Melbourne Art Library

Contribute to the library and choose your impact this end of financial year!

Melbourne Art Library is inviting you to shape our next chapter with a tax-deductible gift towards a cause you are passionate about.

🧡 Collection Care
📚 Sponsor a Book
🎨 Creative Opportunities
⭐ Greatest Need

To make a donation, follow the link in our bio. Your support in any form is greatly appreciated!

Thank you for keeping this important cultural resource open for artists, researchers, readers and curious minds alike.

Starting this Thursday May 14th, the Library will be implementing new hours for the colder months ahead.

Thursdays and Fridays will be from 10am-5.30pm while weekend hours stay the same from 12pm-5pm.

The Library is warm and full of light, please join us during our new opening hours as you please.

Craft Club returns for May!

Bring your projects great and small to the Library for an afternoon of gathering to make and share. Whatever your craft of choice is, Craft Club is open to all!

Come down and learn a new skill, share expertise, or just work on your projects in the company of other crafters. Come and go as you please - we’ll be around from 1PM.

Limited supplies may be available, but please BYO supplies, projects, and WIPs!

RSVP through the Eventbrite link in our bio.

Writers, this one’s for you.

Starting May 7, Melbourne Art Library’s new monthly Writers Group is here.

A relaxed, pressure-free space for writers of all kinds. Whether you’re just getting started, deep in your next big project, or trying to move through writer’s block.
Come along to share work, exchange feedback, connect with fellow writers, or simply carve out dedicated time to write.

Each two-hour session includes:
One hour of sharing, discussion + optional feedback
One hour of focused writing time

All experience levels welcome.
Register via the link in bio.

Join us for a poetry writing workshop this Wednesday April 29th at 6pm-7.30pm, run by our volunteer Nadia Lazich Harari.

The evening will explore writing about nature in a meditative and exclusive way, regardless of if you’ve written poetry before.

All supplies will be provided, just bring yourself and your prominent nature memories. Please find the event link in our bio.

Scenes from the workshop at Melbourne Art Library last Saturday. Together we made bookmarks and music using the ‘Hole Punch Music’ instrument to create unique and intricate sounds.

Come join us this Saturday April 25th for another interactive day of tangible music-making. Participants may come anytime between 10am to 2pm.

If you would like to join this workshop, please find the Eventbrite link in our bio.

Craft Club is back for April!

An open afternoon at the Library to make, share, and spend time with others working across all kinds of craft. Bring whatever you’re working on or start something new.

Come to learn, exchange skills and work alongside others. BYO supplies and works-in-progress encouraged.

Sunday, April 19
1-3pm

Follow the link in bio to register.

This April, Melbourne Art Library will be hosting two environmental-focused workshops by Draw Plants Together and Spiraro Draw Plants Together on Sunday 12th April, run by artist and facilitator Craig Burgess. This is an opportunity to experiment with drawing and creative processes in a gently social space, in connection with local urban nature. Workshop participants will take a closer look at these places of urban habitat, take time to feel into our part in nature through experimentation and play, and create a simple folded booklet for our drawings together.Artist and textile designer Spiraro (Indy Heath) will lead a hands-on workshop on Sunday 26th April, guiding participants through the process of creating biomaterials. This playful and tactile session provides an opportunity to experiment with algae based biomaterials and develop a deeper understanding of their applications. Participants will have access to tools and materials to shape and craft their own bio-plastic and bio-yarn.Please find the Eventbrite links and more information in our bio.

Next up at MAL Artists’ Syllabus 📚

Join Molly Stephenson for a talk and reading session expanding on her recent library residency, exploring the moment something becomes archival.

Part of our ongoing Artists’ Syllabus series presented with Blindeside, this session invites an artist-researcher to share a text that has shaped their practice, offering insight into the ideas, references and methodologies that sit behind the work.

Through selected readings and discussion, we’ll trace the direct, tangential and unexpected ways texts inform creative processes, and come together to exchange thoughts (and reading lists).

Molly Stephenson’s practice centres on assemblage, collecting and reworking found objects to summon the material past into the imagined present. Drawing on performance theory, new materialism and hauntology, her work reflects on what lingers.

Free and open to all. Register at the link in our bio.

Next up at MAL: Artists’ Syllabus 📚

We’re hosting a special artist-led reading group in collaboration with Blindside as part of A Library of Libraries.

Join Darla Gabrielle M Tejada for to lapse as possibility, a reading group cm public forum exploring artist publishing, collective knowledge, and what it means to read (and act) together.

This session builds on texts by Marc Fisher and Eric Schierloh, and turns to What Problems Can Artist Publishers Solve? by Temporary Services. Together, we’ll unpack the social, political and economic potentials of artist publishing, while reflecting on spaces like MAL and the role we play within them.

Afterwards, we are encouraged to peruse MAL’s shelves to see what finds us within it. Perhaps wandering can be a sort of agency? That discovery and surprise can direct us to new ways of seeing, reading and thinking about our relationship to art.

Free and open to all. Follow the link in our bio to register.