Co-founders Clem MacLeod and P. Eldridge bring their open-access learning program, The Compost Library, to Australia with the aim of helping people discover how to reap the personal, social, and political benefits of reading and writing for mental well-being.

On this special occasion, we find inspiration in local and international texts by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula K. Le Guin, and more; confronting ideas of decolonisation in our creating writing, storytelling and gathering. During the session, we invite participants into discussion about these texts and together attempt writing prompts to inspire our creative practices.

With a distinct focus on tender participation and co-creation, The Compost Library provides space for people to gather, share, listen and collectively imagine literary futures. During the course, Worms will have a popup in-gallery shop where you can buy merch, magazines and books.

Tickets are $10 each with a capacity of 35 people. If you want to attend but have difficulty meeting the ticket cost, please reach out and we can consider your individual circumstances on a case by case basis: compost@worm-s.com.

[Book Tickets Here]

The Compost Library acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land upon which we make and facilitate our work, the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung people and their neighbours, the Boonwurrung people of the Eastern Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures; and their Elders past and present. We acknowledge the fact that sovereignty was never ceded and that Aboriginal people are Australia’s first storytellers.

Seventh is excited to announce our open call for the 2025 exhibition program. This year we are doing things a little differently and will be curating a series of group exhibitions. We are seeking applications from people who wish to be part of this collaborative program.

Unlike previous years, we are not requesting detailed project proposals. Instead, we want to get to know you and your practice. Please submit a selection of your work, this can include finished pieces or works in progress that you are keen to develop further and potentially exhibit with us. Alongside your work samples, please provide a brief statement about your practice, including your themes, concepts, or processes. This will help us understand your voice and how it might contribute to a cohesive group exhibition.

Participating artists will receive a fee of $350 for their involvement in a group show.

We strongly encourage applicants to explore Seventh values and ethos, which underpin all our programming. We are committed to fostering an inclusive, experimental, and critically engaged arts space. Our focus is on showcasing diverse perspectives and championing artists at various stages of their careers.

Applications are open to artists working across all mediums and disciplines. Whether you’re a painter, sculptor, digital artist, performance artist, or work within other creative practices, we’d love to hear from you.

How to Apply:

• Submit up to 10 images or files of your work (finished or in progress). Please keep durational samples under 2 minutes each.
  
• Include a short artist statement (maximum 300 words) outlining your practice.
  
• Optional: Provide a brief CV or list of recent exhibitions, projects, or achievements.

Deadline for Submissions: Midnight, Sunday 19 January 2025.

We look forward to discovering your work. If you have any questions or require further information, please don’t hesitate to contact Lucie at lucie@seventhgallery.org.

Apply Here

Seventh and the Women’s Art Register (WAR) are excited to announce a collaborative residency program dedicated to exploring the WAR archive. This residency will run from Wednesday, February 5, to Tuesday, July 8, 2025.

To celebrate WAR's 50th anniversary, we are inviting applications from artists aged 50 and over.

The residency will begin with a guided research period in the feminist archives at WAR. This research will coincide with a studio residency at Seventh, allowing the selected artist to integrate their research into their studio work. The residency will culminate in an exhibition across Seventh's gallery spaces, scheduled from Wednesday, July 9, to Saturday, August 16, 2025.

Applicants must be available for the residency and exhibition dates. These are fixed and cannot be adjusted.

We have compiled a reader featuring an array of different resources related to notions of 'the archive'. We have featured some general texts as well as some resources with a specific focus on the WAR archive. This reading list is not meant to establish rigid criteria or dictate an approach to the project you may wish to develop. Instead, it serves as a starting point — a source of inspiration to encourage you to explore archives and consider ways to engage with them creatively.

Artists, as well as non-traditional researchers are encouraged to apply. The resident will receive a stipend of $3,000, as well as guidance from both WAR and Seventh. The outcome does not need to be proposed in your application, and we are very happy for its form to unfold organically during the residency. In your application we would like to see examples of your work and gain an understanding of how you might engage creatively with the WAR archive.

Applications close at midnight on Sunday, 19 January.

Applicants notified on Tuesday, 28 January.

If you would like to sign up for the information session, or if you have any questions about this EOI, please reach out to Lucie, at lucie@seventhgallery.org

Apply Here

Sapphic Reading and Writing is a six-week, practice-led course designed to support the creative and intellectual development of writers and artists identifying with the sapphic experience, such as among those who are lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, transgender femme, masc, and non-binary. Blending online and in-person sessions, the course offers a unique space for mentorship and artistic growth, enriched by engagement with literary and visual materials.

Led by Ange Glindemann—writer, editor, researcher, and board member at Seventh—this summer program will explore key sapphic themes within both art and literature. Participants will critically engage with influential texts by Anne Carson, Audre Lorde, Monique Wittig, Adrienne Rich, Sara Ahmed, and Jack Halberstam, supported by an extensive supplementary reading list for those keen to explore further. Key themes include queer temporality, low theory, queer use, compulsory heterosexuality, the embodied experience in the lesbian body, the political dimensions of poetry and literature, and lesbian invisibility, among others. The course will also examine significant artworks by both historical and contemporary sapphic artists.

An integral component of this course is collaboration with the Women’s Art Register, where participants will create original written responses to archival materials. The curriculum is further enriched by guest lectures from local academics, artists and writers, fostering a dynamic and multi-faceted exploration of sapphic identity.

Ange Glindemann is a queer and neurodivergent writer, poet and editor based in Naarm. She is a PhD candidate at RMIT, where she is studying situated and spatial writing, and she works as an editor for Books+Publishing, as well as being a member of the board for Seventh Gallery, for which she runs the annual Emerging Writers’ Program.

In her creative practice, she is preoccupied with everyday aesthetics, spatial writing, and ekphrasis, as well as fragmentary and digital writing experiments. She has written for publications such as Archer Magazine, Un Extended and Rabbit, and has participated in several arts writing programs, including the 2022 Writing in the Expanded Field program through ACCA and RMIT’s non/fictionLab.

Course Outcomes

Upon concluding the course, participants will collectively produce a publication that captures the thematic and creative explorations undertaken throughout the program. The gallery will serve as an active studio space, enabling participants to engage in process-based creation and reflection. This will culminate in an exhibition comprising ephemera, notes, visual art, and textual fragments — articulating the collective developmental journey of participants within the course.

The publication launch and the exhibition’s closing event are scheduled for 22 January 2025.

Course Details

Sessions will be held on five Saturdays across December and January, both online via Zoom and in person at Seventh Gallery.

APPILCATIONS FOR SUMMER SCHOOL ARE NOW CLOSED

Expanding the Field presents a series of public banners that consider the intersections of public space, symbology and collective memory of the Citizens Park site. I have used drawing, camera-less photography and digital design to reimagine the idea of civic belonging and to playfully question ideas of identity and connection to place. I have captured ephemeral moments and unstable traces of public life through documenting direct encounters with the park's textures and temporal qualities, along with elements of archival material and lines of sight from the park. Through processes of deconstruction, tracing and reconfiguring, I have applied features of the coat of arms of the Corporation of the City of Richmond with references to the history of the site as a place of trade, leisure and mutual exchange. Expanding the Field invites viewers to reconsider how banners (and flags), traditionally instruments of proposed civic identity and classification, might instead become vehicles for exploring the fluid, overlapping territories of public space, identity and shared memory.

Famam extendere factis
et mon droit
Spread the word of the facts
and my right

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