Members pre-sale 4 March
General tickets on sale 12pm, 5 March
Bridging the gap between modernism and the present day, Melbourne-based architectural photographer and artist John Gollings joins us as part of Melbourne Design Week to reflect on his iconic photography of Australian architecture and urbanism in conversation with NGV Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture, Dr Timothy Moore.
This program is presented as part of Melbourne Design Week 2026
John Gollings has been the photographer of choice for Melbourne architects for over fifty years. Before Gollings, architectural photography in the postwar era was shaped by artists such as Wolfgang Sievers, Max Dupain, David Moore and Mark Strizic, whose images rendered Australian cities in stark greyscale, brining building forms into sharp focus through contrasting light and shadow. Gollings bridges modernism and the present day, celebrating an Australian ordinariness through a surreal lens. One of his most iconic photographs – Kay Street Housing by Edmond and Corrigan – captures the optimism and energy of Melbourne’s postmodern movement. Shot at night with double exposures and awash with flash, Gollings adds a mythic quality to the suburban setting with the addition of bounding kangaroos. Spanning 1978–2015, this collection of photographs is characterised by strong formal composition with moments of drama and exaggeration, calibrated by Gollings’s experimentation with new technologies to push the possibilities of each image. His unconventional approach is reinforced in this display: presented without frames, the buildings become heroes.
Dr Timothy Moore is Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). He is the founder of Sibling Architecture, and Associate Dean (Engagement) at Monash University’s Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture.