Exhibitions
December
The Passengers
Peter Atkins’ new project is a series of small-scale paintings that relate to his Metro Tunnel public commission entitled RAILway for Melbourne’s City Square, installed along Swanston Street un til October 2019.
The Passengers explores our collective social, cultural and personal narratives through the abstracted, obsolete designs of suburban train tickets issued between 1920 and the late 1980s by distilling and stripping away unnecessary details, focusing instead on the beautiful abstraction underneath. What is revealed is an extremely evocative collection of abstracted forms and colours that represent a complicated and fascinating visual coded language that is particular to Melbourne.
The Passengers continue Peter’s interest in appropriating and deconstructing what he terms readymade abstraction from the real world and amplifying those almost nothing moments…
Pictured: The Passengers 2018 installation view, acrylic on board, 40 x 22 cm each

December
La Razza: Quiet Noise
New mixed media works from Brook Andrew.
Pictured: Orange 2019, oil pastel, acrylic paint, paper, glue, plywood and pencil on board, 140 x 140 cm

September
Sky Light Mind
Brendan Huntley’s new body of work, Sky Light Mind, is strongly influenced by, as Huntley puts it “the natural light and crazy vibrant colours of the West Coast” he experienced while based in San Francisco on a residency in 2017.
“I see these works as a meditational expedition,” he says. “A journey, a trek… with paint, clay, glaze, glass, collage, and whatever other materials get sucked into the creative vortex.”
Read the exhibition essay by Danae Valenza or the media release.
Image: Brendan Huntley Untitled (Fade Away and Radiate) 2017/2018, oil on linen, 99.5 cm x 147 cm.

August
Dawn Chorus
A series of new works in crystal, copper and brass wire in woven wire morphic forms.
Image: Untitled A, copper and crystal vase, 55 x 32 x 32 cm

August
The Bottom Feeders
At Sydney Contemporary 2018, Tolarno Galleries presents a new series of paintings, etchings and sculpture from Ben Quilty.
Pictured:
The Biggest Bottom Feeder 2018
oil on linen
265 x 202 cm

August
The Landspace: [all the debils are here]
Danie Mellor presents his first solo exhibition at Tolarno Galleries.
In this new sequence of works, Mellor reimagines the landscape as the landspace, and in doing so opens up a new way of seeing history, ownership and possession of country.
“Reimagining the world as a landspace suggests we are in an enveloping environment, a world that has its past, present and future – its dreaming and landstory – unfolding as prescient and concurrent phenomena,” Mellor says.
Download the media release.
Pictured:
Beneath towering palms 2018
Diasec mounted chromogenic print on metallic photographic paper
21cm diameter
Edition of 3 + 2AP

June
Strawberry Thief
Tolarno Galleries presents Elizabeth Willing’s solo exhibition, Strawberry Thief, at this year’s Melbourne Art Fair. The exhibition will include a wallpaper print, a series of collage prints, hand-carved wooden sculptures and Anxiolytic. This is a bottled and branded spirit and glasses that will form part of a cocktail performance in collaboration with Melbourne mixologist, Cennon Hanson.
Image: Strawberry Thief (after William Morris), 2017. Wallpaper print, dimensions variable.
Elizabeth Willing’s Strawberry Thief project, presented at Melbourne Art Fair 2–5 August 2018, has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

May
Invisible Stories: Meditations on Port Essington
In his first solo exhibition since 2012, Benjamin Armstrong will present a series of linocut prints relating to Mark McKenna’s 2016 book From the Edge: Australia’s Lost Histories.
Read an interview with Benjamin Armstrong in Imprint Magazine Winter 2018 edition.
Image: Embedded, 2018. Linocut, dye, ink, coloured pigment, iridescent pigment. Image size 76.5 x 57 cm, frame size 89 x 69 cm. Edition of 8. All works are hand printed with a baron on Arches BFK Rives.

May
Spill
For his sixth exhibition at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne-based Andrew Browne presents new paintings and related charcoal drawings that extend his decades long interest in a landscape of phenomena – yet one alienated from the picturesque.

April
Bill Henson
Tolarno Galleries presents a collection of new Bill Henson photographic works.
“Plenty of artists conjure with images from the history of art, but none has been so ambitious in their attempt to marry the immediate, over-brimming present with the haunted past. And the fact remains that no other living Australian artist has produced as many images so full of tenderness, silence and longing” – Sebastian Smee, The Monthly April 2017
