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AROUND THE BLOCK Winter Screenings
Jul
4
to 16 Aug
Events

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.

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Nov
21
7:30 pm19:30
Events

Existing on Two Planes | PASIFIKA STORYTELLERS COLLECTIVE

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An online night of stories and omens with the Pasifika Storytellers Collective part of Melbourne fringe 2020.

About this Event

Omens, Portents and messages from the other side. Stories of dreams, ancestral spirit visitors and the messages we receive daily as we walk through life. They are often warnings or telling of family events or suffering. A portent of death or of future birth. A warning of impending pain or a harbinger of future happiness.

As Indigenous and First Nations people we walk through life tuned into the spirit plane as well as the living plane. We weave mana and meaning into the things we create and understand that the spirituality of things is integral to its existence in the material world.

This event is hosted by the Pasifika Storytellers Collective in collaboration with Colectiva Abya Yala a as part of a shared series of events “Around the fire”. An opportunity for the two collectives (both housed at Blakademy) to meet 'around a fire', to share and engage in embodied knowledge and poetics that have migrated and traveled through time and territories of the South Pacific.

Join both Collectives for an online evening of sharing poetry, performance and woven words over zoom.

Register here for link.

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/existing-on-two-planes-pasifika-storytellers-collective-tickets-128476597963

PASIFIKA STORYTELLERS COLLECTIVE ARTISTS

Veisinia Tonga

Veisinia is a Tongan Kakala artist and Storyteller living in Narrm. With a background inJournalism and Floristry. Her art practice with Kakala (plant material) uses the traditional floristry practices of Tonga/Pacifika. As a writer, Veisinia has been published in various publications in New Zealand. Currently working on screenplays and a play with development funding. Veisinia sees a need for a vehicle to help elevate Pasifika narratives and to empower the Pasifika community to tell their own stories. She is working to facilitate the transfer of stories from elders (knowledge keepers) to the younger generation in order to continue the oral storytelling traditions of our Pasifika cultures, keenly aware of her role as a future knowledge keeper, she takes this responsibility seriously and is actively seeking knowledge and understanding by sitting at the feet of her cultural elders. Co-founder of Pasifika Storytellers Collective and Tongan Cultural group, Manava.

Mele-Ane Havea

Mele-Ane is a first generation Tongan Dutch Australian, who lives, works and creates on the land of the Kulin Nations. She is passionate about the intersection of First Nations wisdom, purpose led business and believes in the immense power of storytelling for change.

Her storytelling is an exploration of the many questions that arise when trying to live and love fully in the space between.

Grace Vanilau

Grace Vanilau is a Naarm based Inter-disciplinary artist and Community Cultural Development practitioner of Samoan descent. She morphs between multiple disciplines; singing, spoken word/oratory, weaving, writing and sometimes dancer - all while balancing motherhood. Born and bred in Otautahi she moved to Melbourne in 1996. She is currently working with Te Pasifika Redevelopment Team at the Melbourne Museums as a Cultural Consultant.

Seini F. Taumoepeau

Seini F. Taumoepeau, a.k.a SistaNative is a veteran professional of Oceanic Arts, Media & Cultural sectors in Australia - Songwoman & Orator.

The Founder of OceaniaX & LELEI Wellness, Seini is an Award winning Performer, International Presenter & Educator and she continues to dedicate her life to empower all peoples, with a specific First Nations focus on the Oceanic region towards Self-Determination.

Marita Davies

Marita Davies is an Australian/I-Kiribati writer. A storyteller at heart, Marita explores Pacific issues including women, health, domestic violence and climate change. She is passionate about recreating the animated and insightful oral storytelling of Pacific Islanders in various forms. Marita is a children’s book author and has written for frankie, The Guardian, The Big Issue and Dumbo Feather.

Lay the Mystic

Lay the Mystic is a lyrical poet, musician and dedicated cubby-fort maker based in Narrm.

His current works are centred around intimacy, all things close being both a lens to understand societal or cultural issues, and a landscape to enact change.

Natalia Mann

Natalia Mann is a Samoan harpist, composer and resonance artist for whom music is a mode of discovery, a language which connects us with the intelligence of our universe. Mann's art tests our perceived boundaries of reality, connecting people with their own subtle consciousness to experience heightened awareness of their environments. Her projects are social, interactive and experimental.

Jessica Taruna Paraha

Jessica Taruna Paraha is a multi-disciplinary artist who likes to look at her practice as a loving act of translation. She is a Ngati Hine Māori woman living on Cadigal land, and her translations come from her whakapapa, through recalling them she pays tribute to her tīpuna and the many lands she inhabits.

She is a member of the Pasifika Storytellers collective, is a current recipient of the Emerging Writers Festival’s at home residency program and currently works as a lead artist at the Youth Arts organisation Outloud, delivering social impact arts projects to young people in Western Sydney.

María José Herrera

Maria Jose Herrera is a Chilean migrant woman based in Naarm (Melbourne). Reader, writer and feminist activist. Currently growing roots in her own garden, evolving seasonally and flowering in Autumn. Her poetry is the result of a long journey of understanding the meaning of life and her own inner world in connection with nature.

Alejandra Marín Oyarce

Chilean Actress and Theatre Director. She has worked in Performing Arts for more than 10 years. ​In October 2017, she moved to Melbourne, Australia where she has been part of the Company The Bridge - Teatro Latino. She participated at the MELBOURNEFRINGEFESTIVAL2018withtheplay‘​Beasts’a​ tLaMamaTheatre.

During the last two years she has also been doing Drama and Movement Workshops and has been actively participating in the Colectiva Abya Yala and Latinx Feminists Melbourne.

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This event has been proudly supported by Moreland City Council through the 2020 Flourish: Arts Recovery Grant program. AROUND THE FIRE

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Jun
30
to 1 Jul
Events

Umu preparation Demonstration

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11 am : Umu preparation Demonstration: The Umu is a traditional way of cooking, and earthen oven, heated by rocks and covered by banana or breadfruit leaf’s to trap heat and cook food.

1pm: Community To’ona’i(Feast) and Samoa Faafiafiaga(Entertainment):

Performances by the Nesian Pearls and the Miss Samoa Victoria Contestants 2019

 

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NATIVE HANDS AT MELBOURNE ART FAIR
Aug
3
to 5 Aug
Events

NATIVE HANDS AT MELBOURNE ART FAIR

The Blak Dot Gallery Project Room at Melbourne Art Fiar will bring together the work of Kirsten Lyttle who is of Māori descent, Lisa Hilli who was born in Raboul - PNG, and New Zealand-born Tongan woman Frances Tapueluelu alongside local Aboriginal artists Vicki Couzens and Gina Bundle….

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ROBERT K CHAMPION
Mar
16
8:00 pm20:00
Events

ROBERT K CHAMPION

ROBERT CHAMPION


DATEFRIDAY MARCH 16
TIME8PM - 9PM

Robert K Champion moves audiences with his haunting guitar music and compelling stories of life, love and loss across the Australian landscape. A Gubrun, Kokatha and Mirning man now living and making music in Melbourne, Robert performs original compositions, a combination of country ballads and melodic songs.

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