LOWBROW
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LOWBROW •
Counihan Gallery, on Sydney Road in the heart of Brunswick, is a council gallery for the people. Currently on view are four shows, each entirely their own: Colour My World by Joshua Hede, Not a fine artist, just a "fine" artist by Judy Kuo, Mulana by ENOKi, and Things I Carried Quietly by Nani Puspasari. The exhibitions did not feel connected, but they did not need to be. Counihan knows their space well enough that each holds its own, no encroaching or overshadowing, despite the airiness of the gallery.
Much in the way there is no truly impartial writer, there is no perfect biography. Black, White and Colour is no exception. A biography of Mervyn Bishop, hailed as Australia’s first Indigenous professional photographer, I found this to read like a story half finished – too short, dancing over the stickier parts of Bishop’s personal life and relationships, not allowing facts and realities to breathe. It’s an issue that rises again and again with biographies written while the subject is still living, and when they have a heavy hand in the shaping of the narrative.
One of three annual fundraising shows, Queer Heirlooms at Unassigned Gallery is also their third annual collaborative exhibition with Queer Love Collective. This year, featuring 100 artists on the dot, the exhibition explores memory and heritage, looking at what meaning we make and how we pass it on. The exhibition spans about every art form you can imagine – including the written word and medieval weapons made out of fabric – contains multitudes in how expansively “heirloom” was interpreted. The more I explored the exhibition, both on opening night and on a more relaxed weekday return, the grouping of works by loose theme seemed to pop out. There were explorations of kink, of queer labelling, sexual exploration, online worlds, fandom, and queer history among many others. In an open call exhibition, the breadth of work and skill is bound to vary, but three categories - photography, fibre arts, and the proliferation of renaissance adjacent imagery - stood out above the crowd.
If you read my writing on Held, Altered at No Vacancy a couple weeks ago, you’ll know I had tried to go to Bus Projects, but the world was truly against me getting there. Maybe I should have taken that as a sign, but alas I tried again this week, and actually managed to make it in to see us as stars, as horses. Featuring work by Sophie Coe, the show is a collaboration with Kamilaroi curator Tabitha Glanville.
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It feels very full circle to be writing about fortyfive downstairs’ 2026 Emerging Artist Award. Even though Charlotte was the one who covered the show last year, there’s a certain joy in Lowbrow being back at the same exhibition a year later. We’re growing and we’re evolving but we’re still focused where we want to be; on the emerging artists and their work. Equally, it’s gratifying to see some of the artists that I’ve written about before being included in this show: Ruinscape by Grace Mitchell which I wrote about in Held, Altered at No Vacancy, and also face of an orchid by Tara Howe which I wrote about in silently, childhood’s crystalline paths sank in the garden at Oddany gallery. That was the third ever post on Lowbrow, and now I’m seeing Howe’s work again over a year later, and loving even more on second viewing the delicate orchid made softly solid.