See the roundup of photography exhibition openings, talks, and closing weekends from 26–29 June.

Thursday 26th

Opening: Maybe Our Dreams Are Real by J Davies

Hillvale Gallery
6pm-8pm
free

Image by J Davies

Drifting between memory and make-believe, ‘Maybe Our Dreams Are Real’ poses a question about reality
and surreality: are we truly awake, or dreaming with our eyes open? Working exclusively with 35mm and Polaroid film, J Davies presents a body of work that resists digital intervention. Each image is unedited—raw, tactile, and embedded with the imperfections of lived experience. Light leaks, surreal colours, and layered double exposures disrupt the expected, creating dreamscapes where time and identity blur.

The installation unfolds like a cinematic constellation—non-linear, open-ended. Pinned directly to the wall,
the photographs map the artist’s inner world: a tangle of timelines, textures, and touch. These aren’t just
moments captured; they are moments felt, inviting viewers to slip between what is remembered and what
is imagined.

Each image, a threshold left ajar, balances intimacy and isolation, fact and fabrication. The work is proudly queer, sexually charged, and emotionally raw—drawing on unexhibited Polaroids from the artist’s private archive to build an atmosphere thick with longing, connection, and play.

Untethered from sequence yet bound by spirit, Maybe Our Dreams Are Real moves like poetry—a dance
between memory and possibility. Here, reality dissolves. Dreams take shape. And if we stay still long
enough, we might find ourselves somewhere in between.

Saturday 28th

Opening: Gibberish by Tommaso Nervegna-Reed 

Sutton Gallery
3pm-5pm

Image: ‘Gibberish’, 2025, screenshot, 1920 × 1536 px

Conscious of the gaps between seeing and understanding, Tommaso Nervegna-Reed creates speculative works that include painting, video, photography and sculpture which are informed by the internal logics present in conceptual art. Nervegna-Reed tests the use-value of everyday objects and repositions them to create new generative narratives. Whether it be Venetian blinds wrapped in plaster bandages, a video of a light therapy session or a self-help audiobook, to paintings of DVD whose titles range from ‘corporate crime’ to ‘personality disorders’. He appropriates seemingly novel experiences or objects and through material experimentation he transforms their meaning whilst simultaneously exposing their inherit structures.

Artist Talks: five acts of love with Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Megan Cope, Khaled Sabsabi and Ali Tahayori

ACCA
Main Exhibition Gallery
11:30am-12:30pm
free

Megan Cope, The Tide Waits For No One 2020–21, installation view, Embodied Knowledge, QAGOMA, Brisbane, 2022–23. Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery. Photograph: Natasha Harth.

Artists Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Megan Cope, Khaled Sabsabi and Ali Tahayori discuss their works, their practice and the ideas presented as part of this exciting new exhibition.

Five Acts of Love explores the multifaceted beauty and intensity of love. Works of art centre love manifest in human action, love inherent to transformative change and participation, in moments of connection, memorialisation and reflection that collectively embrace notions of transgenerational grief and a shared humanity. 

RSVP

In conversation: Hayley Millar Baker, Eternity the Butterfly

Buxton Contemporary
3-4pm
free

Image credit: Hayley Millar Baker, film still from Eternity the Butterfly, 2025. Commissioned by University of Melbourne, supported by Creative Australia and Creative Victoria. 

Step inside 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘦𝘪𝘭 and hear directly from the voices behind one of its most arresting works.
Artist Hayley Millar Baker will be joined by Georgia Mokak, protagonist of exhibiting film Eternity the Butterfly, and Curator Hannah Presley in a special panel discussion unpacking the making and meaning of this deeply spiritual work.
Led by Assistant Curator Isabella Hone-Saunders, the conversation will delve into the film’s exploration of Aboriginal transcendence, ancestral connection and the ongoing impact of colonial trauma. As the third in Millar Baker’s cinematic series, Eternity the Butterfly is central to the exhibition, honouring the cyclical philosophies of life, death and rebirth in Aboriginal culture.

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Last day to see We Kill You (2016) by Khaled Sabsabi

West Space
12pm-4pm
free

Khaled Sabsabi, ‘We kill You’, installation view, West Space, 2025. 
Photography by Janelle Low

Seen here, 𝐖𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐘𝐨𝐮 (2016) poetically engages with sensitive issues connected to contested geographies, histories, ideological movements and realities.

𝐖𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐘𝐨𝐮 was inspired by a 1972 poem of the same title written by the revered Syrian poet Nizār Qabbānī. Qabbānī wrote: “𝘞𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘺𝘰𝘶, 𝘰 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘴 […] ‘𝘸𝘦’𝘷𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘢 𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘦’𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘢𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨”. Qabbānī is talking about Gamal Abdel Nasser, as well as about the Quran, but he’s also saying many Arabs are not good at understanding the Quran.

The poem is a mourning elegy in memory of Gamal Abdel Nasser, an iconic (and disputed) figure in the Arab world. Nasser is both a symbol of Arab unity and dignity, and a thorn in the side of the Arab Spring, ideologically used by Pan Arabian movements as well as by authoritarian and repressive Arab regimes.

𝐖𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐘𝐨𝐮 highlights factual contradictions and the effect these have had throughout the world. The work addresses conflict and the rise of extremism and terrorism by expressively engaging with themes relating to nationalism, Islam, colonialism and political circumstances.

Sunday 29th

Radical imaginings: Feminism, protest and cultural power with Kelly Gellatly

MAPH
2-3pm
free

Elvis RICHARDSON & Virginia FRASER
FEMMO ™ 2014 
silkscreen on cotton 
Art Gallery of Ballarat Collection 
donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural 
Gift Program by Elvis Richardson 2022

Join MAPH for this panel talk, which brings together powerhouses whose practices have reshaped the art world from the ground up: Kyla McFarlane and Meredith Rogers, alongside curator and institutional leader Kelly Gellatly, and artist/activist Elvis Richardson, founder of The Countess Report.

Together, they will explore the role of feminist protest in shaping Australia’s cultural institutions, from radical performance and publishing in the 1970s to today’s battles for representation, equity and structural change. The conversation will weave personal memory with political insight, considering how protest has functioned not just on the streets – but within the archive, the exhibition and the image itself.

RSVP