My Funny Valentine

My funny valentine
Sweet comic valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable
Unphotographable
Yet you’re my favourite work of art

At 528 Hz, love is said to reach us through music.

Like the jazz standard interpreted, recorded and enriched (mainly) by numerous musicians (Fitzgerald, Sinatra, Baker), love too endures through art, contributing myth, nuance, and an evolution of form to the frequency (hopefully) of our spiritual connections.

‘A love’ can keep you making, generating. Expression manifested in clay, paint, and screen-based work, where the material and abstract meet.

Join us for My Funny Valentine, a group show curated by Louise Klerks in collaboration with Arts Project Australia, showcasing an eclectic group of Australian and New Zealand artists engaged with love in all its forms: adoration, obsession, its pull – the maddening of it all.

See Matt Arbuckle, Chris Bowes, Brigid Hanrahan, Henry Holder, Chris Mason, Esther Olsson and Daniel Pace in a spontaneous, heartfelt cuddle puddle.

Celebrate with us this 14^th of February at Missing Persons’ first short-duration show of 2020.

Dates: 15 until 16 February 2020. Attend on Facebook
Hours: Saturday 12:00–6:00pm and Sunday 12:00–4:00pm

Download the media release

New Harvest

Missing Persons presents a solo exhibition of photographs by Melbourne artist Sarah Pannell. New Harvest is a selection of works dating from 2018 and 2019.

Sarah Pannell’s images draw together evidence of human trails, traced by the artist as she travels between Ukraine, Turkey, Poland, Estonia and Egypt. From the imprint of a beach resort in the coastal city of Odessa, to a barbed fence line from a communist-era prison in Tallinn, Estonia, Pannell captures scenes that are rich with colour, texture, and cultural and political history.

This body of work engages with the possibilities of surrealism and abstraction in image-making, invoking a subjective experience of place and time.

Join us as we celebrate the opening on Wednesday, 4 December from 6:00–8:00pm.

Dates: 5 until 8 December 2019. Attend on Facebook
Hours: Thursday to Saturday 12:00–6:00pm Sunday 12:00–4:00pm

Download the exhibition pricelist

The Red Geranium And Its Almost Taste Of Pepper

‘The Red Geranium and Its Almost Taste of Pepper’ is a theatre performance presented on a stage measuring 50cm x 40cm. In this performance, Jeff Stewart will manoeuvre his hand-painted theatre sets while also placing models of an overpass, a house, and a reliquary in front of the stage. ‘The Red Geranium and Its Almost Taste of Pepper’ is about the loss of a loved one, written by Jeff Stewart and narrated by Stuart Grant. This is a free event but seats are strictly limited in keeping with the small scale of the theatre. RSVP is essential.

Date: Sunday 27 October 2019, 6:00pm and 7:30pm

Some Cell Sites

Missing Persons invites you to Michael Lindsey Davison’s exhibition and book launch, Some Cell Sites on Friday, 4 October from 6:00–8:00pm.

Melbourne is in the throes of a real estate and infrastructure boom. However, another type of boom is flourishing largely unnoticed. Atop of rooftops, defunct silos, churches and government offices, telecommunication companies have installed mobile phone base stations—everywhere. Otherwise known as ‘cell sites’, over the last decade they have become central to government and corporate surveillance strategies; but they are also essential to how we come to acquire knowledge, how we navigate through the city, and how we communicate with each other. Ultimately, Some Cell Sites makes visible how this indispensable infrastructure has altered the urban and rural landscape. Employing humour as a point of departure, some of the images from the series often elude to the dystopian motifs of urban decay and alien invasions: many photographs in the series document how some base stations blend in with their surroundings to such a degree the effect is either humorous or deeply unsettling. The artist book Davison has produced, and which will be launched on the opening night of the exhibition, features 35 cell sites from the hundreds that he photographed across Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. The book includes an essay which examines contemporary digital culture and its effect on society. Also included are several entries from Davison’s notebooks that reflect on his experience photographing cell sites across the country.

Dates: 5 until 6 October, 2019. Attend on Facebook
Hours: Saturday 12:00–6:00pm and Sunday 12:00–4:00pm

Download a copy of the Press Release

Created by Cindy Jiang & Francis Cao

Asian diasporic bodies are constantly deprived of autonomy. We navigate the jarring contrast between the embracing of sexuality in our white environment, and its stigmatisation in our Asian cultures. Why aren’t our parents talking about sex? Why does it seem like everyone is objectifying us? And what does it mean to be queer on top of all this?

Safe Word is a reclamation of freedom over our Asian bodies from the dual oppression of being fetishised and shamed. This new work of physical theatre is a fiercely proud exploration and expression of our sexuality, on our own terms, in our own words.

Warning: Contains moderate coarse language, both sudden and sustained loud noises, some infrequent/low-pressure audience interaction, potentially triggering content or themes, including Sexual Assault or Abuse, Sexual Harassment, Violence Against Women, Misogyny, Sexual References, references and mentions of racism, homophobia, and transphobia. Buy Tickets

Dates: 20–22 September 2019. Attend on Facebook

Curated by Nikki Lam

In Hong Kong’s most heated summer, up in smoke, we have become insomniacs. The city crumbles on a multitude of screens with passion, violence and dividing opinions, reflecting a newfound awareness of democratic actions. From a decentralised organising strategy to wide-spread guerrilla tactics, each and every one of us plays a vital role in affecting public opinion, even from afar.

Sleepless Summer is a solidarity project bringing together artists from Hong Kong and Australia, we make space for each other and rally for support in Australia. Curated by Nikki Lam, presenting works by artists Cyrus Tang, Jonathan Homsey, Badiucao, Matthew Pit, Natalie Tso (Sydney), Kingson Chan (Hong Kong), Tracy Cheng (Hong Kong) as well as a selection of independent publications on Hong Kong’s civil rights struggles, collected by Zine Coop (Hong Kong).

This is a responsive project and we invite our allies to join us. We welcome those who respect freedom of speech.

Dates: 24 – 25 August 2019,12:00pm–6:00pm. Attend on Facebook

The Letter String Quartet

Curated by Rachael Paintin and composed and presented by the Letter String Quartet: ‘All that you hear is all that is heard’ is an experiment in sound and storytelling, set within the Nicholas Building. Since the 1920s, the Nicholas Building has been a vibrant hub for creative practitioners, makers and designers. The Letter String Quartet will present interwoven stories and recordings collected from past and present tenants of the building in an intimate storytelling circle. The Letter String Quartet is Steph O’Hara and Lizzy Welsh (violin), Biddy Connor (viola, Artistic Director) and Zoë Barry (cello). Click here to RSVP.

Date: Thursday 29 August 2019, 6:00 – 8:00pm. Attend on Facebook

Juicy Comedy

‘Friends’ Lucy and JG are two dysfunctional idiots. Well, one functional idiot and one dysfunctional genius. Together they bring the worst out of each other, and they’re trying to write a play. Things quickly descend into madness due to some… personal conflicts. Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Play, Right?

James JG Gordon and Lucy ‘Luseale’ Seale have been performing stand-up and sketch comedy for two years, and they’ve finally combined their mental efforts to fill out a Melbourne International Comedy Festival application form. Both coming from a theatre background, this is their fifth (and possibly final) show together (we’ll see how it goes). Click here for more information.

Dates: 13 – 14 April 2019, 7:00–8:00pm. Attend on Facebook

Illusions and Allusions

Join us as we celebrate the official opening of Missing Persons with Illusions and Allusions, an exhibition curated by Louise Klerks, featuring Consuelo Cavaniglia, Danica Chappell, Guy Grabowsky and Ben Sexton.

Friday, 29 June from 6:00–8:00pm.

Missing Persons is excited to announce its inaugural exhibition which brings together works that respond to the visual noise of urban spaces.

The exhibiting artists explore the possibilities of image-making through experimental and analogue photography, and acrylic and glass sculptural forms. By inserting themselves and/or the viewer into the works, they invite the viewer to engage with a variety of surfaces.

Representations of space, architecture and the artists own mark-making become apparent through darkroom processes, transference and tricks of the eye.

Consuelo Cavaniglia is a Sydney based artist well known for her large-scale, wall-based and freestanding works. Using materials such as tinted mirror and coloured acrylic, she creates deeply reflective pieces that combine fragmented geometric planes to distort the viewer’s perception of space. In these works the viewer is an active participant; the work is awakened through observation.

Chappell, Grabowsky and Sexton work in the darkroom with analogue and experimental photography.

Danica Chappell has a haptic approach to making. She uses her body as a measuring stick, feeling her way through lengthy and timed photographic processes in the darkroom. Eschewing the camera, Chappell instead manipulates found objects and light to create laborious, complex photographic images that can be scaled to meet the full potential of specific sites. Objects discarded but reclaimed by the artist undertake a transformative process in the darkroom finding new shape as abstract compositions.

Guy Grabowsky is concerned with how he can leave a trace of himself in his images. He manipulates works in the darkroom and scratches the physical surface of his photographs. His consideration of visual texture and its consumption plays an important role. As a photographer dissecting the image as conceptual ground, and interrogating the physical manifestation of photography and its rich history, Grabowsky explores the way that space is represented and re-represented in a predominantly digital era.

Ben Sexton’s (né Lichtenstein) work is as much a comment about artistic expression as it is about capturing what it is we see in photographic form. In the darkroom, Sexton uses exposures of light to overlay images with experimental drawing and painting techniques. Sexton’s acute observations of his surroundings is present in his pictures. His interest lies in everyday experiences, his works featuring the energy of Melbourne streets and containing sweet memories that could be your own – adoration for your wife or a love of football.

Dates: 30 June until 22 July 2018. Attend on Facebook
Hours: Thursday to Sunday 12:00–6:00pm