fortyfivedownstairs

fortyfivedownstairs contains two elegant gallery spaces. The large gallery is a blank canvas, open plan space with two pillars in the centre of the room. The small gallery is also an open plan space, with a single pillar in the middle of the space. The walls in both galleries are painted white and are brick and plaster board. The ceiling is white pressed metal. The floor is hard wood with a waxed finish. We hold exhibitions of either two or four weeks in duration and have a proposal based selection system. Proposals are selected by our exhibition committee and are then scheduled by the gallery manager. We welcome enquiries about exhibiting at fortyfivedownstairs, please email info@fortyfivedownstairs.com or call us on (03) 9662 9966.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, the building at 45 Flinders Lane housed the industrial equipment and cloth bales of the rag trade. In the early 1990s, with Span Galleries on the ground floor, the lower ground warehouse space was first set up as a commercial gallery. Mary Lou Jelbart and Julian Burnside AO QC took over the space, founding fortyfivedownstairs in 2002 with a vision for it to become a unique curated space for both live performance and visual art.

Located in Melbourne’s CBD, fortyfivedownstairs has two exhibition spaces, and a flexible theatre and event venue, which operate all year round. Venturing one floor below street level, the gallery exhibits a diverse range of art forms, from photography, to drawing, to sound art, and more.