman, motifs of weaving, hand harvested and sewn bags, kelp, spoken word, organic movements on canvas, images of home, and oysters communicate a delicate ancestral tribute, and the current dance in which Green is choreographing with her multidisciplinary, experimental practice.

Progeny interrogates introspection, historical association, vulnerability, and an ability to invest in the artist's practice with a sense of intentional curiosity and closeness. 

Edwina Green, Oyster. Image by Jordan Halsall.

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. 

​Join us this NAIDOC week for a special screening of the Unfinished Business Documentary at Doncaster Library.

This moving documentary tells the stories of 30 First Nations people living with disabilities. 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.

Their stories are also featured in the Unfinished Business exhibition, which is showing at Manningham Art Gallery until Saturday 29 July.

Following the screening, there will be a Q&A with Uncle John Baxter: Latja Latja/Narungga man, Board Member Reconciliation Victoria and First Peoples Disability Network, Aboriginal Partnership Coordinator - Brotherhood of St Laurence/NDIS, participant and creative collaborator of Unfinished Business. 

Attendees will also have the chance to view the exhibition at their own pace.

The Unfinished Business Documentary is a creative collaboration between brothers, Liam and Dieter Knierim, Belinda Mason Knierim OAM, and participants.

This is a free and accessible event. Bookings not required. Refreshments will be provided.

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

In this workshop, primary school-aged children are invited to join the staff from Awareaway to create fish from re-purposed plastic waste. The fish will then be displayed as part of the 'School of Plastic Fish' exhibition at the Box Hill Community Art Centre. 

Participation in the workshops is free but places are limited.

The exhibition runs from 23 May until 29 May 2022 at the Box Hill Community Art Centre.

'School of Plastic Fish' is an exhibition responding to the alarming study that predicts by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in our oceans.

The fish depict an eerie yet beautiful ocean-scape where they are displayed, reminding us of a possible future and encouraging us to embrace positive behaviour change to reimagine a better and more sustainable future.

Awareaway is a social and environmental enterprise, co-founded by Sophie Dahm and Alex Child, dedicated to sustainable and creative design by re-purposing and up-cycling plastic waste.

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.

Football Star Academy will be running soccer camps during the upcoming school holidays for any children interested in developing their skills, meeting new friends and having some fun over the break.

Our football training curriculum is designed by professional and qualified coaches who are dedicated to creating a skill-based learning environment with a focus on skill and player development, confidence and empowerment. 

Where: Donvale Primary School

When: 9-12pm (3 hours)

Cost: $50 per day

Week 1: Monday 7 to Friday 11 July

Week 2: Monday 14 to Friday 18 July

For ages 5 years to 12 years, all genders.

Lara Chamas and Hootan Heydari present a selection of recent work in our main gallery, titled Retrace Your Steps!

This exhibition brings together two remarkable artists, each with unique styles and practices. 

While each artist approaches their mediums in distinct ways, their work shares a profound connection through the exploration of themes such as home, familial memory and generational migrant experiences of leaving their home countries due to war and political upheaval.

Their works are both poetic and poignant, speaking to both personal stories and broader political histories.

Lara Chamas is a Lebanese artist, born and raised in Naarm (Melbourne). Her work comprises of sculptural objects and installations that reflect on family, memory, and domestic life.

Hootan Heydari is an Iranian-Australian artist, who predominantly works in sculpture and photography. His art captures connections between the past and present, distilling echoes of history into contemporary expressions. Heydari is represented by Futures Gallery.

This exhibition contains artwork that explores themes of war and violence, which may be difficult for some visitors. Please speak to our staff if you would like more information before attending. We thank you for your understanding.  

_{Photo credit: Lara Chamas, Pestle that He made, Jido (mama), for crushing garlic, Hummus; Chickpeas; Knife that He made, Jido (mama), for chopping parsley, tabouli; Corer that He made, Jido (mama), for hollowing zucchini coosa mahshe; and Mould that He made, Jido (mama), for filled biscuits, ma’amoul; 2021, cast bronze objects, variable sizes. Image courtesy of the Artist.} 

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

Women's Only Group Information Session

Get Active, Get Fit, Live Healthy!

What to expect at this session

• Meet the staff at Aquarena, become familiar with the facility and get a better understanding of the upcoming 4 week program.
• Come and Try 30-minute free workout
• Free swim for registered participants and their families.
• Refreshments provided

What to bring: Exercise mat, water bottle, towel 

What to wear: Comfortable clothes to work out in.

Please register to attend the information session.

​Deborah White is a Melbourne-based artist who works across performance-based photography, video and mixed-media installations. 

Everlasting Happiness entertains the utopian idea of love as a political concept. The underlying philosophy of this aspiration is to love the most distant. This is not a sentimental notion of love. It is a robust kind of love with a revolutionary power. Viewing the actions of love as a deployment of force, this work intertwines supernatural wonder with the spectacle of war.

The playful and vibrant performance-based video depicts an anarcho-mystic quest battling against the pathology of the post-truth world. Featuring fictitious characters that defy the rational world, the video is infused with flower power, music and animal warriors that open the heart to hope and joy. All the characters are performed by the artist—serving as a self-reflection on the internal struggle to love unconditionally.  This work strives for the idealistic desire of a utopian non-place of the imagination. (Sound design is by Jamie Coghill.)

Video still from Everlasting Happiness (2023).
HD digital video, 11:15 mins, 1 or 3 channel, looped, variable dimensions.

Image courtesy of the Artist.

Join us for an exclusive after-hours event at Manningham Art Gallery to celebrate our two latest exhibitions. 

Painted Country

Featuring the works of five First Nations Artists – Nellie Ngampa Coulthard, Brenda Napaltjarri, Clara Napurrula, Rene Sundown and Adrian Jurra Tjungurrayi. Drawing upon their rich artistic, cultural, and ancestral knowledge, each artist paints unique depictions of Country, refracted through memory and lived experience. With special thanks to the Artists; Iwantja Arts, South Australia; Papunya Tula Artists, Northern Territory; and Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne, who partnered with Manningham Art Gallery to curate this major exhibition.

Beyond the Table: The Dinner Party Reimagined 

An interactive reimagining of a traditional dinner party by Manningham artists Isobel Goodman and Jade Piltz, with a nod to 1970s nostalgia and celebrating one of the key gathering spaces in our homes, the humble dining table. The installation is a part of Melbourne Design Week, Australia's premier design festival featuring events across Melbourne and regional Victoria.

Drop in between 5.00pm and 8.00pm, with Manningham Mayor, Cr Deirdre Diamante, formally opening the evening at 5.30pm. Enjoy delicious snacks and refreshments. No bookings required. This is a free public event. 

To find out more about these exhibitions, visit Painted Country and Melbourne Design Week - Beyond the Table: The Dinner Party Reimagined or for information on the event email gallery@manningham.vic.gov.au or call (03) 9840 9367.

Image Credit: Nellie Ngampa Coulthard, Tjuntala Ngurangka - Country with Wattle (Acacia Murrayana), 2024, Synthetic polymer paint on linen, 122 x 198 cm. Image courtsey of The Artist, Iwantja Arts and Alcaston Gallery.

Beyond the Table: The Dinner Party Reimagined  is a reimagining of a traditional dinner party, with a nod to 1970s nostalgia and celebrating one of the key gathering spaces in our homes, the humble dining table.

The installation is on display at Manningham Art Gallery as part of Melbourne Design Week, Australia's premier design festival featuring events across Melbourne and regional Victoria.

Emerging Manningham artist Isobel Goodman responds to and selects works from Manningham Council’s ‘Potters Cottage Collection,’ a grouping of vessels created by the Potters Cottage co-operative. The co-operative was founded in Warrandyte in 1958 to advocate for and sell handmade functional Australian pottery.

Goodman hand builds her signature papier mâché and plaster sculptures – organic and abstracted forms to reference a dinner party table setting – vases, cutlery, plates, and candlesticks that play off and create a contemporary juxtaposition against the Potters Cottage vessels from the 1970s. 

Surrounding the central dining table presentation is a display of paintings from local Manningham artist Jade Piltz. These works depict bright, layered and abstract domestic objects that encapsulate the exhibition’s celebration of communal gathering and ritual. 

During Melbourne Design Week (15-25 May) visitors can take home a flower to celebrate this exhibition. 

Artist Bios: 
Isobel Goodman was recently awarded a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Melbourne. Her practice focuses on sculptural exploration and the body’s navigation of space and environment through the perspective of APD (Auditory Processing Disorder). She invites audiences to examine their relationship between the physical self and how we navigate the world around us.

Jade Piltz is a Warrandyte painter and ceramist. She is fascinated by our innate search for belonging, our desire for meaning and relationships to change and transition. Using mark making, she explores the ways our interactions with surrounding spaces and objects, narrate and inform our lives.

This Exhibition was supported by Gabriela Mello, owner and director of Warrandyte Pottery, through artist mentorship and technical and conceptual support and curated by Lucy Beattie Hughes, Manningham Council’s Creative Industries Officer.

Jade Piltz, Alone, Together (detail), 2024,  acrylic on canvas, 168 x 122cm. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo by: Emily Brookfield.
 

 
Melbourne Design Week is Australia’s largest and leading annual design festival and takes place from 15 to 25 May 2025.

The 2025 program spans 11 days of 350+ events, exhibitions, talks, and installations throughout metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria.

Melbourne Design Week is a vital platform for emerging and established creative practitioners, offering the Australian design community and audiences the opportunity to engage with a diverse program of talks, tours, exhibitions, installations, and workshops. Melbourne Design Week is an initiative of the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and is curated and delivered by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).

Visit designweek.melbourne to view the full program.


 

Between the Details: Video Art from the ACMI Collection presents Bayi Gardiya - Singing Desert by Dr Christian Thompson AO

In this 360-degree video experience, Christian Thompson invites audiences to walk through the landscape of his childhood. Here they will witness a simple yet profound aesthetic gesture of the artist singing in his traditional Bidjara language, a recognised lost language. 

“If I sing even one word of our language, which is considered an extinct or lost language, then it can’t be described as such, because it is being presented as a living language within the art context” - Christian Thompson

See the full program at Between the Details: Video Art from the ACMI Collection. 

For further information contact Manningham Art Gallery, gallery@manningham.vic.gov.au or call 9840 9367. 

Photo caption: Bayi Gardiya (Singing Desert), 2019 (video still). Photo credit: Christian Thompson 

An ACMI touring exhibition
The works in this exhibition are commissioned by ACMI, Artbank, Bundanon Trust, Carriageworks, City of Melbourne, Melbourne Art Foundation, Professor Cav. Simon Mordant AO and Catriona Mordant AM, John Allsopp (Web Directions) and assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts.

Head to Heide Museum of Modern Art for Molto Italiano! 

Heide’s two-day community festival celebrating Italian culture and showcasing the exhibition Molto Bello: Icons of Modern Italian Design. Activating the whole of the Heide site, this festival offers something for everyone. 

Molto Italiano! will have activities for all ages, from lawn bocce to art making, pop-up exhibition talks in Italian and English, an ‘Art Bambini’ program for the little ones with Heide’s art therapist, and an Italian-themed ‘Design Roadshow’ where visitors can bring an Italian design object from home for expert assessment. Authentic Italian food and drink will be on offer throughout, including pizza, pasta, gelato, spritz, and more from specialised food trucks as well as Heide Kitchen. Italian bands will add atmosphere, along with traditional Italian songs from the Veneto Club choir. 

Celebrate all things Italian this summer with Heide!

Pages of Me is a new multimedia project by Beci Orpin, exploring the journey of finding happiness through individuality and embracing one's unique self.

Drawing from her textile-focused background, Orpin delves into mascot culture, crafting a larger-than-life mascot set within a large textile structure. The textiles will feature oversized pages from her sketchbook, blending bold patterns, random imagery, and messages of realistic optimism. 

In addition to celebrating positive individualism, the work touches on themes of future nostalgia, luck (both good and bad), and femininity. Together, these elements create a visual representation of Orpin's metaphysical self—both weird and wonderful.

The exhibition will also invite viewers to get involved, encouraging them to create their own mascots based on the qualities they appreciate about themselves, fostering pride in their identity.

Image courtesy of the artist.

This groundbreaking exhibition calls attention to the pressing issue of Indigenous incarceration in Australia and the crisis of deaths in custody. 

Guest-curated by Kent Morris (Barkindji), it presents works by leading First Nations artists including Vernon Ah Kee, Gordon Bennett, Destiny Deacon, Jimmy Pike, and Judy Watson. Their powerful responses are shown alongside the remarkable creative achievements of former and current prison inmates, many of whom have connected with their culture and Country through The Torch program, such as Thelma Beeton, Stacey Edwards, Robby Wirramanda and Sean Miller.

The exhibition is showing until 20 July 2025 in the Heide Main Galleries.

Visit the Heide website for opening hours and information about how to plan your visit.

Image credit: Trevor Nickolls, Brush with the Lore, 2010, Art Gallery of South Australia, acquisition through Tarnanthi: Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art, supported by BHP 2018.