a bit thing
Dr Paola Balla, Katen Balla & Rosie Kalina
World Premiere
Presented by Arts House
Sat 27 June – Sat 18 July 2026
Mon – Fri, 10am – 4pm
Sat, 11am – 3pm
Free exhibition
Warnings
a bit thing is suitable for all ages, with a family friendly and culturally safe environment. The exhibition contains references to colonisation and trauma.
Arts House
North Melbourne Town Hall
521 Queensberry St
North Melbourne
Wheelchair Accessible
Quiet Space Available
Assistance Animal
Visual Rating 75%
Aural Rating 50%Explore a home within our house in this bold new intergenerational exhibition.
Step inside a fantastical Blak family home – there are rooms to wander, artworks to experience, games to play, books to read and a Blakyard to relax in.
A bit thing is an eclectic and deeply personal exhibition where art, pop-culture and Koorie culture are inseparable from everyday life.
Led by matriarch and curator Dr Paola Balla, and co-curated with her children Rosie Kalina and Katen Balla, a bit thing celebrates the family home as a site of gathering, cultural memory, collective imagination and personal identity. It’s a place where you can be yourself and make yourself at home.
Interactive and sensorially rich, the exhibition features paintings, weavings, photography, moving image and digital artworks, alongside family photos, books, games and other material household memories.
Grounded firmly in Blak perspectives and lived experiences, a bit thing creates spaces of communal respite for visitors to connect, make a cuppa and experience artworks within a home shaped by memory, joy and care.
Pop on over, stay awhile and explore the public programs on offer.
About the artists
Dr Paola Balla is an artist, writer curator and educator. She focuses on Aboriginal women's stories and resistance with a visual practice, encapsulating research, art, memory and narrative realms. Her work centres Aboriginal women’s voices, activism, Sovereignty, and matriarchy and First Nations ways of being, knowing and doing. She has exhibited extensively over the last two decades. Paola is a Wemba-Wemba & Gunditjmara sovereign woman.
Katen Balla
Katen Balla is a proud Wemba-Wemba & Gunditjmara young man in his 3rd year Bachelor of Youth Work, Criminal Justice, Victoria University. Katen is also an Intern at the Aboriginal History Archive, Victoria University, researching impacts of racism in sport, and works as a Koori Youth Programs casual for the Nallie Jerring Indigenous Youth Leadership Program, Western Bulldogs Community Foundation. Katen is passionate about watching and analysing film and tv. Katen has appeared in short films, campaigns, television commercials and was part of the ‘Blak to the Future’ series at Footscray Community Arts (2018 — 2020) as an artist and MC.
Rosie Kalina
Rosie Kalina is a proud Wemba Wemba and Gundjitmara woman. Rosie’s background is in visual arts and curating, makeup artistry, community arts work and event producing. Rosie has engaged in multiple First Nations youth-led projects, such as co-curating the ‘Blak to the Future’ series at Footscray Community Arts (2018 - 2020). Rosie made her directorial debut in 2023 with ‘Tomorrow: the experience’ an experimental First Nations Fashion extravaganza, presented by YIRRAMBOI. Determined to create more culturally safe opportunities for young First Nations people in the arts, Rosie focuses on youth programming in her role within YIRRAMBOI. Rosie aims to ensure First Nations autonomy and excellence are at the forefront of every project she is part of, with the guidance of her Elders and community.
Artist statement
The term ‘A bit thing’ can reference many things, people, places, or situations. It’s an affectionately vague phrase to describe something that is Not Quite Right... Something you can’t quite place, a bit strange, a bit funny… a bit Thing.
It’s how we understand and describe the expressions of creativity and neurodiversity across our family. In our in personal, creative and cultural lives, we’re all a bit thing, in the best of ways.
As an exhibition, a bit thing is a richly layered and immersive experience.
Here, we invite you into Our House.
A space that stands as a memory scape. An amalgamation of the past and present. An exploration of displacement, and the feelings that come with living off Country. It holds everything at once.
Within these walls our artworks sit alongside a collective archive of family memories and material life that have shaped our creative and cultural identities.
Sitting in between time and space, a bit thing is a glimpse into our rich inner worlds, our perspective as Koories, navigating the colony in our own way.
Come inside, make a cuppa and stay awhile.
- Rosie, Katen and Paola
Artistic credits
Details
World Premiere
Presented by Arts House
Sat 27 June – Sat 18 July 2026
Mon – Fri, 10am – 4pm
Sat, 11am – 3pm
Free exhibition
Warnings
a bit thing is suitable for all ages, with a family friendly and culturally safe environment. The exhibition contains references to colonisation and trauma.
Arts House
North Melbourne Town Hall
521 Queensberry St
North Melbourne
Wheelchair Accessible Quiet Space Available Assistance Animal Visual Rating 75% Aural Rating 50%Supported by –
This exhibition and program is an expression of Arts House’s Equity—Builder, where an artist-curator is handed over the keys, spaces and resources to lead a curatorial project in an effort to renew the relationship between the institution, independent artists and marginalised communities.
Image Credit: Rosie Kalina, with photographs supplied from a family collection
Image Description: A collage style image in pastel tones, incorporating an archive of family photographs and flora overlays.
