Cover image of the review
Annabelle Stonehouse, Angel Trumpet, 2022. Image credit: Patrick Callow (photographer) and Platform Arts

Annabelle Stonehouse: Ornamental, Jane Bartier: Footfall, Same River Twice, Footscray Community Arts


2 Jul 2022
Annabelle Stonehouse: Ornamental, Platform Arts 10 Jun - 8 Jul 2022 Jane Bartier: Footfall, Platform Arts 10 Jun - 8 Jul 2022 Same River Twice, Footscray Community Arts Centre 15 Jun - 15 Jul 2022

I’m going on a kind of psychogeographic drive, sucked in from the regions by the gravitational pull of Melbourne toward the rift in space called the Maribyrnong River. Passing through many local government areas and acknowledging countries along the way, I’m going to drop in to two of my favourite, smaller, medium, real, non-spectacular and awesome galleries: Platform Arts in Geelong and the Footscray Community Arts in Footscray.

Like a village with fast internet, these spaces operate within their communities and for their communities. Vibrantly multi-purpose, these spaces offer studios, outreach and workshops as well as diverse performance and exhibition programs. They’re the kind of arts spaces that quietly hum away outside and around the orbit of the larger galleries like the NGV and ACCA. While these other spaces often lay claim to a global and historical impressiveness, what I like about Platform and FCA is their ability to integrate into the particular culture of their own local space. They are orbital and more often than not eccentric. Of course, I mean that in a good way: culture that circulates around a body of mass (black hole?), seeping up through the cracks by capillary action, finding a way to nourish and hydrate in spite of whatever structure is already—or not—in place.

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