Looking Back on an Unfolding Year. Thank You for 2025
Angelina Mirabito & Scott Ross Photographer Guy Holliday
As the year draws to a close, we are filled with gratitude for every visitor, maker, collaborator, and supporter who walked through our doors, pulled up a seat in a workshop, joined a conversation, or encountered art through fresh eyes with us in 2025.
Romulus Folio was founded on the belief that art and community can transform how we live and see. Throughout this year, that belief took form through exhibitions, workshops, talks, and shared moments that grounded us, challenged us, and opened meaningful conversations. From quieter, introspective exhibitions in the colder months to richly layered group shows later in the year, you helped shape Romulus Folio as an active and responsive space within The Gladstone and the wider Melbourne arts ecosystem.
‘Returning to Roots’ Facilitated by Kathryn Farrell, September 2025 | Photographer Scott Ross
A Year of Inquiry and Creative Exchange
In 2025, our exhibition program reflected both individual artistic process and shared curatorial vision. We presented work that invited close looking and emotional engagement, including Observer, where seven artists explored perception as an active relationship, and Echoes, which brought together practices working with memory, form, and material resonance.
Across the year, audiences encountered exhibitions such as Whispers from the Grove, Embers, and Winter, each asking questions about place, transformation, and narrative. Notable series included Gerard Russo’s ‘Intervalle’, which examined rhythm, pause, and repetition through drawing, and Andrea Vargas’ Water Series, where fluidity and gesture became a language of emotion and movement. Together, these works reinforced our belief that art’s power lies not only in what it presents, but in how it invites reflection, presence, and response.
Throughout the year, we were also focused on strengthening the foundations of the gallery itself. Careful attention was given to curatorial clarity, exhibition presentation, and professional frameworks, ensuring that Romulus Folio continues to grow with intention and integrity.
Mayor Alex Makin opening Transitions Exhibition Dec 2025 | Photographer Guy Holliday
Workshops, Community, and Meaningful Making
Workshops remained a vital and joyful part of the gallery’s rhythm. From palette knife painting to charcoal drawing, ceramics, children’s creative sessions, and tactile making, these gatherings highlighted creativity as both a personal and shared experience. Time and again, we witnessed how making together fosters confidence, connection, and a sense of belonging.
Painting With Palette Knives Workshop August 2025 | Photographer Scott Ross
Staying Connected Through Summer
The gallery will pause briefly over the holiday period, reopening on 9 January. When we return, visitors are warmly invited to view Transitions, our current group exhibition, which remains on display until 25 January.
Transitions brings together multiple practices and perspectives, reflecting themes of movement, change, and becoming. The exhibition serves as a bridge between the year just passed and the one ahead, offering a considered moment of reflection as the gallery reopens into a new cycle of activity.
January also marks the return of our workshop program, offering opportunities to reconnect through hands on making, learning, and shared creative experience. Workshops by our artists scheduled for January can be found on our Program. Workshops will continue throughout the month, supporting the gallery’s commitment to accessible and embodied creative practice across ages and experience levels.
Looking Toward 2026
As we look ahead to 2026, we do so with clarity and purpose. The coming year will build on the foundations laid in 2025, with exhibitions and programs that continue to explore narrative, materiality, and spatial dialogue. Upcoming projects such as Prototypes and Fusion will further examine how art lives between ideas, bodies, materials, and shared space.
To our artists, collaborators, and every visitor who spent time with us this year, thank you. You make Romulus Folio not just a gallery, but a living and evolving creative environment.
We wish you a restful and reflective holiday season and look forward to welcoming you back in January and continuing the work together in 2026.
Romulus Folio Team
Transitions Exhibition Opening Night December 2025 | Photographer Guy Holiday
Romulus Folio Gallery
55 Gladstone Street, South Melbourne
Reopens 8 January 2026
Wed - Fri 12 -7pm | Sat & Sun 12 -5pm | by appointment
Written by Angelina Mirabito, PhD