Architecture of Emotion: The Final Exhibition at 55 Gladstone Street

A solo exhibition by Angelina Mirabito.

Architecture of Emotion marks the final exhibition of Romulus Folio Gallery at 55 Gladstone Street, South Melbourne, presented from 6 to 28 May 2026. This exhibition concludes the gallery’s formal exhibition program at 55 Gladstone Street, South Melbourne.

The exhibition brings together a concentrated body of work exploring the relationship between material, structure, and emotional space.

Over the past fourteen months, the gallery has developed as a spatial system that shapes how art is encountered and how emotion is held within an environment. The space has functioned as an active framework, structuring relationships between material, viewer, and duration. This exhibition brings that enquiry into focus through a concentrated body of work that engages with the relationship between architecture and emotion.

Soul Print, mixed media, 60cm x 90cm x 4cm, Angelina Mirabito, 2026

At its core is a proposition that architecture holds space for emotion, and that painting is where emotion becomes visible. The works are constructed through layers of texture, pigment, and gesture, forming surfaces that carry weight, pressure, and memory. Each painting operates as a field of accumulated decisions, where directional movements establish alignment, tension, and release. These conditions generate a spatial logic that is experienced through the body as much as through vision.

Emotion is embedded within the material. It is carried through density, repetition, and variation, allowing each surface to function as a record of internal states translated into physical form. The paintings hold a continuity between gesture and structure, where mark and meaning develop simultaneously.

Signature Frequency, mixed media, 1m x 1.5m x 4cm, Angelina Mirabito, 2026

Key works including Soul Print, Signature Frequency, and The Fates bring this condition into sharper focus. These works present a heightened density of material and gesture, where surface becomes imprint. They register a sustained engagement with pressure and accumulation, forming compositions that hold both intensity and restraint.

The inclusion of the first eight runes, forming the first aett, introduces a parallel structural framework within the exhibition. The runes carry a language of movement, force, inheritance, and transformation. Their presence extends the spatial logic of the work into a symbolic register, where structure operates across both material and conceptual dimensions.

Thursiaz (rune based on boundaries), mixed media, 1.6m x 1.2m x 5cm by Angelina Miralbito, 2026

Several works within the exhibition originate prior to the Gladstone residency and have been reworked within the current body of work. This process allows earlier states to remain active within the surface, establishing a continuity of time within the paintings. The works hold multiple moments simultaneously, creating a layered temporal condition that reflects the ongoing nature of the practice.

This exhibition marks the final formal presentation and program of Romulus Folio Gallery within this location. Fourteen months of programming has established a sustained engagement with exhibition-making as a spatial and social practice, where artworks, events, and conversations have contributed to a shared environment.

Architecture of Emotion brings this period into focus through a body of work that holds structure, material, and emotion in a single field, where each painting operates as both surface and space.

Written by Angelina Mirabito, PhD