What's On

THE BLOWOUT

Arts House 20th Birthday Celebrations

Presented by Arts House

Saturday 26 July 2025 
4pm – 10.30pm

Tickets 
Standard $40 
Reduced $25 
BLAKTIX $15 
Children (under 18) FREE* 
A small transaction fee will be charged per order. 

*All attendees must have a ticket. Guests under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Warnings 
Suitable for all ages 

Audio Describer Guides   
Describer guides available for meet and greet on arrival and one-on-one live descriptions of the event.
This service is book on request by Fri 18 July.

Auslan Interpreting 
This service is book on request by Fri 18 July.

Detailed access information is available to download below
PDF | Word

Arts House
North Melbourne Town Hall
521 Queensberry St,
North Melbourne

Wheelchair Accessible
Quiet Space Available
Assistance Animal
Companion Card

Get ready for THE BLOWOUT, a massive art party celebrating 20 years of unforgettable programming at Arts House. 

Hosted in two parts by Tristan Meecham and Bec Reid (All The Queens Men) and Kamarra Bell-Wykes and Carly Sheppard (A Daylight Connection), THE BLOWOUT pulls out all the stops – we’re bringing back artists and performances from the past two decades for a night of joyous reunions, immersive art, sets from DJ MzRizk and so much dancing. 

Whether you’re reconnecting with familiar faces or discovering new acts, THE BLOWOUT promises a unique experience, celebrating the bold and eclectic spirit of Arts House’s legacy. Come for the art, stay for the party, and let’s make some noise for the next 20 years! 

THE BLOWOUT LINEUP

MAIN HALL

All Day – Slow Art Collective

4.15pm – Welcome to Country 

4.30pm – Dance Club with All The Queens Men

4.50pm – 180 Seconds in Heaven or Hell featuring Bella Waru and Fallon Te Paa, Betty Grumble, Inkrewsive Crew, Nisha Madhan and Julia Croft, Raina Peterson, roya the destroya, Sam Martin and Nathan Borg, Taj Aldeeb and Meena Shamaly, Tamara Saulwick and Peter Knight
W
ith VJ Nick Roux and very special guests

6pm DJ MzRizk

6.30pm – A Daylight Connection, Sammaneh Pourshafighi, Walter Kadiki, small sounds, Bron Batten, Motherless Collective

8.30pm – DJ MzRizk

STUDIO 1

4pm – Conversation Corner hosted by Lorna Hannan and Robin Laurie; Ribbon Leis for Celebration with Veisinia Tonga

6.30pm – Lakatoi & Enter perform Great Ocean Volumes

+

About the artists

All The Queens Men
All The Queens Men unites people of all shapes, sizes and identities together in distinct, creative and communal experiences. All The Queens Men was founded in 2010 by artists Tristan Meecham and Bec Reid, after a chance meeting on the dance floor. We believe dynamic artistic collaboration, bound by ethical partnerships and shared values, activates positive social change. Our work reflects the way we and our collaborating communities want to be in the world; fearless, joyous and inclusive.

We’ve delivered remarkable, community engaged global outputs; celebrating Finnish sword-fighters, South Korean line-dancing Grandmothers, sweat-soaked Darwinian triathletes, neatly-pressed Prime ministerial speechwriters, socially isolated Queers in regional Australia, shimmering First Nations Drag Royalty – all driven by courage, context and curiosity.

A Daylight Connection
Equally acclaimed in their individual practices lead artists Kamarra Bell-Wykes (Jagera/Butchulla) and Carly Sheppard (Takalaka) are A Daylight Connection, an explosive union of weird and talented artists bound by the elusive dream of not only being independent but truly self-determined artists. This collective of artistic geniuses encompass almost all creative and design roles including dramaturgy, devising, directing, choreography, performance, set and sound design. Formed in 2020, their works include CHASE (Malthouse/Hot House) and A Nightime Travesty (YIRRAMBOI). With a slew of new works in development this motley crew are hell-bent on reimagining what First Nations performance can be and taking their unique brand of post-traumatic adventure narratives to the world.

MzRizk
MzRizk – Lebanese-Australian DJ, broadcaster, and cultural curator – is a boundary-pushing force in Melbourne’s music scene. With a genre-blending style that seamlessly weaves house, disco, hip-hop, jazz, soul, and Arabic rhythms, her sets are electric, immersive, and unpredictable. She’s rocked stages at Glastonbury, We Out Here, SOLE DXB, and underground spots from Beirut to New York, while dominating the lineup at homegrown festivals like WOMADelaide and Golden Plains.

A tastemaker with over 10,000 views on My Analogue Journal, MzRizk has spent seven years curating eclectic sounds on her radio show Boogie Beat Suite (PBS 106.7FM). Off the decks, she’s the visionary behind events like Habibi Hafla, known for blending music, art, and community with bold, inclusive vibes. As a sought-after cultural producer, she’s helped craft major experiences like the Biennale of Sydney, Art Souk, and Melbourne’s iconic New Year’s Eve soundtrack.

180 Seconds in Heaven or Hell

Raina Peterson
Raina Peterson is a multi-award-winning dancer-choreographer of Fiji-Indian and English heritage who was born and raised on the lands of the Gunaikurnai people of regional Victoria. Their work draws on the deep cultural practice of their classical Indian dance (Mohiniyattam and Kathakali) training and the experimental, subversive, queering which emerged from their performances in the queer party scene.

They have performed in the work of Jacob Boheme, Alicia Frankovich, Amos Gebhardt, Nithya Nagarajan, Naina Sen, Paul Rae and Kaylene Tan, Lucy Guerin and Alisdair Macindoe. Raina’s recent, multi-award winning works include their dance film with Govind Pillai entitled Drishti (Winner of two Melbourne Fringe Awards, 2020, nominated for the Green Room Award for Best Performer (Raina Peterson) and winner of the Green Room Award for Best Digital Work), Narasimha: ManLion (2022, winner of Melbourne Fringe Award for ‘Best dance and physical theatre’) and Mohini (2023, the most nominated dance work in the 2024 Green Room Awards with four award nominations (‘Breaking ground’, ‘Best set design’, ‘Best sound design’) winning the award for ‘Best Lighting / Digital Effects’. Raina runs ‘TGD Yoga’, a program of free yoga classes for the trans and gender diverse community and is an audio-describer for Vitae Veritas.

Tamara Saulwick
Tamara Saulwick is a performance-maker, director and dramaturg creating work across and between artforms for theatres, galleries and public spaces. Notable for the complex interplay between sound, technology, visual design and live performance, her works have toured extensively, been adapted for radio, and have been honoured by numerous industry awards. Since 2017 Tamara has been the Artistic Director of Chamber Made, a Naarm/Melbourne based company renowned for creating works at the intersection of performance, sound and music. Recent Chamber Made productions include: One Day We’ll Understand (2024); My Self in That Moment (2022) ; SYSTEM_ERROR (2021) and Dragon Ladies Don’t Weep (2020). In her role at Chamber Made Tamara continues to conceive and direct new works, collaborate with lead artists from outside the company, curate artist and artform development programs, and mentor emerging artists.

Peter Knight
Perpetually curious, composer/trumpeter Peter Knight's practice thrives in the spaces between genres, disciplines, and cultures. Peter composes for film and performance and collaborates extensively across cultures. As artistic director of the Australian Art Orchestra (2013–23) he commissioned over 100 new works fostering collaborations with a diverse range of artists including Alvin Lucier, Senyawa, and Nicole Lizée. He also composed for and performed in the company, presenting his music at international festivals and venues in more than a dozen countries. Peter’s innovative solo practice extends the possibilities of his instrument with approaches that interweave acoustic preparations with electroacoustic processing via laptop, vintage delays, tape machines, amplifiers, and pedals. His work involves the use of repetition, rhythmic overlapping, slow harmonic evolution and subtle timbral evolutions to shift our perceptions of linear time, and is published on labels including ROOM40, 12K, and Hospital Hill. Peter holds a doctorate from Griffith University and has received awards including the Albert H Maggs Composition Prize, and several AMC Art Music awards.

Nisha Madhan
Nisha Madhan (India/Aotearoa) is an independent artistic director and producer. She is the Creative Producer of Asia TOPA, the triennial of Asia Pacific Art in Naarm, Melbourne. Until recently she was the Lead Creative Producer at Next Wave and the Programming Director of Basement Theatre in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Her eclectic career includes creating, directing, and producing experimental live art, performing on stage and screen, and critical writing. In 2022 she toured her co creation, Working On My Night Moves , a live art exploration of feminist futures to RISING Festival in Melbourne. She is the co-director Aoteroa’s Festival of Live Art, F.O.L.A. [AKL] in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, held most recently in June 2025. As a practitioner, Nisha is driven by relationships and artist care and is passionate about creating space for urgent artistry and vital voices.

Julia Croft
Julia Croft is a performance maker from Aotearoa, recently relocated to Naarm. Her practice draws on a wide variety of critical theory and pop culture to create performance works that are highly theatrical, visual and comedic. Julia’s interest as an artist lies in spaces of potentiality and possibility, radical joy and the Scientific-Poetic. She is particularly interested ways to enliven, live with and through, matter and materiality through a feminist and Queer lens. She has created over 12 full length performance works including 4 solo works: If There's Not Dancing at the Revolution, I'm Not Coming; Power Ballad ; Working On My Night Moves and Terrapolis. These works have toured extensively throughout NZ and internationally including to the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Mexico and Singapore.

Working On My Night Moves was awarded a prestigious Total Theatre Award at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival as well as an Auckland Theatre Award for Excellence. This work was most presented at the RISINGin 2022. She has undertaken residencies at CAMPO (Belgium), Something Great (Berlin), Mala Vaodora (Portugal), The Basement (NZ), Forest Fringe (UK) & West Kowloon Cultural District (HK) and Time Place Space (Melbourne). She is also the co-director of the Festival of Live Art, F.O.L.A. [AKL] in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland - a festival celebrating live art and experimental practice in Aotearoa. She also works as a teaching artist, director and dramaturg and considers karaoke to be her secret superpower.

Taj Aldeeb
A multi-hyphenate, Taj Aldeeb is a truly exciting performer of Syrian heritage. She explores migration, identity, and community through her diverse talents that enrich storytelling across screen, stage, and sound as an actress, musician, radio presenter, and dancer. She holds a Bachelor of Music (Piano) from Monash University and a Bachelor of Design (Digital Media) from RMIT. Taj is a radio presenter at ABC Classic radio, a pre-concert speaker and production assistant with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, FOH with ACM, and Head of Percussion (2024) with the Melbourne Youth Orchestra. Her acting credits include the SBS series Four Years Later (dir. Mohini Herse and Fadia Abboud), short films The Fall (lead role, dir. Mert Berdilek, Dendy Awards fi nalist), Get to the Wire (dir. Paul Burns), as well as stage roles in THEM (dir. Bagryana Popov) and Zaffé (dir. Stéphanie Ghajar). A passionate advocate for refugee and migrant communities, Taj received the 2021 Young Leader Award for her advocacy and youth mentorship work.

Meena Shamaly
Meena Shamaly is a composer, session musician, poet, lecturer, and radio presenter. He is the host of ABC Classic’s Game Show, exploring video game music on the radio, and he also presents live game music performances, such as the Indie Symphony series by Orchestra Victoria and the Press Play concert by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

Meena is the composer of Innchanted (DragonBear Studios) and Every Hue of You (Cactus Jam Games), for which he and his co-composer Natalie Jeffreys were nominated in the category of ‘Best Music for a Video Game or Other Interactive Media’ at the 2024 APRA/AMCOS Screen Music Awards.

As a performer, Meena contributes vocals and sound on Christopher Tin’s Grammy-nominated game score to Old World and he has sung for Ian Livingstone and Ed Watkins on the game Total War: Pharaoh , Kevin Penkin on the anime series Made in Abyss , and more. His other screen work includes performing on the films such as The Legend of Ben Hall and Rise of the Footsoldier 4: Marbella , as well as having his compositions licensed for Amazon Prime, Netflix, Dropout (formerly Collegehumor), Discovery Channel, and WWE.

On the live stage, Meena regularly creates music and performs on projects that span the worlds of theatre, poetry, and spoken word. He was a cast member and musician in the critically acclaimed play THEM by Samah Sabawi, and his work with Camille El Feghali on the immersive theatre production Zaffé by Stephanie Ghajar won Best Sound Design and Composition at the 2024 Green Room Awards.

Bella Waru
Bella Waru is a takatāpui dancer/choreographer, musician, creative director & eternal student of the Māori healing, weaving & martial arts. Of Ngāti Tukorehe, Taranaki Tūturu & Celtic descent, they are a foreign Sovereign navigating life, lore & culture from, toward & between Indigenous lands & peoples. They recognise Indigenous knowledges & worldviews as means for communal wellbeing & futurity, celebrating living culture, land, legacy & healing in their work.

Projects of note include BLOODFIRE (FAMILI collective, 2025), TOA III (Matriarchs Uprising Festival 2025, Vancouver, Canada), HANA (Melbourne Museum 2023), Kaitiaki: Sovereign Reflections (Bodies of Woven Code Corbans Estate AKL 2022 NZ), Where We Stand (Dancehouse 2019, DanceOn 2018).

Fallon Te Paa
Fallon Te Paa (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Whātua, Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, Manihiki) is a movement practitioner, choreographer, composer & vocalist. She is a leader in Naarm’s Mau Rākau (martial arts), having practiced for 11 years (currently the 4th highest ranked in Victoria) and headed Te Ara Hononga (Naarm’s chapter of the International School of Māori Weaponry) as the chair for a decade. She is also a leader in traditional Māori performing arts, having practiced and performed with Te Hononga o Ngā Iwi for 14 years. Significant works of Te Paa include Reckōning Samuel Gaskin (2021), Rites of Passage: The Origins of Tā Moko (2022), I am the river, the river is me , Jen Cloher tour (2023), and Being Human , Jen Cloher (2022).

Betty Grumble
Emma Maye Gibson (AKA Betty Grumble) is a Warrane/Sydney based storyteller and performance artist. Largely through the avatar/war mask/love letter/critter of Grumble she engages her body as a hopeful and medicinal site for catharsis and pleasure. Often moving in a genre smash of ritual theatre, autobiography, cabaret, performance art and multi-media, she is a proud ecosexual and believes in art as an action of her spirituality.

She has her Masters in Fine Arts and has presented work at The Sydney Opera House, Glastonbury, Edinburgh Fringe, Perth & Adelaide Fringes, The Melbourne Comedy Festival, The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Griffin Theatre, Belvoir St Theatre, The Bearded Tit, Red Rattler Theatre, OUTsider Festival (Austin, Texas), MoMA (NYC), Joe’s Pub (NYC), The Glory (London), LiveWorks, The Old Fitz, AsiaTOPA, Dark Mofo, Mona Foma, Sydney World Pride, Ted X, AGNSW, MCA, Berlin Fringe, The Ladies Lounge, The Forest Congress, RISING and beyond. She believes in the flesh riot, leads Grumble Boogie Thank You Body aerobic psychic love energy dance classes and is currently engaged under the guidance of mentors Dr Annie Sprinkle, Elizabeth Burton and Victoria Spence.

Major works include Sex Clown Saves The World , Love & Anger , The Unshame Machine , GRUMBLISM , Grumble Boogie , Goddess – The Elizabeth Burton Story , Mini Beast Disco , A Composting Cabaret , 24HR Grumble Boogie , 6HR Grumble Boogie , Enemies of Grooviness Eat Shit and BODY SPELL. She is one half (alongside Dr Charlotte Farrell) of performance collective Body of Work who are working on their new offering titled CALM DOWN and considers the late great Palestinian/Lebanese poet Candy Royalle to be one of her greatest guides.

roya the destroya
roya the destroya is a strong believer that every day is an adventure. She is a passionate performing artist who plays with her abilities to disrupt the stranger into a soulful and joyful exchange. Roya has performed in events and festivals around the world from busking in the Middle East, aerial dancing off the exterior of Art Centre Melbourne, performing at the White House and being featured in the Paris 2024 Paralympics closing film. Roya was the recipient of the 2022 Australia Council National Arts and Disability Award for Established Artist.

Tusi James & Damian (Inkrewsive Crew)
Tusi James and Damian (Fantasma) bring fresh energy straight outta the Inkrewsive Hip Hop crew — a collective of artists bringing raw talent, creative bars, and lived experience to the stage. Repping disability pride and hip hop culture, their music is all about self-expression, connection, and straight-up fun. With bold beats and sharp flows, they’ve been lighting up stages across Naarm/Melbourne.

Sam Martin
Sam Martin (he/him) is a Deaf, queer director, creative producer, writer, consultant and Access Coordinator working across film, television and theatre. A graduate of AFTRS with a Bachelor of Screen: Production, he has directed several award-winning short documentaries that have been broadcast nationally and screened at festivals worldwide.

His theatrical work includes writing and performing Sam I Am, published by Playlab in the anthology Authentic Stories – Disability Collection, and developing projects with Melbourne Fringe Festival, Arts House Warehouse Residency, Flow Festival and Midsumma.

Sam is also the founder and curator of PAH! Stories, an Auslan-first storytelling platform celebrating Deaf experience, which won the 2021 Melbourne Fringe Access Award.

Nathan Borg
Nathan Borg is an Australian Queer actor and a proud member of the Deaf community. He is one of the well-known Deaf actors to appear on our national screens. Nathan has worked on Neighbours and a few Australian films. He is BONDS’ first and recurring deaf model and is currently featuring on the SBS podcast Without Limitations!

Evening

small sound
small sound is the most recent creative incarnation of Melbourne born and based multi-form artist, multi-instrumentalist and Quandamooka man, Andrew James. Creating, composing and performing original music, sets and sculptural space in response to independent dance, theatre, contemporary art exhibitions and film works for over twenty-five years has been not just a privilege, but an inevitable evolution. Past work for other companies and individuals includes: A Daylight Connection; The Malthouse; Red Stitch Theatre; Hothouse Theatre; FCAC; MTC; Ilbijerri; Farmwalker Films; Blackbox Media; Makatron; Human Sacrifice Theatre; Eagles Nest Theatre and Chimene Steele-Prior.

Bron Batten
Bron Batten is a multi-award-winning Australian theatre artist, performer and producer with over 15 years of experience writing, producing and performing her work nationally and internationally.

Bron's work has been presented at venues and festivals such as The Soho Theatre London, The Royal Vauxhall Tavern London, La Puta Calle Paris, The Space Glasgow, Summerhall Edinburgh, The Performing Arts Festival (PAF) Berlin, The Prague Quadrennial, TURDA International Theatre Festival Romania, The Neo-Futurists Theatre Chicago, Basement Theatre Auckland NZ, BATS Theatre Wellington NZ, Brisbane Festival, Darwin Festival, RISING, Dark MOFO, The Melbourne Theatre Company, The Melbourne International Arts Festival, The Melbourne International Comedy Festival, The Malthouse Theatre, Arts House, Next Wave, Performance Space, Griffin Theatre and Bondi Festival Sydney, Vitalstatistix Adelaide, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), The Blue Room Theatre Perth, Punctum Castlemaine, Salamanca Arts Festival Hobart, Junction Arts Festival Launceston and The Wheeler Centre amongst many others.

She has received funding from Creative Australia and multiple fellowships from the Ian Potter Foundation to undertake professional development programs in Chicago, London, Hong Kong, Avignon, Zurich, Berlin, Glasgow and New York.

Bron was awarded a residency at the prestigious Cite Des Arts Internationale in Paris and the Lithuanian Composers Union in Druskininkai, Lithuania and has been selected to participate in numerous international programs in Scotland, France and Southbank Centre London, facilitated by The Live Art Development Agency (LADA) in the UK.

Past works include Onstage Dating (2016-2024); The Hole (2015); Use Your Illusion (2014); The Dad Show (2014); Sweet Child of Mine (2011-2016) and The Last Tuesday Society (2008-2015).

Bron’s newest work Waterloo premiered at the 2019 Melbourne Fringe Festival where it won the Arts House Evolution Award and The Summerhall Edinburgh Touring Award.

Waterloo was nominated for Best Production in the Experimental and Contemporary category at the 2020 Green Room Awards and was presented at the 2021 Darwin Festival. Waterloo was produced as part of the British Council’s UK/Australia season in Edinburgh, UK and also presented at Theatreworks in July 2025 as part of their mainstage season.

Bron was performer and co-devisor with Back to Back Theatre on their new major work Multiple Bad Things, which has been presented in Geelong, Brussels (Kunstendesarts Festival), The Malthouse Melbourne and the Sydney Opera House for Sydney Festival 2025.

She was also a collaborator on APHID’s major work OH DEER! which was presented at the 2023 RISING Festival as well as at Transform Festival in Leeds, UK.

Sammaneh Pourshafigi
Sammaneh Pourshafighi is a queer Muslim artist and hereditary witch whose transdisciplinary practice spans photography, performance, and poetry. Born in Iran with ancestral roots in Isfahan, Gilan, and Kurdistan, she arrived in Australia as a refugee after the Revolution and came of age on the Gold Coast, a place she views as both mirage and myth. Her work is a form of world-building where the body becomes a soft archive of memory, mysticism, and feminist resistance. Pourshafighi blends personal and collective histories with vibrant colour, unexpected humour, and emotional charge, conjuring spaces where identity, ritual, and play collide. Her work has been presented at RISING Festval, PHOTO 2024, and the National Portrait Gallery, offering not just images but embodied spells.

Walter Kadiki
Walter Kadiki is a poetic visionary whose performances ripple with rhythm, resilience, and revolutionary stillness. A master of signed poetry and visual vernacular, Walter transforms silence into symphony—his storytelling transcends sound, offering visceral, embodied truths that speak to Deaf and hearing audiences alike.

In Manifesto of Silences , his recent collaboration with fellow Deaf artist Irene Holub, Walter conjured an audacious space at Arts House—a bold tribute to what cannot be voiced but must be felt. Here, silence became protest, pulse, and poem: a language of defiance, dignity, and depth.

Currently, Walter is crafting a transcendent work with Newmarket Collective and the Melbourne Orchestra, where his poem becomes a song, and his song becomes a score—composed in haunting harmony with Andrea Keller Meagher. This groundbreaking piece blurs the boundaries between verse and vibration, celebrating Deaf poetics in orchestral form.

Across Australia, Walter has ignited creative fires through Deaf slam poetry workshops for youth, empowering emerging voices and championing radical self-expression. His impact echoes through festivals, public squares, and civic institutions—from the Melbourne Fringe Festival to Federation Square, the Deaflympics, and the halls of Canberra’s Parliament.

Internationally, his poetic force catalyzed A Tonal Caress, a cross-disciplinary collaboration with US-based NOW-ID, weaving his verse into contemporary dance. Premiering at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, the piece embodied Walter’s ethos—movement as message, language as liberation.

Walter Kadiki’s work is not just poetry—it is lived philosophy, kinetic ritual, and cultural reawakening. It is the echo of resistance, the choreography of truth, and the heartbeat of Deaf imagination.

Motherless Collective
The Motherless Collective (MoCo) is comprised of Stone Motherless Cold (Arrernte, she/they/re), Cerulean (Meriam, they/them) and Mora Money (Wiradjuri, he/him). Emerging from 2019, this drag collective is entirely First Nations Trans/Gender non-confirming; they have been reclaiming space throughout the ever-expanding drag scene. Drag is in dire need for Blak queer representation which MoCo provides while offering a wide range of refreshing acts. Each drag performer presents their own personal styles - an amalgamation of their art, history and Blak perspectives on popular culture.

Additional programming

Slow Art Collective Slow Art Collective is an artistic collective that focuses on creative practices and ethics relating to environmental sustainability, material ethics, DIY culture and collaboration. As an interdisciplinary group of artists, Slow Art Collective is interested in process-driven practices where the focus is on the act of making.

‘Slow art’ is about slow exchanges of value rather than the fast, monetary exchange of value. It is about the slow absorption of culture through community links by creating something together and blurring the boundary between the artists and viewers. It is a sustainable art practice, not an extreme solution; a reasonable alternative to deal with real problems in contemporary art practice.

Collaboration is intrinsic to all facets of their work. Since 2009 Slow Art Collective has undertaken a range of projects that use the process of collecting to address the crossovers between artistic practice, creative sustainability and individual responsibility. Recently commissioned projects include Tokyo Biennale, TarraWarra Museum of Arts, McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Powerhouse Museum, Mpavillion (Botanic Garden, Monash University and Dockland), NGV, Gertrude Contemporary and Esplanade Singapore. Slow Art Collective received and awarded many grants, including Creative Victoria, the Australian Council and the City of Melbourne.

Slow Art Collective is currently helmed by Chaco Kato and Dylan Martorell, who invite collaborators to join them for individual projects.

Lakatoi
Lakatoi works to create spaces for performers and artists to tell stories through music. He invites them to participate in a deep community-led practice around creation - primarily through reconnecting to culture, ancestry, history and the grief that haunts many of our complex histories. Through these spaces, he hopes to achieve a reconnection and catharsis, by naming some of those intangible feelings we live with. He is of Papua New Guinean and Scottish ancestry and lives and creates on unceded Wurundjeri lands.

Enter
Enter is the expressive channel of Samoan/Iranian artist Nadeem Tiafau Eshraghi. Through sound, sight and space, they distil lived and diasporic experiences, mark contemporary rituals, and offer universal deviations.

Conversation Corner

Lorna Hannan
Lorna Hannan, who has made it into her early 90s, currently has four great-grandchildren and finds much to interest her and keep her active in North Melbourne's local life. Her experience convinces her that theatre in its many forms is not only fun but can be a powerful force that influences and comments on community life. Over recent years Lorna has been active in the epic Arts House program REFUGE. Thus, she has added to her experience which began with Emerald Hill Theatre and flourished in the days of the Pram Factory.

Robin Laurie
Robin has been making things up with groups of people for a Very Long Time. She was an original member of the Pram Factory, a co-founder of Circus OZ and the first Women's Circus. She has worked nationally and internationally with many contemporary performance companies and festivals and researched, devised and directed large-scale multi-lingual community performances with the East Timorese, Italian, Middle Eastern, Warlpiri and refugee communities. She is part bionic and thinks it’s probably true that life is a Circus! She is a Grande Tata, a Feldenkrais practitioner, has an MA in Asian studies, loves vernacular languages and cooks a very good Christmas cake from a Nut Trek kit.

Veisinia Tonga
Veisinia Tonga is a multidisciplinary artist and storyteller based in Naarm (Melbourne), with strong ties to the Victorian Pasifika community for over 40 years. Drawing on her background in journalism, floristry, and business, Veisinia’s creative practice centres around Kakala — working with plant materials through the ethno-botanical lens of Tongan and broader Pasifika traditions.

Veisinia is the co-founder of the Pasifika Storytellers Collective, an initiative dedicated to amplifying Pasifika voices and empowering the community to take ownership of their narratives. Her installations, often rooted in cultural symbolism and community practice, have featured in diverse corporate and cultural events.

Her recent work includes projects with Arts House, Blak Dot Gallery, the State Library of Victoria, and RISING Festival. As a writer, her contributions have been published across various platforms in Aotearoa and so-called Australia, continuing her commitment to storytelling as a form of cultural preservation and resistance.

Details

Presented by Arts House

Saturday 26 July 2025 
4pm – 10.30pm

Tickets 
Standard $40 
Reduced $25 
BLAKTIX $15 
Children (under 18) FREE* 
A small transaction fee will be charged per order. 

*All attendees must have a ticket. Guests under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Warnings 
Suitable for all ages 

Audio Describer Guides   
Describer guides available for meet and greet on arrival and one-on-one live descriptions of the event.
This service is book on request by Fri 18 July.

Auslan Interpreting 
This service is book on request by Fri 18 July.

Detailed access information is available to download below
PDF | Word

Arts House
North Melbourne Town Hall
521 Queensberry St,
North Melbourne

Wheelchair Accessible
Quiet Space Available
Assistance Animal
Companion Card

Image: Design by Actual Size.

Image description: A checkered number 20 on a peach-coloured background.