Cover image of the review
Alpha60 Chapter House.

Spring1883
  • Audrey Schmidt
  • Paris Lettau


8 Aug 2021
ALPHA60, Blackartprojects, FUTURES, HAYDENS, CAVES

Help! We’re lost and can’t tell the shop fronts from this Spring1883 sputnik. It’s caught in the orbit of ALPHA60, punctuated by champagne, cops and QR codes. Gone is the Windsor Hotel’s renaissance-revivalism and grimy opulence, once Spring’s point of difference from those other humdrum art fairs. That was a place where collectors saw how their purchases might look next to drapery, side tables and bed linen. Spring1883 has moved from one Victorian-era setting to another: we’re in the light-flooded and pointy-vaulted Chapter House of St Paul’s gothic-revivalism down on Flinder’s Lane, today housing a store that dresses all Melbourne’s 30-something arts workers in demure linen a-line pinafores, sack-dresses and culottes. The mood is auspicious.

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