MARS Gallery

This is Art. This is Melbourne.

From 18-21 February, the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre will become a temporary world of art, design and ideas. Melbourne Art Fair is a place where curiosity takes over, conversations spark, and discoveries wait around every corner. Alongside an incredible line-up of leading galleries and art centres, we’re thrilled to be exhibiting at Melbourne Art Fair 2027.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Early bird tickets are now on sale.

JENNA LEE: MELBOURNE SCULPTURE BIENNALE

Jenna is currently exhibiting at the Melbourne Sculpture Biennale: Soft Systems, 8 – 25 October, held in Billilla Mansion, Brighton.

Join Jenna for an artist talk on Saturday 24 October, 12 – 1pm, facilitated by the Biennale directors Adam Stone and Laura Couttie.

Jenna Mayilema Lee is a Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman, and KarraJarri woman with Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. Interrogating language, materiality and inherited narratives through immersive installation, works on paper, sculpture and multimedia, her practice engages with systems of knowledge and translation. Working primarily with books as material, Lee engages dictionaries and language publications that have flattened First Peoples’ languages. Using Larrakia linguistics as a guiding framework, she extracts and reworks narratives embedded within these texts. Through deconstruction and reconstruction, she translates them into new forms that respond to the limits and residues of colonial knowledge systems.

For more information about Jenna’s works, please contact [email protected].

The artists & their works!

Thank you for joining us last night to celebrate the openings of “It was a very quiet, night in art heaven…” - A drawing group show + Jas Shalimar’s solo “The Private Theatre”!

Exhibitions at MARS until November 21st. For a copy of the catalogue, please contact [email protected].

SCOTTY SO
Did you know there is a paperbark forest in Hong Kong?, 2026
archival ballpoint pen on Xuan paper, framed
200 x 100cm

Scotty So grew up believing the paperbark was native to Hong Kong. It was only after moving to Australia eight years ago that he learned the tree originates here, brought to Hong Kong under British rule, where it has since naturalised and grows as though it had always belonged. Encountering the paperbark in Australia gave him an unexpected comfort when he first arrived, far from home. Later, returning to Hong Kong and away from the home he had made in Melbourne, the same tree offered that same comfort in reverse. The paperbark came to hold both places at once, and neither completely.

This drawing was made from photographs So’s brother sent of the trees near their family home in Hong Kong. He approaches the tree through the accumulated doodling of marks, the ballpoint a return to the medium of his schooldays, when paperbarks grew beside the classroom. The work holds the fading memory of home and origin, and of a colonial history at once personal and collective. In the paperbark So recognises his own condition, a displacement and quiet alienation that comes of being rooted in neither the place one left nor the place one now lives.

For more information about Scotty’s work please contact [email protected].

Install done! Join us for the opening celebrations this Friday 6–8pm.

Currently exhibiting until November 21st:

𝙸𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚊 𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚎𝚝 𝚗𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚒𝚗 𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚟𝚎𝚗, 𝚒𝚗 𝚏𝚊𝚌𝚝, 𝚊 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚢, 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝚗𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝, 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚅𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚋𝚘𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝚋𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝙿𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚘 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚌𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚜 𝚊𝚝 𝙼𝚒𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚎𝚕𝚘 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙻𝚎𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚛𝚍𝚘 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚜𝚊𝚒𝚍, “𝙻𝚎𝚝’𝚜 𝚐𝚎𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚎𝚕𝚕 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚐𝚎𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝙼𝙰𝚁𝚂 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚐𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚍𝚛𝚊𝚠𝚒𝚗𝚐” – Group exhibition

Jas Shalimar’s solo exhibition – 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒓𝒊𝒗𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒓𝒆

Contact [email protected] for a copy of the catalogue.

We hope to see you there!

JENNA LEE - TELSTRA NATSIAA PRIZE

Congratulations Jenna Lee who was recently awarded the 2026 Telstra Work on Paper Award at the Telstra NATSIAA Prize.

Currently featured in the new issue of Art Collector, Jenna’s exhibiting work, ‘Taking back taken’, 2026 comprises six danala (dillybags) constructed from paper maps taken from the British Museum. Between 2018 and 2020, while living in London, Jenna frequently visited the Museum. In the ‘Great Court’, visitors are invited to take a map in exchange for a donation.

“I chose not to donate. Instead, I began quietly taking the maps, a few at a time, unsure of what they would become. Over time, the act accumulated meaning. When the idea for this work formed, I contacted friends and family still in London and asked them to take small stacks as well, without donating and smuggle them back to Australia for me.

Maps are documents of possession. They chart borders, territories, and authority. The British Museum map guides visitors through imperial collections, reinforcing the institution’s claim to hold the world. By taking these maps and reworking them into ancestral forms, I reverse that logic. The map no longer directs. It becomes material.

This is not theft for theft’s sake. It is an act of conceptual restitution. A gesture that asks: what does it mean to take from an institution built on taking? The danala stand as quiet refusals, embodying a reversal of flow. Taking what was taken.”

- Jenna Lee

Thank you Art Collector for this feature of Jenna’s works!

Jenna (Mayilema) Lee
Art Collector Magazine

JENNA LEE - NATSIAA PRIZE

Congratulations Jenna Lee who was recently awarded the 2026 Telstra Work on Paper Award at the NATSIAA Prize. Exhibiting at Museum and Art Gallery of Northern Territory until January 24th, 2027.

Currently featured in the new issue of Art Collector, Jenna’s exhibiting work, ‘Taking back taken’ 2026, comprises six danala (dillybags) constructed from paper maps taken from the British Museum. Between 2018 and 2020, while living in London, Jenna frequently visited the Museum. In the ‘Great Court’, visitors are invited to take a map in exchange for a donation.

“I chose not to donate. Instead, I began quietly taking the maps, a few at a time, unsure of what they would become. Over time, the act accumulated meaning. When the idea for this work formed, I contacted friends and family still in London and asked them to take small stacks as well, without donating and smuggle them back to Australia for me.

Maps are documents of possession. They chart borders, territories, and authority. The British Museum map guides visitors through imperial collections, reinforcing the institution’s claim to hold the world. By taking these maps and reworking them into ancestral forms, I reverse that logic. The map no longer directs. It becomes material.

This is not theft for theft’s sake. It is an act of conceptual restitution. A gesture that asks: what does it mean to take from an institution built on taking? The danala stand as quiet refusals, embodying a reversal of flow. Taking what was taken.”

- Jenna Lee

Thank you Art Collector for featuring Jenna’s work!

For more information about Jenna’s practice and her available works, please contact [email protected].

NOW ON AT MARS

Ayman Kaake, ‘Stones Remain Stones’

Until October 10th

Ayman Kaake’s ‘Stones Will Remain Stones’ draws from lived experience within patriarchal systems across the SWANA region, examining the social, religious, and political forces that shape q***r existence.

For the catalogue, please contact [email protected]

Ayman Kaake is a Lebanon-born, Naarm/Melbourne-based photo-media artist working across photography, video, and installation. His practice explores diasporic identity, memory, and q***r experience through staged, cinematic imagery that blurs reality and fiction. Drawing on personal and political histories, his work reflects on displacement, belonging, and the intersections of religion and power. He has been selected as a finalist in the Bowness Photography Prize (MAPH) in 2024 and 2022, and the National Photographic Portrait Prize (NPG) in 2025, 2023 and 2022.