After the unfortunate closure of Meow early last year, not long after Paris Lettau's survey of the state of the not-so-“new museological consciousness” of the housemuseum, Meow2 opened last Saturday 15 February with a solo exhibition by Alethea Everard titled simply Art show. Unlike the lived-in Meow, we might see Meow2 as a gallery proper. Although it also occupies a small terrace-house (this time in West Melbourne) there is no furniture, kitchenware, mouldy bread, dirty dishes and so forth that revealed the previous space's second function as a home.
The space is freshly painted and fitted out with a levelled-up plywood floor in what would have once been the living room. Meow2 appears as much a “legit” gallery as, for instance, Conners Conners gallery—which opened in November last year with a series of group exhibitions and cloaked the Victorian interiors of the Fitzroy Town Hall with floating white plaster on temporary stud walls at about a foot's distance from the Oxford blue-grey carpet. As shepherds of the situation, Meow directors Hana Earles and Calum Lockey wore neckties (looking a bit slutty porno pastiche, but with all the connotations of professional gallerists left intact), and Brennan Olver a satin spaghetti strap number fit for the occasion. In a crisp white shirt, slim-fit black pants and understated smoky eye, Everard looked the part too.