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Project8 Gallery

Project8 is a contemporary art space in Melbourne dedicated to speculative poetic and material innovation.

01/09/2026

Last week to see 'Impractical Companions' at Project8, including Natalie Thomas’s 'Puppy' 🐚

Wednesday–Saturday, 11am–5pm.
Closing 5 September.

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NATALIE THOMAS
'Puppy', 2013
Shells and adhesive on fibreglass
85 × 45 × 77 cm

Photography: Lucy Foster.

28/08/2026

SUZIE IDIENS

Suzie Idiens turns the support materials of the studio into the work itself. Blue tape, bubble wrap, cardboard and raw canvas — usually used for packing, protection, mock-ups and drafting — are brought from the periphery of her practice into view.

Across four works, a single form is repeated in different materials. Three are wall-mounted; another rests on the floor, clinging partly to the wall as though it has slipped from the final hang. Together they form a motley crew: insecure and slightly awkward, resisting the sense that the form should resolve into something useful.

The forms may be impractical, yet the materials themselves remain essential support structures for Idiens’ practice.

Part of 'Impractical Companions', on view at Project8 until 5 September.

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Left to right: Suzie Idiens, 'Structure (Blue Tape)', 'Structure (Blue Tape & Bubble Wrap)', 'Structure (Canvas)' and 'Structure (Cardboard)', all 2026.

Photography: Lucy Foster.

26/08/2026

RAVI AVASTI
'Bolgolam's Articles', 2026
Cedar
215 × 145 × 210 cm

At once absurd and vulnerable, 'Bolgolam's Articles' sits awkwardly beneath the gallery’s lowered ceiling, its monumental scale heightened by the surrounding architecture as a reminder of the burdens of duty and the acts of care through which they are borne.

The work extends Ravi Avasti’s ongoing 'Human Acts' series, which explores the friction between what is real and what is accurate. Beginning with isometric drawings of chairs, Avasti translates these precise but spatially unreal representations into three dimensions, cutting and reforming the resulting structures.

For 'Bolgolam's Articles', Avasti departs from the intuitively altered forms of earlier works, presenting a single monumental chair derived from the elaborate swearing ritual imposed upon Gulliver before his release in 'Gulliver's Travels'. Through this translation, the work considers the complexity of obligation, duty and ritual, and the pleasure of serving.

Part of 'Impractical Companions', on view at Project8 until 5 September.

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Installation views of Ravi Avasti, 'Bolgolam's Articles', 2026.
Photography: Lucy Foster.

24/08/2026

PAUL DONALD
'Vanishing Angle' 2026
Mixed media installation including 4K video with sound, wood, rope
and sunscreen

In 'Vanishing Angle', Paul Donald turns to the mythologies through which masculinity and identity are constructed and performed. Drawing on colonial signifiers including the memorial obelisk and HMS 'Endeavour', Donald brings sculpture, performance and video together to examine what happens when the symbols used to negotiate identity prove incomplete, misrepresented or counterfeit.

His own body enters this unstable field through the language of “manly work”, while allowing for failure and abjection. In doing so, Donald unsettles inherited models of masculinity at a moment when their more dangerous forms appear newly aspirational.

Part of 'Impractical Companions', continuing this week at Project8.
Wednesday–Saturday, 11am–5pm.

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Installation views of Paul Donald, 'Vanishing Angle', 2026.
Photography: Lucy Foster.

21/08/2026

Phaptawan Suwannakudt’s works in 'Impractical Companions' trace a process of transferring, layering and reworking images across paper and pigment.

At left, 'The Process of making' (2013) is an archival work demonstrating Suwannakudt’s mural-making process, using drafting paper, ink and pigment to transfer images through a perforated linear design. Alongside it, 'The Hidden Screen, Laplae (ลับแล)' (2026), one of a series of 36 panels, continues this process through perforated paper and pigment.

Drawing on Suwannakudt’s early training in temple mural painting in Thailand, her practice uses masking, peeling, adding and erasing to create what she describes as “screens of memory, history, and imagination.”

'Impractical Companions'
On view until 5 September 2026
Wednesday–Saturday, 11am–5pm

Image: Phaptawan Suwannakudt, 'The Process of making' (2013) and 'The Hidden Screen, Laplae (ลับแล)' (2026), installation view, 'Impractical Companions', Project8, 2026. Photography: Lucy Foster.

19/08/2026

NATALIE THOMAS

Drawing on dystopian fiction and art-historical references, Natalie Thomas’s paintings revisit familiar narratives of authority, power and control. From 'Brave New World' to 'Fahrenheit 451', historical stories become a way of looking again at questions of autonomy and subjugation playing out today.

Thomas calls the recent works 'Science Non-Fiction', collapsing the distance between imagined worlds and contemporary life.

Part of 'Impractical Companions', continuing this week at Project8.
Wednesday–Saturday, 11am–5pm.

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Installation view, left to right: Natalie Thomas, 'Day of the Triffids (after John Wyndham)', 2026; 'Animal Farm (after Joan Miro)', 2026; 'Clockwork Orange (Science Non-Fiction Series)', 2024; 'Brave New World (Science Non-Fiction Series)', 2024; 'Fahrenheit 451 (Science Non-Fiction Series)', 2024.

All acrylic on linen. Courtesy of Darren Knight Gallery.
Photography: Lucy Foster

17/08/2026

Siying Zhou’s 'You were once part of me' and 'Hold', 2025–2026, trace relationships between people, pets and the objects through which attachment is carried.

In 'You were once part of me', Chinese hairdresser Ms Zhu shapes Zhou’s hair into the likeness of her greyhound, Wally. Later, in her parents’ apartment, Zhou removes the hairstyle in front of a mirror, the elaborate construction proving difficult to undo.

'Hold' extends this gesture into domestic space. Fridge magnets show photographs Zhou gifted to friends of herself wearing the hairstyle, documented where they have been placed in their homes. The photographs shift between image, gift, keepsake and object, drawing attention to the relationship between giver and receiver.

Across the works, hair, photographs and everyday objects become sites through which friendship, memory and attachment are made material.

Part of 'Impractical Companions', on view at Project8 until 5 September.

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Images 1–3: Installation views of Siying Zhou, 'You were once part of me', 2025–2026, digital videos.
Images 4–5: Siying Zhou, 'Hold', 2025–2026, PVC fridge magnets on magnetic strip.
Photography: Lucy Foster.

14/08/2026

A walkthrough of Impractical Companions, now on view at Project8 until 5 September.

Impractical Companions brings together works that dwell in the quiet, often invisible spaces of companionship, where relations between humans, non-humans, machines, materials and ideas unfold through negotiation, shared attention and being alongside one another.

Featuring Ravi Avasti, Aldo Bilotta, Aleks Danko, Paul Donald, Suzie Idiens, John R Neeson, Phaptawan Suwannakudt, Natalie Thomas and Siying Zhou.

Curated by Kim Donaldson with Jiayang Zhang.
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Video by Zhen Yu
Audio: Hanna Lindgren, ‘In Our House’

12/08/2026

ALDO BILOTTA
Delage Rusted Front Guard 2026
40 × 78 × 170cm

Bilotta is known for building vintage cars from the chassis up, working through a precise knowledge of fabrication, structure and material.

In Delage Rusted Front Guard, rust, patina and the visible traces of age are left intact. Detached from the vehicle, the guard becomes a sculptural object in its own right, carrying its history of use while resisting the impulse to restore or erase.

Part of Impractical Companions, on view at Project8 until 5 September.

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Installation view of Aldo Bilotta, Delage Rusted Front Guard, 2026. Photography: Lucy Foster.

05/08/2026

IMPRACTICAL COMPANIONS continues this week at Project8. Wednesday–Saturday, 11am–5pm.

Not all companionship is practical, visible or measurable. Bringing together artists, designers and makers, the exhibition dwells in the often invisible spaces where creative, collaborative, intimate, ecological and playful relations unfold beyond utility, metrics or recognition.

Featuring Ravi Avasti, Aldo Bilotta, Aleks Danko, Paul Donald, Suzie Idiens, John R Neeson, Phaptawan Suwannakudt, Natalie Thomas and Siying Zhou.

Curated by Kim Donaldson with Jiayang Zhang.

On view until 5 September.

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Image: From left, Ravi Avasti, Bolgolam’s Articles (2026); Natalie Thomas, Puppy (2013); and paintings by John R Neeson. Installation view by Lucy Foster.

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Level 2, 417 Collins Street
Melbourne, VIC
3000

Website

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