LOWBROW
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LOWBROW •
I’ve been a fan of Aretha Brown’s work for years, but was going to give this exhibition a miss due to the $19 ticket price at entry. The aversion to the ticket price comes from two directions; feeling guilty spending my money on anything at the moment, and not wanting to write about a ticketed show. You may have noticed that we’ve consistently avoided writing on Lowbrow about exhibitions which are ticketed (the only exception being art fairs, but they’re their own thing). We want the art we write about to have as few barriers to entry as possible and be as widely accessible as possible. We want to bring art to people not in the arts, and platform the people who don’t have other places to be seen. I’ve made the exception for Aretha Brown though, and I’m glad I did.
Welcome back to Bottom Shelf, Lowbrow’s very own art book club! After a month off, we’re back and in video! Though the written component of Bottom Shelf will always be central to what I want to do with it, the main reason I started Bottom Shelf (and conceptualised it years ago) was to connect with people about art over books. I’ve started off by inviting Molly Stephenson on to talk about her pick, Symbionts. I met Molly a few months ago when we were introduced by Bec at an opening and bonded over our shared love of annotating art books. I first came to know of Molly in 2024 when I bought one of her works from No Vacancy.
Three Instagram messages, two trams, and one elevator ride were the price to pay for admittance to Melbourne’s newest gallery. The brainchild of Oliver Wood, Amelia Yilan Wilson, and Valeriy Taouk and located in the photography department of VCA, the project takes over a storage nook. The show changes weekly (time permitting) and makes me truly excited for what the kids these days (talented undergrads) are doing. Ostensibly appointment only (open to anyone with a VCA swipe card) the space is genuinely fun, not at all the dank, ominous room its original use would suggest.
I’m writing this feeling a little bit dusty after our first Lowbrow happy hour last night; a lovely evening meeting irl with some of the people we’ve written about and connected with online. You’ll be seeing more in person events from us moving forward (anyone keen for crit 24th October??) The night before our happy hour however, we were invited to ACCA’s NEW26 opening. Which feels like a big deal - recognition of our work and what we’re doing, the niche we’re filling with our writing and how it ties to ACCA’s newest show.
I went to First Site in search of Aleksander Morris’s Memory Tides. I got a taste of the show at this year's Emerging Artist Awards and was keen to see how it would come together in its entirety. I came away loving every moment of the four shows on view at the moment. The through line flowing through them makes it hard to focus on only one. In having them all together in that subterranean space - cool and dry where Melbourne couldn’t decide if it should pour or shine outside, tram rattles and street chatter filtering through the open door - the shows amalgamated, becoming more than their own islands of memory and grief.
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