Abbotsford Convent's spring line-up has bogs, blak romance and books after dark. Here's what's on.
Abbotsford Convent is shaping up to be the place to be this spring, with a trio of wildly different events landing across September and October, spanning literature, immersive performance and visual art.
From a late-night literary hang in a historic laundry to a scratch-and-sniff journey through an Irish bog and a bold new exhibition from a rising Gumbaynggirr artist, the heritage-listed precinct is proving there’s no single way to experience art.
Here’s everything you need to know about what’s coming up.
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
After Hours at the Convent
- 17 September
- Abbotsford Convent – Magdalen Laundry
- Presented as part of the Melbourne Emerging Writers’ Festival
View this post on Instagram
Kicking things off is After Hours at the Convent, a late-night literary event landing as part of the Melbourne Emerging Writers’ Festival on 17 September.
The historic Magdalen Laundry will be turned into an immersive, after-dark space combining live readings, digital projections, ambient soundscapes and a pop-up bar.
Journalist, filmmaker and ABC broadcaster Paul Verhoeven hosts the evening, joined by four current and former Abbotsford Convent Writers in Residence, including Mia-Francesca Jones and Ernest Price, alongside Nalini Jacoub-Roussety and Mindy Gill.
Each writer will share an extract from their work before sitting down with Verhoeven for a conversation about process, influence and what keeps them coming back to the page.
Expect ambient jazz from DJ Rafet setting the mood, with Verhoeven describing the space as having a distinctly nocturnal, big-city energy once the sun goes down.
Distillation
- 1–4 October
- Melbourne Fringe
- Abbotsford Convent
- 50-minute sessions, 2pm–8.30pm
View this post on Instagram
Next up, things get a little more sensory.
Irish multidisciplinary artist Luke Casserly brings his acclaimed show Distillation to the Convent for Melbourne Fringe, running 1–4 October and marking the Australian debut of the work.
Part performance, part interactive lecture and part full-body sensory experience, Distillation gathers audiences around a table covered in organic material standing in for peat, as Casserly tells the story of the Irish Midlands bogland where he grew up and where his father once worked in the peat industry.
Every audience member walks away with a sample of a custom-made perfume distilled from botanicals sourced from that very bog.
Casserly has spoken about the project as a way of exploring the tension between the decline of Ireland’s peat industry and what comes next, both ecologically and for the communities left behind, describing his own return to the landscape as something of a personal reckoning with a place he once couldn’t wait to leave.
Aretha Brown – Born Romantic
- 25 September – 4 October, 10am–6pm
- North Laundry, Abbotsford Convent
- 1 St Heliers Street, Abbotsford
View this post on Instagram
Rounding out the season is Born Romantic, the first solo exhibition from Gumbaynggirr artist Aretha Brown, running 25 September to 4 October in the Convent’s North Laundry.
Brown is best known for expansive murals and bold, socially charged public art that exists well outside traditional gallery walls, and this show brings that same scale and energy indoors.
Rather than leaning into purely political or educational territory, Born Romantic is a far more personal offering, described by Brown as an unfiltered, vulnerable look at love, dating and romance as a young, queer, Blak woman navigating all of it in the internet age.
Brown has spoken about wanting the show to feel messy and human rather than polished, embracing awkwardness and tenderness in equal measure.
Abbotsford Convent CEO Justine Hyde has welcomed the exhibition as a chance for audiences to experience Brown’s ambitious, large-scale practice up close.
For more information, head here.
This article was made in partnership with Abbotsford Convent.
