AROUND THE BLOCK Winter Screenings
AROUND THE BLOCK
Winter Screenings
Launching at:
Next Wave on Friday 4 July, 6pm
270 Sydney Road, Brunswick VIC 3056
We’re teaming up with our neighbours Next Wave, Michelle Guglielmo Park (260 Sydney Road) and Counihan Gallery to launch an exciting, six-week outdoor screening series of moving image works. Join us for mulled wine by the fire as we celebrate bold experimentation and storytelling beyond the frame.
Guests will take a walk ‘Around the Block’ - stopping by each venue to catch new and recent video works lighting up the night. It’s free, it’s local and will warm up your winter night.
SCREENING PERIOD: July 4 - August 16, 2025
SCREEN TIMES: Thursday / Friday / Saturday evenings (twilight to dawn)
This winter, Blak Dot Gallery lights up the dark with the first of our annual, six-week screening series -transforming our glass entrance into a circular portal for moving image.
Featuring works by April Phillips, Diana Paez and Emma Salmon, the program celebrates bold experimentation and storytelling beyond the frame. From poetic reflections to the wonderfully weird, each piece is created specifically for the round format - inviting passersby to pause, peer in, and experience moving image in a whole new way.
ABOUT THE artists:
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LOOK ▷ SEE (Look to See), 2024
April Phillips
4 – 19 July
6:00pm (Thur, Fri, Sat )
In a world that feels both familiar and new, we set off on a seemingly improbable magical journey, from the depths of a pristine riverbed to the celestial infinite skies, to traverse speculative futures from multiple perspectives. Where is this dreamy, fluid and peaceful world: A parallel existence? A dreamscape? A pocket of deep time?
All the tiny details make us feel connected and in tune, while the mega scale moments make tummy leaps … this is so that we may feel all the layers of our planetary existences.
Looking to see is the act of paying witness to the wonders of our natural world here on Earth, with a nod to the technologies we co-opt in the spirit of innovation. This work leverages the power of perspective, with a play and push in the infinite-scale affordances of the virtual environment, we zoom into the world of a tiny ant and pull out to the edges of the universe.
About April Phillips
April Phillips is a Wiradjuri-Scottish woman of the Galari / Kalari peoples, living and working in regional Australia. Her art practice is cemented in futurism and media arts; as lead artist / director working across moving images, illustration, 3D assets, AR research, and photogrammetry. In 2022 April was awarded the Women in Digital award for excellence, advocacy, innovation and social impact, in recognition of her work in digital arts.
Her practice extends to analogue materials and processes including drawing, printmaking, ceramics and glass. She works within collaborative environments to realise ambitious projects, leading teams to do big things. April employs character design as a narrative tool to explore empathy, fun and form. Her use of vivid colour and unlikely digital processes celebrates the potential of computer art for a new world.
As a founding member of the Friends with Computers collective, April works to playfully engage digital technologies as tools for her art making, with a focus on futurism, human intelligence and ethical methodologies.
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Woven In: Circle of Visibility, 2025
Diana Paez
24 July – 16 August
6:00pm (Thur, Fri, Sat )
Woven In: Circle of Visibility is a circular video work honouring the strength and presence of culturally diverse women in Australia. Originally created for the “Hidden” public art festival in Ballarat, it now loops as a quiet visual meditation in new public contexts.
Silhouettes of walking women - evoking unseen lives - dissolve into intimate portraits: women gazing, standing with pride, exchanging glances. A soundscape of their voices and poem fragments creates a shared space of reflection.
From shadow to light, this is a quiet act of resistance - an offering of visibility and belonging. What does it mean to be truly seen in public space?
About Diana Paez
Diana Paez is a Colombian-Australian documentary filmmaker and visual storyteller based on Wadawurrung Country (Ballarat, Victoria). Her poetic, human-centred practice explores migration, identity, and belonging, often in collaboration with culturally diverse communities. In 2025, she was commissioned for Hidden in Ballarat, presenting Woven In, a circular projection honouring culturally diverse women. Her feature documentary Nuestras Voces premiered at the 2022 Spanish Film Festival and gained international recognition. Expanding into public installations and projection art, Diana is committed to amplifying underrepresented voices and creating emotionally resonant works that foster connection and social cohesion.
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CLASSIC REFRAIN, 2024-5
Emma Salmon
24 July – 16 August
6:00pm (Thur, Fri, Sat )
CLASSIC REFRAIN edits together a classic love song refrain with glitches of Country below and above asphalt to sing feelings of anguish, desire and entrapment in the colony. This video is filmed just down from Boundary Road in Fawkner - a marker of a border used to develop colonial infrastructure and subjugate Aboriginal people, land and movement. Cars made from precious metals and minerals rev over asphalt, itself paving over Wurundjeri wetlands. These cars are a seductive symbol of freedom.
However, they are really a symptom and mechanism of restriction. “Melbourne” was designed for cars, not people, - our movement is dictated by crossings, intersections, petrol prices and concrete. This is especially true in the outer suburbs of our cities as well as remote areas. I’m afraid of driving, but I need to learn how to do it so I can go on Country. This reality is one of the many reasons I wish to sing out ‘set me free’.
As the video goes on, the different singers form a choir whose lyrics are made indecipherable, rendered to just a mass of anguished desire to be set free by the object of their affection. This indecipherable nature is akin to the complicated knots of industry and Country, and my own personal feelings of connection to the suburb I grew up in, mob living down here and my ancestor’s Country, all of which are bound up in one another. I wonder if these knots also include my internet connection. Ultimately, I want this video to advocate for land back and for blakfullas to experience true freedom - in love, self-determination and connection to Country. None of us are free till all of us are free, from the river to sea.
About Emma Salmon
Emma Salmon (b. 2004, Naarm) is an artist of Nyikina and Celtic descent, living on Wurundjeri country. Her practice spans drawing, printmaking, weaving, video, and installation, telling stories of ancestry, family, and community. Alongside her artistic practice she is a writer and set and costume designer for theatre.
As a Stolen Generations descendant, she explores and practices culture through abstracted, intuitive, and memory-based processes, guided by honesty and sustainability. Informed by the industrial northern suburbs and digital cultures she grew up within, her practice challenges prescribed ‘Australian’ identities, settler-Indigenous relations, and mystifications of Indigeneity. She has exhibited at Incinerator Gallery, 138 Gallery and Trocadero Projects, and is currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Drawing and Printmaking) at VCA.
