What's On
See whatâs on from our base in Brunswick and beyond â
Listen: Radio Composite
Imagined as a contemporary theatre of sonic art, performance, experimental music, talks, criticism, audio workshops, and reading groups, Composite Radio is a platform supporting interdisciplinary, critical, and speculative work that attunes (to)/detunes (from) the currents of our time.
Opening night: Sparks in the Dark
Join us to celebrate the opening of âSparks in the Darkâ.
Doors at 5.30pm with delicious Afghan food, saffron tea, and a voluntary embroidery activity with local expert Shokira Jan. Speeches and Afghan music from 6.15pm.
Exhibition: Sparks in the Dark
Developed by emerging artists Mursal Azizi and Kat Rae, Sparks in the Dark fuses traditional and contemporary art practices â incorporating new works from Azizi and Rae, alongside 208 embroidered handkerchiefs from more than 30 women living in Afghanistan.
'Making Sparks' Artist Discussion
Join âSparks in the Darkâ and âMaking Marksâ artists for a discussion that elevates Afghan womenâs voices and âmakes sparksâ!
Sparks in the Dark: Workshop and Closing Event
Join us to celebrate the final days of Sparks in the Dark with this fun and purposeful hands-on workshop. Learn how to embroider with local expert in the beautiful Afghan style, Shokira Jan.
$16.50
Bookings essential
Thinking Ground
Presented by VIMH in collaboration with Next Wave
Taking place in three sections every Friday, these session are open to local artists and community to share knowledge, swap skills, and build shared understanding on civic and creative practice.
Archive
Exhibition: Winter Windows
Sik by Axel Garay and Nightfall by Liwen Lian will be showing from dusk until dawn over some of the longest nights of the year.
Next Waveâs Winter Windowâs program transforms the buildingâs windows into portals exploring the artistsâ interpretation of Possible Worlds: Imagined Futures.
Screening: How to Build the Future
How to Build the Future (2024) by Callum McGrath offers a glimpse into the political ideology of the infamous gay billionaire Peter Thiel, the man behind PayPal, the angel investor in Facebook and the co-founder of Palantir Technologies.
Presented by Composite
Winter Windows Launch
Celebrate the launch of Sik by Axel Garay and Nightfall by Liwen Lian for Next Waveâs Winter Windows program.
Cosy up with us as we light up Brunswick Mechanics Institute in the heart of winter.
Next Waveâs Winter Windowâs program transforms the buildingâs windows into portals exploring the artistsâ interpretation of Possible Worlds: Imagined Futures.
Divestment drop-ins
Tea, cake and climate action.
A Climate for Art will be setting up in Next Waveâs studio at Brunswick Mechanics Institute with hot drinks, treats and plenty of intel on divesting from superannuation funds that donât put our collective futures first.
These drop-ins are part of ALL SchoolâNext Waveâs artist-led learning program created to facilitate knowledge sharing and idea swapping.
Tidelines
Zela Papageorgiouâs Tidelines shares her personal devotion to the artistic practice of percussion in an hour-long, intimate and immersive listening experience.
Presented by Speak Percussion in collaboration with Next Wave
Emerging Curator Mentorship x Blindside
Through this exciting initiative, the successful emerging curator will curate a funded performance-based program to be developed and presented by Blindside, in collaboration with Next Wave, through mentorship from Next Wave CEO Elyse Goldfinch.
BOOK LAUNCH: Cinemal: The Becoming-Animal of Experimental Film
Celebrate the launch of Cinemal: The Becoming-Animal of Experimental Film (University of Minnesota Press) by Tessa Laird.
This event will include a special screening of films by Corinne and Arthur Cantrill, Nova Paul, Sriwhana Spong, Tina Stefanou, Peter Waples-Crowe with Glynn Urquhart, and Sebastian Wiedemann, and more to be announced.
Presented by Composite
Subversive Film x Hasib Hourani
Subversive Film and Hasib Hourani examine and enact narratives of solidarity in this speaking from the I eye program. A screening of four short films from Brussels and Ramallah based collective Subversive Filmâs Tokyo Reels project, is accompanied by the reading of a newly commissioned poem by Lebanese-Palestinian writer Hasib Hourani who lives on unceded Wangal Country.
Presented by Composite
Winter Windows callout
Next Wave is calling for artists who live, work or study in Merri-bek to apply for our inaugural Winter Windows Series!
Winter Windows artist drop-in session 2
Missed our first drop-in session? Donât stress, you can still join us at Brunswick Mechanics Institute to talk about the Winter Windows program.
Motherhood in the Colony screening
Join Bukjeh, GARUWA and Common Ground to celebrate the premiere of Motherhood in the Colony in Naarm (Melbourne) on Motherâs Day, with an intimate evening shared between First Nations and Palestinian communities.
This session is pay as you feel. Register via Humanitix
This event is supported by Next Wave and Composite.
As we looked back, we saw the future
Referencing iconic Australian visual histories in Two Laws (1982) and state archives of the nuclear testing at Maralinga in the 1950s-60s, this screening engages with questions of representation, positionality, and ethical modes of image making involving vulnerable communities and the historical record.
Presented by Composite
Winter Windows artist drop-in session 1
Drop in to Brunswick Mechanics Institute to chat with the Next Wave team about the Winter Windows program, see our space and ask questions about the application process.
Winter Windows online information session
Join us online to learn more about the application process for Next Waveâs Winter Windows series.
Production Management Seminar
Learn the ins and outs of production management in this free workshop led by some of Melbourneâs most experienced Production Managers.
This seminar are part of an ongoing series by Bronwyn Pringle, supported by Next Wave.
Next Wave Neighbours 2
Next Wave Neighbours returns for its first iteration of 2025!
Join us for drinks, snacks and chats at Brunswick Mechanics Institute.
SpringCity 43214
Next Wave Young Artistic Director MaggZ is presenting an interactive game-performance with street dance, sound, audio-visual installation for the Asian-diasporic community.
Played simultaneously across two spaces, audiences are invited to watch the game unfold from behind the scenes, or experience how their actions can change the rules of SpringCity 43214.
Residue
Residue is a 26-minute film centred around a series of domestic tableaux shot at different frame rates (including time-lapses shot over many months, and extreme slow-motion shooting at 1900 frames per second). Composited together, they form a single scene where Angela, played by Eora-based choreographer and dancer Angela Goh, interacts with decomposing still-lifes.
Presented by Composite
speaking from the I eye: Claire Lambe x Eleanor Ivory Weber
The abject body and the construction of a scene meet in this speaking from the I eye program. Two short films by Naarm (Melbourne) based artist Claire Lambe accompanied by the reading of a newly commissioned text by Brussels based artist Eleanor Ivory Weber.
[https://events.humanitix.com/speaking-from-the-i-eye-claire-lambe-x-eleanor-ivory-weber test: Tickets via Composite](https://events.humanitix.com/speaking-from-the-i-eye-claire-lambe-x-eleanor-ivory-weber test: Tickets via Composite)
Presented by Composite
Considering Practice
Next Wave is supporting artist and mentor Leisa Shelton to deliver her next iteration of âConsidering Practiceâ at Brunswick Mechanics Institute.
Considering Practice is a focused investigation into the core principles, values and intentions that underpin each individualâs independent arts practice.
This full-day workshop is $125. Places are limited.
To book, contact Leisa via email.
Neighbourhood Noise (BMF)
Neighbourhood Noise is an open invitation for the community to experience live music and experimental arts programming by Arts Merri-bek partners Next Wave, the Counihan Gallery and Composite.
Next Wave is collaborating with Speak Percussion to present âPercussion, Conversation, Degustationâ.
CAST Book LaunchâArt and Memorialisation
RMITâs CAST research group and Next Wave invite you to the launch of âArt and Memorialisation: Truth-Telling Through Creative Practice in Settler Colonial Australia (2024)â. This event will be convened by oral historian, Genevieve Grieves, and artist and researcher, Amy Spiers.
MESS Presents: New Waveforms (BMF)
Brought to you by Brunswick Music Festival, MESS (Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio) takes over the Brunswick Mechanics Institute for the first time with New Waveforms.
Place Made After the Story
The artists in Place Made After the Story exhibit a tenderness in approach, bringing a poetic logic to their critical engagement with place. By revisiting public histories or familial memory, these works deal with the intricate relationships between locality, ecology, narrative, belonging and not belonging.
Presented by Composite in collaboration with KADIST.
Next Wave, Industry Discovery Day
Curious about how leading arts organisations operate and envision the future of creative practice?
Join our industry discovery day to hear from Platform Arts, Westspace, Arts House, Rising, Asia TOPA and Footscray Community Arts.
This program is designed for early-career creative practitioners (including our Kickstart artists, whoâll be joining us) to build their knowledge and connections.
Recompositions Screenings
Part of a series of discursive and performative events accompanying the exhibition âThe place we do not know is the place we are looking forâ at West Space and
Liquid Architecture.
Amplifying the mode of the gathering, the program assembles and attends to resonant practices that are intent on inventing languages to be able to hold ineffable dreams, desires and encounters, unfixed from the discretisation of time, bodies, and sensing.
Presented by Composite.
ACFA Symposium
Next Wave is partnering with A Climate for Art (ACFA) to deliver the ACFA Symposium.
The symposium aims to build relationships and extend a vocabulary around how culture underpins the climate crisisâand how culture is in turn affected by environmental imbalance.
Over two days, ACFA will relay what they have learnt so far and bring together a range of speakers.
Public Grief, Public Space (Composite)
Esther Carlin and Adalya Nash Hussein explore the psychogeography of grief in the first Melbourne speaking from the I eye program.
Presented by Composite
Finite Eyes screening (Composite)
Finite Eyes brings together live performance, pre-recorded sound and moving image to explore the emotive pull and mobilising force of utopian visions.
By anorak and Ora Clementi in collaboration with Debris Facility and Melody Woodnutt and featuring work by Basma al-Sharif, Tolia Astakhishvili and James Richards, Charles Bernstein, Marguerite Duras, and Dani ReStack.
Presented by Composite
Below The Surface presents â 2025 Vision Board & Networking Event
Young Artistic Director Lydia Tesema is bringing her annual Below The Surface (BTS) vision board and networking event to Brunswick Mechanics Institute.
Connect with likeminded local creatives while creating visual representation of your goals, dreams and aspirations.
Reading: 'Inheritance'
Next Wave is supporting the development of âInheritanceâ, a new production by Ryan Enniss and Robert Lewis.
Inheritance stems from a project investigating neurodiversity in Australian performing arts. It explores themes of toxic masculinity, relationships and anxiety through a kaleidoscopic journey of interconnected monologues.
Contact Persona Collective for more information.
Activating Truth
Convened by CAST leader Dr Amy Spiers, âActivating Truthâ brings together artists and researchers from across Naarm/Melbourne, other parts of so-called âAustraliaâ, as well as Turtle Island/Canada, to share and deepen knowledge on ways that the truth about settler colonial violence can be activated responsibly and impactfully in community and localised contexts through creative practice.
Screening: 'Anak'
Masculinity, race and boyhood simmer in this stylish slow-cinema debut about a Filipino-Australian father and his six-year-old son, who are navigating a family divorce.
Presented by Composite in partnership with Sunburnt.
Deaf Culture and Auslan workshop
Join us for a free workshop celebrating the richness of Deaf culture and language, led by Deaf artist Luke D King.
Luke will share an introduction to Deaf histories and give participants the opportunity to learn and use some basic Australian Sign Language (Auslan).
Triangle by Flow Festival
Flow Festival presents âTriangleââa unique series of lighting design workshops led by Bronwyn Pringle (Deaf Kitchen, SPIN, and Flow Festival). Bronwyn is diving into how lighting design can be more inclusive for the Deaf community.
âTriangleâ is for the Deaf community, including Deaf, hard of hearing, CODAs, and interpreters.
Next Wave Neighbours
Join us for a drink, explore our venue, hear about what we have planned and help shape our priorities for 2025 and beyond.
Homing Instinct
See a special screening of commissioned works from Homing Instinctâa collaborative moving image project featuring artist commissions related to housing, home and belonging.
This screening includes an artist talk by Ari Angkasa.
Presented by Composite.
'Web Working Bee'
Join our working bee with WORLDWIDEWORMS.NET, an online space for peer-led publishing. In this event, collaborators and contributors to WORLDWIDEWORMS.NET share work in progress, including video screenings, readings, and a garden tour of the back-end of the website.
Contributing artists are Alrey Batol, Eric Jong, Jacina Leong, Ella Peck and Emily Simek.
Presented by Composite
Nosferatu with live score
âNosferatu: A Symphony of Horrorâ is widely regarded to be the first and best vampire film ever made. Join us for a Halloween screening of this silent cinematic masterpiece with an original score performed live by Edwin Montgomery.
DAMP video anthology
This selection of short video works made between 1997 and 2008, range from quickly captured playful scenarios to elaborately constructed narratives. Established in Naarm Melbourne in 1995, DAMPâs multidisciplinary practice over three decades has consistently addressed the relationship between artist and audience and examined individual and collective notions of value and desire.
Presented by Composite
Snap! (You Have Nothing to Reconnect But Your Chains)
Join us for the premiere of a new experimental performance lecture by Catherine Ryan. This ambitious, research-based work tells the tragicomic story of one of the neoclassical statues adorning the interior of Victoriaâs Legislative Council in Parliament House. The work draws on the comedic travails of this political decor to critically examine the idea of connection to tradition and the telling of origin stories about the settler-colonial society of Victoria.
Presented by Composite
'ShareHouse: Studio Day + Exhibition'
ShareHouse invites you into Next Waveâs home, Brunswick Mechanics Institute, for community-led workshops, performances, and conversations.
Curated by our Young Artistic Directorate - Banda
Get Tickets
âł Saturday | Studio Day: Workshop 1 (Charlie Taylor) + Lunch & Panel
âł Saturday | Studio Day: Workshop 2 (Adele DâSouza) + Lunch & Panel
âł Sunday | Exhibition
MEga Yoga: A counternarrative experience
Bus Projects, Engages, MEga Yoga is a participatory embodied performance that uses the structure of a yoga class inviting participants to move their bodies slowly and their minds critically.
New North Concert 17
Guest curator Rachael Archibald (Meanjin/Brisbane) has gathered lineup of artists pushing boundaries in their music-making for the next New North concert.
Alexandra Spence ~ Ode2Joy ~ ANNIHA
THINKING GROUND
Next Wave is supporting the THINKING GROUND workshop series, a pilot artist-development program by theatre-makers The Voice in My Hands. Workshops are free but places are limited.
Learn more about THINKING GROUND and register for the next workshop
New North Concert 16
Guest curator Dale Gorfinkel brings lineup of Narrm/Melbourne-based musicians pushing boundaries in their areas of practice to Brunswick Mechanics:
Sounds Like Movement [Peter Fraser/Dale Gorfinkel] ~ Shh! [Anja FĂźsti/Rosalind Crisp] ~ Peter Blamey
Get tickets to New North Concert 16
Get tickets to New North Concert 15
New North Concert 15
Xiaole Zhan ~ Jassy Robertson ~ Tilman Robinson
Xiaole will present a âlive anthologyâ for narrator, percussion, violin, electronics and narratorâa musical setting of a collection of poems exploring the collision between music and language.
Sonic Travellers: Opening Performance
Sonic Travellers seeks to discover shared connections between sonic pasts and presents, exploring regional affinities between Australia and Southeast Asia.
The 2024 LAB program considers Next Waveâs past, present and future â with a focus on intergenerational knowledge sharing and creative responses to notions of collectivism, preservation and care â culminating in a future-focused 40th birthday party.
Across the Ocean: Viet Thanh Nguyen in Conversation with Nam Le
The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network is thrilled to host an evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen in conversation with Nam Le.
Next Wave x (nexus)
Next Wave x (nexus) is a multi-sensory Radical hospitality event of experimental dance battles, cuisines and a party.
International Women's Day Performance
Our Young Artistic Directorate are co-curating a party in partnership with Brunswick Music Festival
Radical Hospitality: ĺĺ° + equatorial fruit-opening party
Dead Ends and Detours - Bruno Booth
Leisuretime I â Aaron Claringbold & Rebecca Mccauley
Leisuretime I
Leisuretime I
Aaron Claringbold & Rebecca Mccauley
Sun 27 & Tues 29 Mar
đ Berth 2, Federation Wharf, Princes Walk (in front of Riverland)
Get tickets
Leisuretime I is a photographic intervention inside an operating tourist ferry on the Birrarung/Yarra River, led by your friendly guide Catherine Ryan. Jump on board and join us in reflecting on the ways that photography has shaped contemporary understandings and uses of ânaturalâ spaces within the floodplains now known as Melbourne.
Float along the river seated within a camera obscura, disembodied from the outside world, and experience your surroundings reversed and upside-down, projected onto the vessel walls. Cruise with our guide as we take in some of the sights this city has to offer; floating riverside bars, outdoor BBQs, million-dollar properties, yoga in the park, and the oldest and largest surviving single dock in the world; asking, why did we get here, and how?
Content Warnings and credits
This production takes place on a boat that will travel down a river. Audience members will be in a dark space on a boat for the entirety of the show and will not be able to leave the boat for the duration of the performance. There will be low visibility during the performance, and audience members who experience claustrophobia and/or motion sickness are encouraged to contact Next Wave with any questions.
Commissioned by Next Wave for Next Wave Festival 2020. âLeisuretime Iâ is supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program 2020, Creative Victoria and Regional Arts Victoria through the Sustaining Creative Workers Initiative, the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and RMIT through its Photo Futures Lab.
Lead artists â Aaron Claringbold & Rebecca McCauley
Performerâ Catherine Ryan
Scripting and devising â Aaron Claringbold, Rebecca McCauley & Catherine Ryan
Mentorsâ Willoh S. Weiland, Steven Rhall & Kate Golding
Thanks to Jamie Lewis and all at Next Wave for their trust, Con and Yarra River Cruises, Julieanne Axford and Gail Smith at the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Corporation, Roslyn Helper, Melanie Mackenzie at Museums Victoria, Eliki Reade, Bron Belcher, Tristen Harwood, Grace Connors, Christine McFetridge, Kelly Hussey-Smith, APHIDS, Marcello Rotar and Paul Murphy.
Aaron Claringbold and Rebecca McCauley are artists currently based in Naarm/Melbourne. Starting from a place of photographic practice, the pair bring together shared interests to explore land, land use, ecology and human presence within modern day âAustraliaâ. Reflecting on their shared positionality as settler-descendant white Australians, they are interested in how we form ideas (and who benefits from these ideas) of nature and wildness. They have a particular interest in practices that centre place-based bonding and responsibility, and that complicate the myriad of essentialisms underpinning the Australian Colonial Project.
Aaron Claringbold artist website
Rebecca Mccauley artist website
Image: Aaron Claringbold and Rebecca Mccauley (2022)