An exploration of the many tongues through which fire speaks, Incinerator Gallery’s new exhibition, Molten Tongues, will be on display from 31 January to 28 March 2026.
Drawing its curatorial spark from the original function of the Essendon Incinerator, this exhibition explores the myriad ways in which we wield fire across time and place, curated by Jake Treacy.
This exhibition brings together works by 28 contemporary Australian and international artists who engage fire as material, metaphor, and memory – tracing its roles across ritual and industry, ceremony and combustion, love and loss, technology and ecology.
The exhibition responds to the 2026 Midsumma Festival theme, Time & Place, which considers the actual and metaphorical flames that ignite passion and activism over time, and those that have consumed people and place.
Molten Tongues explores themes of fire through heat, desire, love, transformation and destruction, as well as the resilience held by LGBQTIA+ communities through the symbol of a phoenix rising from the ashes.
The exhibition takes its cue from the historic site of the gallery itself: the Essendon Incinerator, a modernist structure designed in 1929 by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin.
Originally built as an innovative solution to the environmental hazards of an open landfill near the Maribyrnong River, the Essendon Incinerator fused aesthetic vision with civic utility – transmuting waste through flame.
Today, this site of combustion becomes a container for contemporary and creative reflection: a space where art and design reckon with heat, pollution, renewal, and the stories that smoulder beneath the surface.
The Molten Tongues exhibition comprises four chapters:
- Chapter One explores The Pyrocene, the Age of Fire with a focus on how human-fire impacts upon the world.
- Chapter Two explores The Temple of Flames, surveying deities of flame, the underworld and the heavens, examining burning as a ritual act and fire as a medium for meditation and ceremony.
- Chapter Three is titled The Hall of Singing Suns and explores the body and language of fire.
- Chapter Four concludes the exhibition with Hades Smoke – The Industry, Technology and Ecology of Fire.
Molten Tongues features work from 27 artists and collectives including: Ali Tahayori, Ara Dolatian, Dr Bon Mott _/\_, Cheng Ran, Dr Christian Thompson AO, Claybia (Cassandra Chilton and Molly O’Shaughnessy), Diego Ramírez, Diogo Evangelista, Emily Parsons-Lord, Felix Saturn, Glynn Urquhart, Hannah Hallam-Eames, Iluka Sax-Williams, Ioanna Sakellaraki, Joshua Serafin, Jenna Lee, Makiko Ryujin, Michael Jalaru Torres, Moorina Bonini, Morehshin Allahyari, Naomi Blacklock, Nicholas Burridge, Priyageetha Dia, Sha Sarwari, Shireen Taweel, Yhonnie Scarce, and Yumemi Hiraki.
Molten Tongues
Incinerator Gallery, 180 Holmes Road, Aberfeldie
Exhibition: 31 January – 28 March 2026
Free entry
For more information, including public programs, visit: www.incineratorgallery.com.au for details.
Image: Installation View of Molten Tongues at Incinerator Gallery – photo by Thomas McCammon