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About the Gallery

The Margaret Lawrence Gallery was established in 2001 to provide crucial links between the School of Art and the wider artistic community.

The contemporary art space fulfils an important role within our own artistic community, while its broader function reflects its rigorous commitment to research and art practice in Victoria.

The gallery offers established practitioners an opportunity to create new work in a supported and critically engaged environment. It also encourages meaningful connections and exchanges between professional artists, academics, students and the wider public.

Research focus for our exhibitions
The program regularly presents new works by local, national and international artists. These exhibitions are delivered in an environment that fosters critical discussion, as well as an understanding and promotion of visual art and its broader social contexts, with accompanying forums, artist and curator talks, residencies and public lectures.

The exhibition program has a strong emphasis on research. We achieve this in two ways: firstly, by directly responding to exhibition proposals; and, secondly, by inviting artists, curators or groups whose work or research is of particular contemporary relevance to devise a project for the space.

The program is generally determined 12 to 18 months in advance to allow a reasonable period of development in discussion with gallery staff.

Goals of the Margaret Lawrence Gallery

  • To provide an optimal platform (in terms of institutional support and best practice methodologies) for artists and other practitioners to develop their research and test their ideas.
  • To present ambitious projects that extend artists’ individual practices while contributing to the development of cultural discourse.
  • To encourage meaningful engagements between and among artists, writers, the academic community and the wider public.


The Margaret Lawrence Gallery is generously supported by the Margaret Lawrence Bequest.