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‘My inspiration for the White wash series comes from the Chinese government’s attempt to control the use of public space. Throughout Beijing unauthorised postings, largely of a commercial nature, are painted over with white and grey brush marks. In Brisbane, the practice exists to cover graffiti. In both instances, there is the suppression of an individual voice by a dominant collective. These white brush strokes are the perfect allegory for hegemony.’

Pamela See has studied contemporary Chinese paper-cutting in regional centres across China. She has exhibited internationally and is represented in numerous collections.

Image: White Wash NO.3 2010, waterjet cut stainless steel. 130 x 108 x 2cm. Photograph – Christopher Lay. image courtesy Andrew Baker Fine Art, Queensland.

As a photographer and sociologist, Kristin Diemer loves to tell a good story. Her latest exhibition ‘A Dingo Fence and Mallee Roots’ tells the story of a Victorian family farming on the Fringe. Kristin’s poignant imagery illustrates the often solitary life of remote farming – the ordinary, repetitive, daily life.

‘Beginning as a one year project, my passion for the beauty of the country and the people saw it evolve into a 6 year odyssey…’

Join us this Saturday 4 February from 1:30pm for an artist talk with Kristin Diemer incorporating photographs and memorabilia from the McKenzie farm. The discussion will be followed by a special solo performance by musician and personal friend of the artist, Helen Davey. While away your Saturday afternoon at fortyfivedownstairs, we would love to see you there.

Image: Final Barley Harvest

Raw, raucous, and beautiful, Leggings Are Not Pants shows that there are no boundaries to gender identity, but there are to lycra. A pole show with a twist on the sexy, this is for anyone who has not come out as wanting to explore an inner dancer. Full of laughter, sweat, acrobatics, beauty, rocking live music and muscles, this hilarious show defies the divide between masculinity and femininity and explores being queer in today’s world.

From Sara Pheasant, the director of last year’s fabulous Ladies Prefer Brunettes, it is presented in conjunction with the Women’s Circus. Not to be missed – Leggings Are Not Pants is circus gold!

A Premier Event of the 2012 Midsumma Festival.

A photographic series by Morganna Magee.
Motherhood is our biological destiny, but for the first time consumerism and marketing has meant the spotlight is well and truly on modern mothers. Motherhood is universal but each woman brings her own history to her family.In a post feminist world, Australian women have been given complete freedom to choose how to raise their children, yet societal expectations of what a mother should be still weigh heavily on the tired shoulders of mothers. Motherhood is a series that aims to explore how women from different backgrounds react to these expectations.
Image: Sue and Adam 2011 silver gelatin print, edition 1/3, 50 x 50cm.

Jean Lyon’s new oil on canvas works juxtapose disparate objects representing the elements of earth, fire, water, air and space to create dreamlike scenes. In this monochromatic series, the grey wash background, reminiscent of Zen Buddhist brush and ink landscapes, provides an amorphous ground that triggers ideas for the painted imagery. Figurative elements such as trees, rock formations, birds and people inspired by close observation of found materials and the artist’s archive of personal photographs, newspapers and magazines evoke a sense of nostalgia.  In these low key compositions, constructed via Golden Mean theory and Fibonacci number sequences, thin washes of black and white oil paint are used to paint the contrasting detailed objects.
Image: Rest, 2011, oil on canvas, 34 x 55cm.

Not everyone got on to Noah’s Ark – plenty got left behind.

Set in a Melbourne of the near future, and in the wake of mass flooding, TWO BY TWO follows a couple and a sick woman who have been denied passage on the Ark. The play charts their final hours, as the trio fights over the one thing that could get them a ticket – a baby, found floating in the water.

Inspired by the Noah’s Ark story, TWO BY TWO deftly weaves the political and the personal, the domestic and the apocalyptic. With a bold design evoking a slowly flooding room, the play explores what it would be like to be left behind, and how it feels to be pushed to the margins of society.

TWO BY TWO is for anyone with a brain, a heart, and an umbrella.

Developed with support from the Malcolm Robertson Foundation.

Written by Dan Giovannoni, Directed by Stephen Nicolazzo, Designed by Emma Kingsbury, Lighting by Katie Sfetkidis, Dramaturgy by Amelia Evans, Artwork by Jake Preval.

Performed by Gary Abrahams, Paul Blenheim, Zahra Newman.

With a deep understanding of the language of painting and drawing Alexandra Sassé interprets the intangibles of human presence through colour and line. Working repeatedly with a small select circle of models, the intensity of the studio spills into these deeply articulate compositions of the head; images found in translation.
‘These portrait heads are worked from life from a small select circle of models. My aim is neither to reproduce reality nor delineate a character but to create. I am not heading the picture towards a truth already grasped, but responding to something unfolding. The work becomes about what is transmitted or transacted through that time in the studio translated to form and composition through the language of painting or drawing.’
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Image:Alexandra Sasse, Head of V.H. 2011, oil on canvas, 56 x 43cm.

‘Drapery is interesting in this respect, since it can be perceived as covering something and at the same time as revealing, or about to reveal, something. Drapery, it could be argued, is ideally suited to fetishistic representation.  The spectator of the artistically constructed image of drapery oscillates between different viewing positions, and positions of knowledge, in a similar manner to the fetishist, whose splitting of the ego allows him (or sometimes her) to maintain two contradictory perceptions.’  (Doy, Gen, Drapery Classicism and Barbarism in Visual Culture).
Image: Janice Gobey, Interrogation 2011, Oil on Belgian linen, 170 x 200 cm.

It’s our tenth birthday…

We can’t quite believe it ourselves, but it’s true! Our first production at 45 Flinders Lane, which opened on January 29th 2002, was Sailing on a Sea of Tears – and now, hundreds of exhibitions and performances later, we’re still going strong…

We’re celebrating ten great years on 25 February with a performance party that will include many of the early musical performers here, featuring Fiona Roake, Faye Bendrups & Guillermo Anad (tango piano & violin) Michael Dalley (Urban Display Suite) Benn Bennett (Black Bag Comedy Festival) singer Henry Manetta, the inimitable Moira Finucane, star of Gotharama, The Burlesque Hour, Carnival of Mysteries…and more to be announced!

It’s going to be a night of revelry and we’d love to see you there. Tickets include a welcome drink on arrival and profits from ticket sales go to our sparkling performers.

King Henry IV is beset by strife.
His soul is sick, his body faltering.
His land is gripped by civil war.
His enemy is a killing machine.
And his heir is a playboy prodigal.
What does he want to do?
Start a religious war in the Middle East…

No directorial tricks.
No flashy concepts.
No bloody mobile phones.

Just Shakespeare.

Recently returned from the southern hemisphere’s only recreated Elizabethan theatre – The New Fortune in Perth, Western Australia – Nothing but Roaring’s production of Shakespeare’s historical masterpiece imaginatively recreates the world of Shakespeare through the power of his words and using the conventions of his theatre.

Starring Tom Considine (MTC, STC, Playbox, State Theatre of SA) as the irrepressible rogue Falstaff and a cast boasting a hundred year’s combined theatrical experience, Nothing But Roaring present Henry IV, Part I in “original practices” – all-male, period costume, audience-included – Shakespeare.

Written by William Shakepseare.
Adapted and Directed by Rob Conkie, Designed by Romanie Harper, Stage Management by Harriet Gregory, Production Management by Remi D’Agostin.
Featuring Tom Considine, Bob Pavlich, Chris White, George Lingard, Rob Conkie.

This production forms a unique Shakespearean double-bill with The Zoey Louise Moonbeam Dawson Shakespeare Company’s all-female production of Romeo and Juliet. These exciting productions pair to reveal Shakespeare’s “infinite variety” to a modern audience.

“The more I give, the more I have…” – Juliet, Act II

Juliet Capulet is 13. And she is getting older every day…

The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is an all-female, psychological examination of one of literatures most famous – and youngest – heroines. Featuring a cast of six young women – one of whom plays Juliet and five of whom play Romeo – it re-imagines Shakespeare’s iconic love story within the erotically-charged world of teenage girls.

Dangerously contemporary and morally provocative, Zoey Dawson’s groundbreaking production tackles Romeo and Juliet’s underrepresented but volatile themes of violence, youth suicide and the sexualisation of children.

Written by William Shakespeare.
Adapted and Directed by Zoey Dawson, Designed by Zoe Rouse, Sound Design by Claudio Tocco, Stage Management by Harriet Gregory.
Featuring Carolyn Butler, Brigid Gallacher, Devon Lang Wilton, Laura Maitland, Naomi Rukavina and Nikki Shiels.

This production forms a unique Shakespearian double-bill with Nothing But Roaring’s all-male production of Henry IV, Part 1. These exciting productions pair to reveal Shakespeare’s “infinite variety” to a modern audience.

An exhibition of the finalists of the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards 2012.

The annual Victorian Indigenous Art Awards acknowledge the contribution and achievement of Indigenous artists in Victoria. The program aims to; present a current representation of Indigenous art practice across Victoria; profile the diversity of practice in Victoria; and showcase the uniqueness of south-east Australian Aboriginal art.

This exhibition will feature a program of floor talks by Indigenous artists, details to be announced here.

For more information about the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards go to indigenousartawards.com.au.

The Victorian Indigenous Art Awards 2012 are being presented and hosted by fortyfivedownstairs. The Awards are a Victorian Government initiative through Arts Victoria and have received sponsorship from the Copyright Agency Limited and the Koorie Heritage Trust.

It’s the 3^rd of February again and Miss Place, Betty and Lana sit quietly, sipping their shiraz. Slowly and methodically the floor begins to shift, revealing the moss and mud below.  A tall crab apple tree pulls out from cupboard doors and a young woman stands at the bar. They nod at her, and she nods back.

Weaving together elements of text, image and sound A Little Room is a startling visual and aural performance piece. Writer-animateur Michelle St. Anne has created a work of heightened detail that will transport you between the ephemeral world of memory, and the not so present.

A Little Room takes you into the lives of three women at different stages; sharing the joys and agony of new found love… and of love lost. Caught in a web of their own making, they wait for the spell to break. These are their stories.  Stories about the struggle to cope, about temporary instability, and how memory is instrumental in finding comfort.

From the company that brought you Man 40 seeks Woman with Good Legs and Billie, a girl a swing and underpants returns to Melbourne with A  Little Room which enjoyed  a highly successful debut in 2011 at CarriageWorks Sydney; running this March at fortyfivedownstairs for two weeks only.

Performed by Susan Miller, Kate Gorman, Michelle St Anne, Gabrielle Quin.

Created by Michelle St Anne, Designed by Joel West, Lighting by Michelle St. Anne and Jared Lewis, Film and Sound by Jared Lewis, Music by Alister Spence Trio (with permission).

UNFOLD: works from paper will feature 10 outstanding Australian artists: Louise Rippert, Nobby Seymour, Graham Hay, Wendy Edwards, Lan Nguyen-Hoan, Shellaine Gobold, Adam Simmons, Alana Sivell, Claudia Gleave and Sara Nothrop.

Each exhibitor creates their work using a common yet versatile medium – paper. Continuously intriguing, the medium is flexible yet strong and utilised in myriad ways by artists all over the world. Animated, crushed, folded, torn, twisted, cut, punctured, burnt and stitched.

Image: Function by GRAHAM HAY Craft Journals and other documents 11 x 25 x 25cm Photo courtesy of Victor France

FINUCANE & SMITH’S GLORY BOX!
BURLESQUE HOUR MEETS PANDORA’S BOX

Finucane & Smith, the purveyors of the seductive, subversive, and electrifying are back…and this time they’re opening Pandora’s Box! Get ready for the unleashing of the wild ones led by a jaw-dropping Moira/Medusa in the anarchic, archaic, erotic and unforgettable THE GLORY BOX!

All Time Favourites! Wild New Acts!

These legendary, genre-defying acts have set critics raving and 70,000 audience members around the world in raptures. Winner of 6 theatre awards, critically acclaimed in ten languages, this is a travelling emporium that fuses demi-monde nightclub with jaw-dropping cabaret, insolent and exotic live art and seductive spectacle.