Bus Projects is a leading not-for-proft, artist-led organisation in Narrm/Melbourne, operating on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation for the last 23 years. We support artists to make and show work on their own terms, with the support of our creative team.
As an Artist-Run Initiative (ARI), we are part of an important history of artists collectivising to create spaces of agency, self-determination, career development and knowledge-sharing within the broader art system. We champion the agency of artists, and recognise the vitally important role that artists play in shaping futures.
Since 2023, we have been located in a stand-alone gallery space in Brunswick East. We operate as a not-for-proft organisation with one part-time employee, an artist committee, and a volunteer board. With generous multi-year funding from the Australian Government through Creative Australia, we are thrilled to be able to guarantee the payment of project fees for all our program artists.
Program
Bus Exhibitions
Our flagship annual program of artist-led exhibitions. In 2025 have we have intentionally slowed down our 2025 Artist Program to offer sustainable and increased support to the artists we work with. This also recognises the capacity of our part-time staff, volunteer board and volunteer team - aligning with our ongoing work in recognising the importance of valuing artists and creative labour. Through our open-call process the Bus Projects Artist Committee have programmed eight exhibitions with longer 6 week exhibition periods and greater time for install and de-install.
Bus Launch
As part of our exhibition program we offer our Bus Launch program. This program supports early-career artists (in their first five years of practice) to debut their first solo exhibition at Bus Projects. All applications that select the optional ‘Bus Launch’ field in the open call are considered for this, and chosen from this pool of applicants. At least 2 of our 8 exhibitions in the 2025 calendar are allocated to Bus Launch applicants.
Bus Engages
Our public programs include events, workshops, panel discussions, and other knowledge-exchange and learning opportunities. This can sit alongside exhibitions, or be standalone programs.
Bus Projects 2025 artistic program is assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
Kiera Brew Kurec(Panel Discussions) Archiving the Temporal: Emanate
Accompanying Kiera Brew Kurec’s project Archiving the Temporal: Emanate, Bus Projects will be hosting a public program incorporating three panel discussions with esteemed Australian and International performance practitioners, academics and historians over the month of April. The discussions encompass ritual as a basis for performance making, ethical reinterpretation/re-performance, and methodologies in performance archiving. These talks are facilitated by Kiera Brew Kurec, generously hosted by Bus Projects and supported by the City of Yarra.
Archiving the Temporal: Emanate was an intimate performance exploring the possibilities of preserving and archiving performance practice beyond photographic and video documentation. Using ritual as a framework for preservation, Archiving the Temporal: Emanate asks the audience to become custodians of the performance, then to pass on the performance beyond its original viewing and out into the wider community. The performance will be accompanied by a series of online discussions which have been generously supported by the City of Yarra small project grants.
Curated by Grace McQuilten and Amy Spiers, with Dewi Cooke and The Social Studio, David Mackenzie and Youthworx, and Irine Vela and Outer Urban ProjectsTakeover
We are excited to announce the upcoming Bus Projects 2021 Online Fundraiser. Join us, Tuesday 16th November, 6–8pm, on Instagram to purchase original artworks by our community of artists!
Arini Byng, Sean Dockray, Tamsen Hopkinson, Steven Rhall, Jacqui Shelton, Fayen d'Evie, Public OfficeMeans, of Production
Means, of Production is an experiment in building open-source software in an open dialog with a group of artists, in order to try and expand the idea of how artworks can live and evolve in the peer-to-peer space. It is a collaborative project between Bus Projects, Public Officeand six Melbourne-based artists. Funded as a result of Covid-19, initially the ideas sprung from an obvious lack of tools for making art works solely for an ephemeral, digital space. That’s what we hope to shift through this process.
Presented as part of Walking in the configuration of infinity, Join members of RMIT’s research group, the non/fictionLab, for a series of participatory events on writing walking.
Sandra Bridie and Melody EllisQ & A Walking in the configuration of infinity
Melody and Sandra discuss their project Walking in the configuration of infinity, which combined a series of Walkshops presented by members of nonfictionLab, a walking lecture and performance by Alice Cummins,and the inaugural Reading Room presentation at Bus.
To coincide with the first iteration of ‘Compassionate Grounds: Ten Years on in Tohoku’, curator Emily Wakeling will give a curatorial talk on the project on Saturday 8th May from 2pm.
“…the rhythm of walking took the song into the body. Through the body, song became dance, which in turn became ceremony.” Songlines, Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly.
Presented at Sylvia Staehli Theatre, Dancehouse, That Which Was Once Familiar (TWWOF) investigates how culture inscribes gender and sexuality onto the flesh sacks we walk around in… our bodies.
Please join us at Bus Projects this Saturday 10th April, 3.30-5.30pm, for the ‘True Colours’ catalogue launch. There will be performances by En.V, Fimo, and a secret guest.
Alongside a community feast, ‘For The Love of Leftovers’, the epilogue to F.O.C.U.S. In the interest of keeping a waste-free practice, Alisa Tanaka-King will be cooking up the leftover ingredients from F.O.C.U.S and will be hosting an open event for the local community, promoting sustainability and communal eating. All are welcome!
‘Three Retracings’ is a sound publication that explores a process of returning, retracing and re-listening in urban space. Recorded periodically across three and a half years in Narrm Melbourne, Kaifeng and Suzhou; nine compositions form a set of sonic relations between neighbourhoods undergoing urban transformation in Australia and China. Placing three accumulative listenings in conversation across these contexts, the publication interrogates the contentious role of the field recordist as an itinerant documenter, archive-maker, visitor and tourist.
OUT OF BOUNDS is a series of performances and conversations with Australian artists that navigates the intricacies of their art practice, the way they have adapted to the world in isolation and their reflections on the emerging art world right now.
Darcey Bella Arnold’s practice considers the artists’ close and unique relationship with her mother, Jennifer. Jennifer has an acquired brain injury, which has altered her use of language.
Join us for a virtual lecture by Siona Wilson to mark the screening of Women of the Rhondda as part of the Bodies of Work film series curated by Benison Kilby.
Concentric Curriculum is an artist-led parallel-school program embracing non-institutional, self-organised approaches to education and made in collaboration with local communities. This program enables artists and arts professionals to become creative collaborators and co-producers with diverse communities, resulting in long-term collaborations and sustained knowledge sharing.
‘Field Notes from Care Workers’ is a series of encounters between human and more-than-human beings who consider care as a part of their work. Broadcasted live weekly on Bus Radio.
Born from interviews with close friends about vulnerability, ‘Ourselves’ explores the risk perceived in baring oneself and the value of support in constructing autonomous and unfiltered spaces. Presented on Bus TB on Wednesday 2 September, 7pm
Melanie Jame Wolf, Bus TVThree Possibilities Walk Into A Bar (TONIGHT reprise)
Three Possibilities Walk Into A Bar (TONIGHT reprise) is a music video for a performance text. This text first appeared in a 2019 choreographic work called TONIGHT.
Geoff Robinson, Ying-Lan DannLower Moonee Ponds Creek Tributary Project
Lower Moonee Ponds Creek Tributary Project is an audio work that investigates the redirected, hidden and remnant creek tributaries of inner northwest Melbourne.
Mira Loew, and Jane Frances Dunlop, Bus TVfull moon to new moon (hands, fastness, surprise) & other exchanges
For Bus TV, Loew and Dunlop share a new work that is the consequence of a set of exchanges occurring over spring 2020. A series of videos form an intimate conversation about distance, isolation, depression and the consequences of stopping by choice and by necessity.
Chantelle Mitchell and Jaxon Waterhouse, Concentric CurriculumAbyss Lessons: Vortextual Thinking amidst the Ecological Turn EOI
Abyss Lessons is a five part curriculum, exploring, through geologic and hydrologic states, our human and other-than-human entanglements through depth as a measure of being.
‘Casual Stain’ is a radio play based on Aaron Billings’ own experience working at a multi-national retail & homewares store as the Pandemic hit. Released Fortnightly on Thursday evening at 7pm. The next episode will air on Thursday 23 July.
Living Room is a series of short films by visual artist Nina Sanadze. Each film presents a portrait of a Melbourne artist captured in their home studio and sometimes at their job too.
Jacina Leong, Concentric CurriculumThinking with, and acting from, this place: caring in and through the ethics, methods and purposes of our practices Open Call
Bus Projects and Jacina Leong invite you to submit an expression of interest for this free, four-part workshop will take place via Zoom, facilitated by artist-curator, Jacina Leong.
Eleanor Duffin (born Wexford, Ireland, currently lives and works in Bristol, UK) is a visual artist whose works are predominantly sculptural in nature. She employs a process of speculative questioning that draws influence from varied disparate ideas and anecdotes within anthropology, literature, physics and art history. She is interested in things that have a sense of self conscious autonomy and the potential to be generative agents.
Gertrude Talks is weekly discussion series produced in partnership with Gertrude Contemporary. Each week a new theme will be unpacked by host Georgia Banks with past and present Gertrude studio artists.
Caring for the Ecology is a show on Bus Radio that amplifies important conversation about the collaborative, collectivist and organisational structures that impact the way we work as arts workers and cultural producers.
A music show presenting a mix of politically inclined tracks across all genres to help you through the day. Enjoy mixes by the Bus team as well as guest programmers during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Departed Acts is a performance-lecture series that invites Victorian artists, writers and curators to recall the experience of a pivotal exhibition or artwork that has influenced their practice.
Hosted by Bus Projects and Liquid ArchitectureCollective-Kolektif: an Indonesia-Australia dialogue on artist collectives
‘Collective-Kolektif’ hosts Indonesian collectives including KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, Ace House, OMNI space, Ruang MES 56, and ruangrupa; alongside Melbourne-based groups Her Africa Is Real, Hyphenated Projects, eleven-collective, and Sound School, with more to be announced.
Archie Barry will present a thread of curated readings from their diary entries written between 1999 and 2019, laced together with excerpts of affect theory, linguistics and existential philosophy. Polyvocal and correlative, the presentation searches for ramified language that could function (or dysfunction) to touch the perpetual flux of personhood.
MUSIK BOX is an ongoing series of experimental music concerts featuring emerging and established artists and musicians. The upcoming concert features electronic music.
Please join us on Saturday 30 November from 2 - 4pm for ‘The Design Plot’. This will be the final event at Bus Projects’ current Rokeby st site. ‘The Design Plot’ is helping us say goodbye to our site that we have occupied since 2013 before we move into our new site at CAP in 2020.
Tara Cook, Edwin Jurriens, Jessica O’Brien, Nella Themelios, Agung Nugroho Widhi, Tristan Jalleh, Eugenia Lim and Rowan McNaught. Chaired by Channon GoodwinPut Up a Signal Forum
Sarah Byrne, Eric Demetriou, Jaya Fausch, Andy Hutson, Cheralyn Lim, Taree Mackenzie, Lyndal May Stewart, Jaime Powell, Made Spencer-Castle, Fiona Williams, SHOP SHOPHOUSEWARMING
Snawklor, Gugg, Super Star, Fatti Frances, Helen Johnson, Andy McClelland and Jason Heller with Lulu Quintella, Sian and the Velantas, Norkiro Nakamura, Nat McQuadeBus Projects Closing Party
