2026 marks an important milestone for Linden New Art as the organisation celebrates four decades at the heart of Melbourne’s contemporary art landscape. What began as a family home has gradually become a site for experimental practice and a place where artists and audiences meet.
This anniversary offers a chance to look back on the influences that have shaped Linden while also considering its direction for the future. The building’s long history, and the cultural shifts it has lived through, continue to influence the organisation’s work as it enters its fifth decade.
Across forty years Linden has championed emerging and mid-career artists, nurtured radical thinking and pushed the boundaries of what contemporary art can be. This anniversary honours all that has shaped Linden since its beginning while signalling the institution’s ongoing evolution as a site where contemporary art remains brave, relevant and deeply connected to place.
“For 40 years, Linden New Art has been a vital part of Melbourne’s visual arts landscape. Many artists who went on to build significant careers began their journey with us, and while our programming has evolved, our commitment to championing artists and looking forward has never changed.” Said Vincent Alessi, Director and CEO
Time Moves Through These Walls: 40 years of Linden New Art: 21 February – 17 May
This exhibition traces the rich, multi-layered story of the Linden site, from pre-contact Boonwurrung Country through its periods as a private home and guesthouse to its life as one of Melbourne’s most recognised contemporary art spaces.
The exhibition reflects on the institution’s formative first decade, when experimental installation practices and the artist-run Room 4 collective shaped Linden’s early identity. By revisiting these pivotal years, the exhibition acknowledges Linden’s role as a crucible for artistic experimentation and a space where creative risk has always been welcomed.
The exhibition brings together significant new works by artists including Ernie Althoff, Carolyn Eskdale, Raafat Ishak, Callum Morton, Rose Nolan, Robbie Rowlands, Mitch Mahoney, Fiona Abicare and Ry Haskings. Each artist engages with the building’s architecture, memory and cultural histories, creating a dialogue between past and present.
Althoff’s contributing a site-specific music installation, while Eskdale’s intervention engages the deep history and memory in-cased within the building. Ishak’s sculptural and painted works draw directly on elements of the building’s early life, and Morton’s practice examines the melancholic urban archaeology that prompts us to consider the relationship between art and life.
Nolan’s text-based wall work uses language to engage the gallery’s architecture. Rowlands will cut into walls, doors and floors, revealing the hidden spaces of the building, a reference to the palimpsest of history embedded in sites and places.
Mahoney’s suspended photographic works honour ongoing cultural connections to Country, responding to the building’s early inhabitants, Abicare’s work will respond to the lifestyle and activity of the Michaelis family, the original inhabitants of the home. Haskings reflects on St Kilda’s cultural evolution, drawing connections between its past as a centre of avant-garde activity and the inevitable gentrification and change it faces.
These works collectively reveal the experiences embedded within Linden’s walls. The exhibition offers not a “best of” history, but an interrogation of place, practice and institutional identity.
Maree Clarke: The Long Journey Home: 21 February – 17 May
Presented alongside the anniversary exhibition is a major new commission by celebrated Boonwurrung artist Maree Clarke. The Long Journey Home acknowledges the historical and continuing significance of the Linden site for the Boonwurrung people and asserts a powerful presence on the building’s façade.
Clarke’s monumental photographic work, printed on transparent mesh, partially veils the architecture and transforms it into a spectral silhouette. This gesture disrupts traditional readings of the building and offers a direct challenge to the histories of colonial dominance embedded in the site. Visible 24 hours a day, the installation asserts sovereignty and invites audiences to consider the broader history of the land on which Linden stands.
Time Moves Through These Walls: 40 years of Linden New Art and Maree Clarke: The Long Journey Home will be presented at Linden New Art, St Kilda, from 21 February – 17 May 2026. For more information, visit: www.lindenarts.org for details.
Images: Robbie Rowlands, Forgotten, 2016. Cut and reconfigured found timber – photo by Robbie Rowlands | Rose Nolan, So Far, So Good, 2021. Wall painting, Conners Conners, Melbourne – photo by Christo Crocker | Maree Clarke, The Long Journey Home 8, 2024. digital print on photographic paper, 69 x 102.5 cm, edition of 10. Courtesy of the artist and Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne