Five Walls

Five Walls FIVE WALLS Gallery is an artist-led commercial art gallery located in central Footscray.

This is the final week to see Merric Brettle’s striking exhibition PSYCHOPOMP 3 – SURFACE TENSION. The exhibition conclu...
19/08/2026

This is the final week to see Merric Brettle’s striking exhibition PSYCHOPOMP 3 – SURFACE TENSION. The exhibition concludes this Saturday at 5pm. For a catalogue of available works contact the gallery on [email protected]

Open Wed-Sat 12-5pm
Misuzu Ueda

Pictured:
Merric Brettle
Pattern Finding 58
2026
autopaint and vinyl on board
52.5 x 42 cm
merric

This is the final week to see Merric Brettle’s striking exhibition PSYCHOPOMP 3 – SURFACE TENSION. The exhibition concludes this Saturday at 5pm.

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Pictured:
Merric Brettle
Pattern Finding 63
2026
autopaint and vinyl on board
52.5 x 42 cm

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Pictured:
Merric Brettle
Pattern Finding 58
2026
autopaint and vinyl on board
52.5 x 42 cm

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Pictured
Merric Brettle
Sense Data - Perspectives on Feedback 1
2026
autopaint, steel and vinyl on board
52.5 x 42 cm approx

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Pictured
Merric Brettle
Sense Data - Perspectives on Feedback 2
2026
autopaint, steel and vinyl on board
52.5 x 42 cm approx.

-Continuing today is Silver, including this stunning works by Shuhei Fukuda. Silver is less a colour than a condition of...
14/08/2026

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Continuing today is Silver, including this stunning works by Shuhei Fukuda.

Silver is less a colour than a condition of light. It exists in continual negotiation with its surroundings, changing with atmosphere, reflection and time. Never entirely fixed, it oscillates between presence and absence, surface and depth, object and perception. In this exhibition, silver becomes an active field through which material, space and experience are brought into relation.

Across the practices of Andrew Browne, John Nixon, Lachlan Stonehouse and Shuhei Fukuda, silver is approached not as a shared aesthetic but as a conceptual proposition. It reflects, absorbs and transforms. It carries associations of industry and technology, ritual and ornament, the celestial and the everyday. Simultaneously reflective and elusive, silver resists certainty, continually returning the viewer to the act of looking itself.

In Shuhei Fukuda (b.1997)’s practice, silver is both medium and collaborator. Working with traditional J*panese materials and techniques, he embraces the inherent instability of silver leaf, allowing it to tarnish through its interaction with air, humidity and sulphur. Rather than resisting change, Fukuda understands transformation as the work’s essential condition. Time is not represented but materially inscribed, with each work becoming a record of the ongoing relationship between nature, material and human intervention. His works propose an Eastern understanding of impermanence, where beauty emerges through continual transformation rather than permanence.. (Extract - full essay available on our website)

Aaron Martin, 2026

Pictured:
Shuhei Fukuda
Quiet Presence 005-011
2026
J*panese paper, Silver leaf, Cinnabar
65.5 x 45.5 x 3 cm

All images by Simon Strong

Shuhei Fukuda

Andrew Browne appears courtesy of Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
John Nixon appears courtesy of the Estate of John Nixon and Anna Schwartz Projects, Melbourne

For a catalogue of available works contact Missy at [email protected] Misuzu Ueda

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Shuhei Fukuda
Quiet Presence 005-012
2026
J*panese paper, Silver leaf, Cinnabar
65.5 x 45.5 x 3 cm

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Shuhei Fukuda
Quiet Presence 005-013
2026
J*p

-Continuing today is Silver, including this striking work by Lachlan Stonehouse. Silver is less a colour than a conditio...
12/08/2026

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Continuing today is Silver, including this striking work by Lachlan Stonehouse.

Silver is less a colour than a condition of light. It exists in continual negotiation with its surroundings, changing with atmosphere, reflection and time. Never entirely fixed, it oscillates between presence and absence, surface and depth, object and perception. In this exhibition, silver becomes an active field through which material, space and experience are brought into relation.

Across the practices of Andrew Browne, John Nixon, Lachlan Stonehouse and Shuhei Fukuda, silver is approached not as a shared aesthetic but as a conceptual proposition. It reflects, absorbs and transforms. It carries associations of industry and technology, ritual and ornament, the celestial and the everyday. Simultaneously reflective and elusive, silver resists certainty, continually returning the viewer to the act of looking itself.

Lachlan Stonehouse (b.1999) similarly examines the fundamental structures of painting through the language of repetition, pattern and the grid. Drawing upon the legacies of Modernism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism, his meticulously constructed surfaces merge hand-made and fabricated processes to produce optical rhythms that shift with changing light. The reflective qualities of silver heighten these perceptual effects, activating the surface as something continually experienced rather than simply observed. (Extract - full essay available on our website)

Aaron Martin, 2026

Pictured:
Lachlan Stonehouse
Happiness Machine
2026
87 x 87 cm
oil, cotton webbing, calico, thread, steel bolts, stainless steel frame
Credits: Fabrication technical Assistance: Karin Otto Melbourne Sewing

All images by Simon Strong

Lachlan Stonehouse

Andrew Browne appears courtesy of Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
John Nixon appears courtesy of the Estate of John Nixon and Anna Schwartz Projects, Melbourne

For a catalogue of available works contact Missy at [email protected] Misuzu Ueda

Continuing today is Silver and includes these remarkable works by Andrew Browne: Silver is less a colour than a conditio...
07/08/2026

Continuing today is Silver and includes these remarkable works by Andrew Browne:

Silver is less a colour than a condition of light. It exists in continual negotiation with its surroundings, changing with atmosphere, reflection and time. Never entirely fixed, it oscillates between presence and absence, surface and depth, object and perception. In this exhibition, silver becomes an active field through which material, space and experience are brought into relation.

Across the practices of Andrew Browne, John Nixon, Lachlan Stonehouse and Shuhei Fukuda, silver is approached not as a shared aesthetic but as a conceptual proposition. It reflects, absorbs and transforms. It carries associations of industry and technology, ritual and ornament, the celestial and the everyday. Simultaneously reflective and elusive, silver resists certainty, continually returning the viewer to the act of looking itself.

Andrew Browne (b.1960)’s paintings inhabit a quieter, more poetic register. For decades his work has explored the intersection of the natural and the constructed world, where illumination, atmosphere and the poetics of the nocturne become vehicles for psychological reflection. Hovering between representation and abstraction, Browne’s restrained surfaces evoke landscapes that feel at once familiar and estranged. Silver becomes a vehicle for this ambiguity, capturing fleeting moments of light while suggesting the spectral, the remembered and the unknowable.

Silver has long occupied an ambiguous position within art and culture. It is the colour of mirrors and machinery, precious objects and industrial manufacture, the moon, memory and preservation. It suggests both permanence and impermanence: valued for its brilliance, yet destined to oxidise and change. Its reflective nature denies a singular image, instead incorporating its environment and those who stand before it. (Extract full essay available on our website)

andrewbrowne.com.au

Andrew Browne appears courtesy of Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne Tolarno Galleries

John Nixon appears courtesy of the Estate of John Nixon and Anna Schwartz Projects, Melbourne

All images by Simon Strong photography. Simon Strong

Misuzu Ueda

Continuing today is Silver, including these significant works by John Nixon. Silver is less a colour than a condition of...
06/08/2026

Continuing today is Silver, including these significant works by John Nixon.

Silver is less a colour than a condition of light. It exists in continual negotiation with its surroundings, changing with atmosphere, reflection and time. Never entirely fixed, it oscillates between presence and absence, surface and depth, object and perception. In this exhibition, silver becomes an active field through which material, space and experience are brought into relation.

Across the practices of Andrew Browne, John Nixon, Lachlan Stonehouse and Shuhei Fukuda, silver is approached not as a shared aesthetic but as a conceptual proposition. It reflects, absorbs and transforms. It carries associations of industry and technology, ritual and ornament, the celestial and the everyday. Simultaneously reflective and elusive, silver resists certainty, continually returning the viewer to the act of looking itself.

For John Nixon (1949–2020), whose lifelong investigation of the monochrome remains a significant contribution to Australian abstraction, colour functioned as a point of departure rather than conclusion. His practice sought to reduce painting to its essential conditions, stripping away narrative and representation to reveal the possibilities of material, form and process. Through his rigorous yet experimental approach, Nixon explored the monochrome as both an idea and an ongoing field of enquiry. Silver extends this investigation, occupying the fertile space between neutrality and luminosity, where colour becomes not an image, but a proposition — a way of thinking through the fundamental conditions of art itself. (Extract - full essay available on our website)

Aaron Martin, 2026

All images by Simon Strong

Andrew Browne appears courtesy of Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
John Nixon appears courtesy of the Estate of John Nixon and Anna Schwartz Projects, Melbourne Anna Schwartz Projects

For a catalogue of available works contact Missy at [email protected]

John Nixon
Silver Monochrome (Briar Hill)
2003
enamel paint on hessian and MDF
51 x 51 x 3 cm

courtesy of the Estate of John Nixon and Anna Schwartz Projects, Melbourne

John Nixon
Silver Monochrome
2005
enamel

NOW REPRESENTING SHUHEI FUKUDAWe are delighted to announce the Australia-wide representation of Tokyo-based artist Shuhe...
05/08/2026

NOW REPRESENTING SHUHEI FUKUDA

We are delighted to announce the Australia-wide representation of Tokyo-based artist Shuhei Fukuda:

Shuhei Fukuda
Born 1997, Gunma, J*pan
Lives and works Tokyo, J*pan

Shuhei Fukuda is a Tokyo-based artist whose practice reinterprets traditional J*panese painting through the use of silver leaf and time-based processes. He received his Doctor of Fine Arts from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2025, where his research explored the unpredictable transformation of materials and the expanded relationship between artwork, environment and time.

Working with silver leaf as both medium and collaborator, Fukuda combines traditional J*panese materials and techniques with a contemporary conceptual approach that explores impermanence, transformation and the agency of natural materials. Rather than preserving a fixed image, he allows his paintings to evolve through their exposure to air, humidity and sulphur, embracing tarnishing as an essential component of the work. Time becomes materially inscribed, with each painting recording an ongoing relationship between material, environment and human intervention. His practice reflects an Eastern aesthetic sensibility in which beauty emerges through continual transformation rather than permanence.

Fukuda has exhibited throughout J*pan and internationally, with solo exhibitions including Fragment of Externality (229 Gallery, Tokyo, 2024), Quiet Colors (RUE VERTE, Copenhagen, 2023), and Change / Unchanging = Universal (3331 Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo, 2019). His work has also been presented in group exhibitions including ashes and silver leaf (Hebel_121, Basel, 2023) and Depository Archaeology (kvalitar, Prague, 2023).
In Australia, Fukuda’s work has been presented by Five Walls Gallery in the curated group exhibitions Minimal Reductive (2025) and Silver (2026), and at the Spring 1883 Art Fair (2025).

Shuhei Fukuda
Misuzu Ueda

Continuing today is PSYCHOPOMP 3 – SURFACE TENSION by Melbourne-based artist MERRIC BRETTLE:Pictured:Pattern Finding 622...
05/08/2026

Continuing today is PSYCHOPOMP 3 – SURFACE TENSION by Melbourne-based artist MERRIC BRETTLE:

Pictured:
Pattern Finding 62
2026
autopaint and vinyl on board
52.5 x 42 cm

Image courtesy of the artist and Five Walls Gallery.

To request a catalogue of available works contact Missy at [email protected]
merric
Misuzu Ueda

Continuing today is PSYCHOPOMP 3 – SURFACE TENSION by Melbourne-based artist MERRIC BRETTLE:

Pictured:
Pattern Finding 61
2026
autopaint and vinyl on board
52.5 x 42 cm

Image courtesy of the artist and Five Walls Gallery.

To request a catalogue of available works contact Missy at [email protected]
merric
Misuzu Ueda

Continuing today is PSYCHOPOMP 3 – SURFACE TENSION by Melbourne-based artist MERRIC BRETTLE:

Pictured:
Pattern Finding 55
2026
autopaint and vinyl on board
52.5 x 42 cm

Image courtesy of the artist and Five Walls Gallery.

To request a catalogue of available works contact Missy at [email protected]
merric
Misuzu Ueda

Continuing today is PSYCHOPOMP 3 – SURFACE TENSION by Melbourne-based artist MERRIC BRETTLE:

Pictured:
Pattern Finding 63
2026
autopaint and vinyl on board
52.5 x 42 cm

Image courtesy of the artist and Five Walls Gallery.

To request a catalogue of available works contact Missy at [email protected]
merric
Misuzu Ueda

Opening this Friday from 6-9pm is Psychopomp 3 – Surface Tension, the first solo exhibition with the gallery by Melbourn...
27/07/2026

Opening this Friday from 6-9pm is Psychopomp 3 – Surface Tension, the first solo exhibition with the gallery by Melbourne-based artist Merric Brettle:

Psychopomp 3 – Surface Tension presents a new body of work by Melbourne-based artist Merric Brettle, exploring how we experience an increasingly image-saturated world.
Drawing on collected and remade imagery, Brettle’s exhibition reflects an ongoing process of observing, analysing and reinterpreting the visual information that surrounds us. The works move between two interconnected approaches: Pattern Finding, which investigates the images we encounter every day, and Reflection, which considers how these images shape our understanding of ourselves and the world.
Working across formal and conceptual abstraction, Brettle transforms familiar visual motifs into layered compositions that encourage slow looking and personal interpretation. Rather than offering fixed meanings, the works invite viewers to discover their own connections through the interplay of image, material and title.
Psychopomp 3 – Surface Tension considers how meaning is constructed in a contemporary culture where images constantly mediate our experience of reality.

Merric has maintained a sustained engagement with the arts over the past three decades, with an extensive exhibition history spanning institutional, commercial and independent spaces across Australia and Asia. His work has been presented at venues including Terajima Kashiwa, Omotesando Garo Tokyo, Neu Contemporary Bangkok, Cartel Bangkok, Genkan Gallery Tokyo, The J*panese Consulate Melbourne, Brenda May Sydney, Peloton Sydney, Blindside Melbourne, Deutscher & Hackett Melbourne, Block Projects and NKN Melbourne.
A recipient of the Monbusho (J*panese Government) Research Scholarship, Merric holds multiple degrees, including Master of Visual Art degrees from Tokyo University of the Arts and Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney.
merric

Final Days to see Soft Geometries:Soft Geometries brings together four Melbourne-based artists whose practices expand th...
23/07/2026

Final Days to see Soft Geometries:

Soft Geometries brings together four Melbourne-based artists whose practices expand the language of geometric abstraction through textile processes. Working across weaving, stitching, embroidery and textile-based construction, Britt Salt, Shannon Slee, Sara Lindsay and Tia Ansell demonstrate that geometry is not confined to the traditions of painting or formal abstraction, but can emerge through tactile processes of making that are deeply connected to labour, materiality and lived experience.
Across the exhibition, geometry is understood not as a fixed system but as a language that can be woven, stitched, unravelled and reconstructed. Grids, repeated structures and accumulated gestures become vehicles through which each artist explores space, memory, architecture, landscape, community and the body. Precision sits alongside intuition; order gives way to subtle disruption. Collectively, the works reveal how textile practices soften the often-rigid language of abstraction, replacing certainty with tactility, movement and human experience.

Britt Salt‘s woven works investigate the relationship between geometry, perception and space. Hovering between art and architecture, her tapestries operate as spatial experiments where line, form and structure continually shift through the viewer’s movement. Drawing on intuitive processes of weaving, Salt embraces interruptions within the woven matrix that generate subtle glitches, visual ambiguities and impossible perspectives. Referencing the spatial paradoxes of M.C. Escher, her works challenge the apparent stability of geometric systems, inviting the eye to linger, adjust and ultimately surrender to a space that is simultaneously ordered and elusive.

Artwork details:

1.
Britt Salt
Neither-Nor
2021
woven wool and cotton, framed in stained timber with
museum glass
95 x 84 cm (framed)

2.
Britt Salt
The Midst
2020
woven wool and cotton, framed in stained timber
97 x 108 cm (framed)
Finalist in the Wangaratta Contemporary Textiles Award 2021

3.
Britt Salt
Holding Tension
2026
steel and cotton
90 cm diameter (installed)

Britt Salt

Misuzu Ueda

Soft Geometries continues this week and includes these delightful works by Shannon Slee:1. Shannon SleeGeranium Rag Pain...
22/07/2026

Soft Geometries continues this week and includes these delightful works by Shannon Slee:

1.
Shannon Slee
Geranium Rag Painting
2024
woven spun wool, pigment,
framed in timber
60 x 33 cm (framed)

2.
Shannon Slee
Lanky Queen Anne’s Lace
2024
artist’s own discarded silk
skirt, hand-dyed linen, linen
remnants, thread, on silk-
linen backing
132 x 132cm

Soft Geometries brings together four Melbourne-based artists whose practices expand the language of geometric abstraction through textile processes. Working across weaving, stitching, embroidery and textile-based construction, Britt Salt, Shannon Slee, Sara Lindsay and Tia Ansell demonstrate that geometry is not confined to the traditions of painting or formal abstraction, but can emerge through tactile processes of making that are deeply connected to labour, materiality and lived experience.

Across the exhibition, geometry is understood not as a fixed system but as a language that can be woven, stitched, unravelled and reconstructed. Grids, repeated structures and accumulated gestures become vehicles through which each artist explores space, memory, architecture, landscape, community and the body. Precision sits alongside intuition; order gives way to subtle disruption. Collectively, the works reveal how textile practices soften the often-rigid language of abstraction, replacing certainty with tactility, movement and human experience.

For Shannon Slee, textile becomes both material and metaphor. Through the slow processes of unpicking, weaving and reconstructing discarded garments, she transforms clothing imbued with personal histories into collective objects that speak to transition, care and shared experience. Her abstract compositions emerge through acts of labour and repair while acknowledging the social histories embedded within textiles. Her ongoing Abortifacients project further extends these ideas by connecting abstract geometries with botanical forms, drawing attention to the historical use of medicinal plants in reproductive healthcare and the overlooked knowledge carried through women’s craft traditions.

Shannon Slee

To request a catalogue of available works contact [email protected]
shengjie wang

Address

1/119 Hopkins Street
Footscray, VIC
3011

Opening Hours

Wednesday 12pm - 5pm
Thursday 12pm - 5pm
Friday 12pm - 5pm
Saturday 12pm - 5pm

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