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fortyfivedownstairs

Chapel off Chapel

The Meat Market

Until the middle of the 20th century, the building at 45 Flinders Lane housed the industrial equipment and cloth bales of the rag trade.

In the early 1990s, with Span Galleries on the ground floor, the lower ground warehouse space was first set up as a commercial gallery. Mary Lou Jelbart and Julian Burnside took over the space, founding fortyfivedownstairs in 2002 with a vision for it to become a unique curated space for both live performance and visual art.

For the first five years, exhibitions and theatre productions alternated in the lower ground space.

Having hosted artists such as Coldplay and Shirley Bassey (music), Bud Tingwell (drama), Tripod (comedy) and The Bald Archys (visual art), Chapel maintains a dynamic performance schedule, cementing our role as a vanguard for artistic and cultural excellence.

Described by Australian theatre and film stalwart Geoffrey Rush as “an industrious hotbed [for the arts]”. Since its opening in 1995 Chapel Off Chapel has earned, both nationally and internationally, an excellent reputation as a progressive arts and entertainment venue.

Make Chapel Off Chapel your first choice on destinations on your next night out.

Arts House is a City of Melbourne contemporary arts initiative. Each year Arts House presents a curated program of contemporary art featuring performances, exhibitions, live art, installations and cultural events.

Arts House operates as a multi-dimensional resource hub for artists – producing, programming, devising, supporting and funding. Work is presented across two sites, Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall and Arts House, Meat Market.

Arts House values arts and culture that help create a world where people are actively engaged, aware and empowered to participate, politically and culturally, to make positive change.

...tour-de-force, load and fast and thrillingly well acted. It’s as if we’ve stepped into a fight club where the knock-out punches are all technical and all verbal.

- The HERALD SUN