Season 1, 2025
A note on the season
Arts House Season 1 2025 will feature uprising, robots, emergency drills, sign language opera, places for gathering, international exchange, and a big celebration. It’s the 20th year of Arts House’s curated program and we look back, and forward, to the artists and people who made it happen!
Like many venues across Melbourne, we open the year with a celebration of art from across the Asia Pacific for the return of Asia TOPA. We are eager to share two works that address the climate crisis and emergency management in fun and surprising ways. In Goldfish, a ground-breaking new collaboration between puppet masters Terrapin Theatre and Aichi Prefectural Art Theater (Japan), you’re asked to suspend your disbelief and look past everyday objects to see the magic of storytelling; and we can’t wait to welcome back South Korean artist Geumhyung Jeong as she manages audience safety in the wry and ridiculous Fire Drill Scenario.
Continuing with our partnership with Alter State – Arts Centre Melbourne for The Warehouse Residency, we will welcome Irene Holub and Walter Kadiki who are developing their new Deaf lead opera 1880: Manifesto of Silences over eight weeks.
In March, our Makeshift series continues again with a three-day workshop led by Lana Nguyen and guests exploring site-responsive work as a form of climate response. EOIs are now open and participants are paid to attend.
Looking back to 2006, the start of Arts House’s first curated program featured some groundbreaking artists who set us on a path to where we are today. 20 years later, we have supported the development and presentation of hundreds of new Australian works. To celebrate, we’re going to throw a party! Put Saturday 5 April in your diary now – you won’t want to miss it.
Across April – May the keys will be handed over to Dr Paola Balla, who is leading our next curatorial takeover as part of our Equity—Builder commitments. In Partnership with YIRRAMBOI, Blak Women’s Healing makes the voices of Aboriginal women who are continually silenced – heard and experienced through an immersive exhibition. The centrepiece will be Dr Balla’s 2021 Murrup Ghost Weaving in Rosie Kuka Lar, a large canvas tent used to hold a suite of communal gatherings.
Protest, uprising and defiance – Joel Bray Dance closes out the season with MONOLITH. In partnership with RISING, the world premiere of this epic new dance work will take you on a powerful journey from one of our most celebrated creators.
We are really excited about a new bi-lateral exchange residency with 4A in Sydney and Kala Kulo in Nepal, with First Nations High Country artists. Kate ten Buuren and Peter Waples-Crowe head to Kathmandu in April, and in the second half of the year we will welcome artists from the collective Kala Kulo to Melbourne and Sydney. We will share the outcomes with a symposium and publication on the exchange in October.
Behind our doors, nearly every day of the week, artists are always busy making new art with us. North Melbourne Town Hall is home to stories that are bursting to be shared. From January to June, we will be working with another cohort of independent artists and small companies on the development of 13 new Australian works.
Maissa Alamaddine (NSW)
Kamarra Bell-Wykes and Carly Sheppard (VIC)
Vidya Rajan (VIC)
Olivia Muscat (VIC)
Weave Movement Theatre and Bec Jensen (VIC)
Cheng Lei, Clyde Brunswick and Emma Valente (VIC/CHINA)
MOCO – Motherless Collective (VIC)
Margaret Harvey (VIC)
Stéphanie Ghajar and collaborators (VIC)
Emele Ugavule (NZ/VIC)
Eugenia Lim (VIC)
Mohamed Chamas (VIC)
Mararo Wangai with Belvoir (WA/NSW)
This season is a celebration of the past, the present and a look to the future with excitement. We look forward to sharing these spaces and the artists stories with you soon.
– Olivia Anderson, Acting Artistic Director