20 August – 11 September, 2026
Opening celebration: Thursday 20 August, 5-7pm

Drawing from the UMSU Art Collection's recent acquisitions, Unstable Ground brings ten works into a shifting and changing sphere of relation, working across the notion of an unstable ground through literal, remembered, and manufactured applications.

Developed within the unresolved context of art school itself, these acquisitions consider how the site of making shapes the artwork that emerges from it. Acquired over several years from VCA graduate shows, the student context is understood here as its own unstable ground; a site of development for artistic voice not yet fixed.

Some works address this literally, interrogating systems of colonial violence and the intergenerational trauma they inflict while, in the same breath, carrying collective memory and connection to Country forward.

Others locate instability inward, on the threshold between consciousness and unconsciousness, or in memories and personal mythologies; narratives that reflect larger socio-political inheritances: fragmented and disconnected relationships to land, culture, memory or identity.

Others find it in questioning what is made; in the hegemonic value systems, ideologies, and aesthetics that have been inherited rather than chosen: dark humour juxtaposed with art history, or an interrogation of the profit and violence hidden inside what we're taught to find beautiful.

Across all three sites, artists sit in overlap between spheres, revealing the commonalities between what is inherited, remembered, and made.

Curatorium

Mi-Chieh Chen is a Master of Arts and Cultural Management graduate interested in exhibition design, audience engagement, and cross-cultural perspectives. Alongside volunteering with the George Paton Gallery and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), she works for UMSU and the Affordable Art Fair Melbourne, and has experience as an Engagement Intern at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) for Future Selves.

Olivia McRae is a Master of Art Curatorship student interested in arts writing and curatorial studies. Alongside volunteering with the George Paton Gallery, she is a Curatorial Intern with The University of Melbourne’s Museums and Collections and previously co-curated Liminal Encounters at Buxton Contemporary.

Daphne Papas is a third-year Bachelor of Arts student majoring in Art History with a minor in Japanese studies. Aside from volunteering with the George Paton Gallery, she is particularly interested in collection management and registrar work and is hoping to pursue this path in her postgraduate studies.