State Library Victoria (SLV)

The State Library of Victoria is Australia’s oldest public library and one of the first free public libraries in the world.

The softly lit Cowen Gallery is part art exhibition space, part information hub. Part of the Library’s Gateway Zone, it’s where you can ask for assistance from the staffed Gateway service point. You can also find information by browsing one of the self-service points. The gallery houses a permanent exhibition of selected artworks from the Library’s Pictures Collection. The current selection includes portraits and landscapes, and historical and contemporary works to create connections and tell new stories.

The stories and collection items presented in the Victoria Gallery change annually, providing an immersive and interactive experience for visitors and placing the best of Victoria’s many great treasures on public display.

One of the most historic parts of the Library, the Keith Murdoch Gallery is a superior exhibition space. Spaciously designed, with commanding central pillars, the gallery has hosted a varied menu of entertainment over the years, from art exhibitions and multimedia presentations to blockbuster exhibitions and installations.

State Library Victoria (SLV)

328 Swanston Street Melbourne VIC 3000

03 8664 7000

www.slv.vic.gov.au

The Library building is open 10am-6pm daily.

State Library Victoria (SLV)

The rhythm of creating

In a new collaborative exhibition at PS Art Space, in partnership with Cool Change Contemporary, five artists with process-lead practices contemplate material ethics through actively engaging in slowness and reuse.

Sally Gearon

The ecstatic visions of Isaac Julien

Isaac Julien’s 2022 video work Once Again…(Statues Never Die) exposes the unseen emotional registers inherent to the struggle for colonial repatriation by mapping the places where poetics and politics intersect.

Michael Sun

Scaling new heights

A new exhibition at the Australian National Capital Artists Inc (ANCA) asks 12 artists—including Dan Powers, S.A.Adair, Emma Beer and Lisa Sammut—to explore scale: from the miniature to the monumental.

Michelle Wang

Trevor Vickers and the abstraction of light

Trevor Vickers reflects on his six-decade career in hard-edged abstraction, the value that Perth’s light offers painters, and how his latest exhibition at Art Collective WA focuses on a series of quieter works.

Steve Dow

Icons from Italy

Heide Museum of Modern Art’s summer blockbuster exhibition is unveiling the breadth and beauty of Italian modernism through design. With over 170 objects spanning sixty years, Molto Bello explores the cultural impact of this period of creativity and invention.

Art Guide Australia

Reviving the potter’s quarter

In an expansive show at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, seven leading Australian ceramic artists have reinvigorated one of Australia’s oldest museum collections by creating a contemporary potter’s quarter—known as the ‘kerameikos’ in Ancient Greece.

Michelle Wang