New work in By Necessity presented by Alta Forma

Andrea Eckersley, 2026, Ombre Inferential, dye reactive printed silk dress, wool and steel studio chair with light.

Alta Forma is delighted to present By Necessity, featuring John Brooks, Andrea Eckersley, Jacquelyn Fang Greenbank, Leah Muddle, Dell Stewart, Meredith Turnbull and Mashara Wachjudy. This exhibition takes place across Daine Singer (Bulleke-bek/Brunswick) and Alta Forma (Naarm/St Kilda Road, Melbourne).

Opening celebration at Daine Singer

2-4pm Saturday 2 May

Exhibition dates:

2 May – 30 May 2026

By Necessity features artists who engage with textiles in diverse ways. It examines how the gestures of making are guided by principles of necessity including: a direct relationship to the body and the body in space; with humour, memory and politics through image making; through compulsion, repurposing, world building and ideas of sustainability. By Necessity examines how visual art, craft and design-based practices utilise the idea of necessity to drive and sustain practice. By Necessity is presented as part of Melbourne Design Week (MDW), 2026.

'Quotient Set' installation at Carlton Library, City of Yarra

‘Quotient Set’ Carlton Library Light boxes

Quotient Set is a series of collaged art works installed in the Carlton Library Light Boxes in the City of Yarra from Friday 26 September 2025 – Thursday 26 March 2026. These images are constructed from the folding of 19th century maps of the immediate area surrounding the Library representing a contested time in our colonial past when Indigenous land was being parceled off and sold as property of the state.

THIS SATURDAY: Radical Fashion Exercises Melbourne Launch + Panel Discussion at Perimeter Books

Radical Fashion Exercises: A Workbook of Modes and Methods

Editors Daphne Mohajer va Pesaran and Laura Gardner warmly invite you to celebrate and launch their book Radical Fashion Exercises: A Workbook of Modes and Methods, published by Valiz, at Perimeter Books (734 High St, Thornbury) this Saturday (September 9) from 3-5pm.

To coincide with the launch, we (the book's editors Daphne and Laura) will be joined by contributors and fashion practitioners Andrea Eckersley, Annie Wu, Adele Varcoe and Kate Meakin for a discussion on the radical possibilities of experimental and critical fashion practice and education. A casual celebration with light refreshments will follow the panel discussion.

Further details can be found on the event listing on Perimeter's website. 

Over one hundred tried, tested, and speculative exercises that expand the way we look at fashion, how we are part of its system, and how we can practice fashion otherwise. 

Radical Fashion Exercises contains a copious collection of bottom-up activities, prompts, and workshops designed by contributors (from all around the globe), who explore fashion in an expanded field. Designers, curators, artists, educators, fashion practitioners, DIY home sewers, students, and other creatives responded to the book’s open call with contributions that challenge how to practice fashion and reflect on its systems, politics and economics. The exercises collected in this book embrace interdisciplinarity, experimentation, and aesthetics and widen fashion’s horizons as a medium for expression, embodiment and sociality.

Radical Fashion Exercises assembles methods for learning and practicing fashion in meaningful, radical and responsible ways. The book is an inspiring tool for design students, designers, writers, and practitioners of diverse disciplines to challenge fashion as a commodity and polluting structure in these times of uncertainty and upheaval.

304 pages, 22 x 15 cm, softcover, Valiz (Amsterdam).