Events

Join the Composition 5 cohort as they present nature, nurture – a showcase of their most recent works. Composers Kylie Cheah, Max Kielly, Oliver Muller, and Riley Hogan present a daring and exciting program of new solo and chamber music.

Each piece explores the complex and at times contradictory relationships between Nature and Nurture. Come and hear a new generation of daring musical voices, performed by several performance students at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.

PROGRAM

Max Kielly: Paths of Amber - (for solo piano)
Max Kielly: The Discards of Your Broken Soul - (for solo piano)
Kylie Cheah: Inheritance - (for clarinet, cello, piano)
Riley Hogan: Dome Spinning - (for electronics)
Oliver Muller: Indrukken en Conversatie - (for string quartet)
Oliver Muller: Rocking Gently - (string quartet)
Max Kielly: Until We’re Over - (for voice, piano, violin, cello)
Riley Hogan: Lineae - (for piano and three performers)

CREDITS

Max Kielly - Piano
Darby Lee - piano
Zoriana Krupa - cello
Katherine Ma - violin
Ingram Fan - violin
Tom Protat - viola
Ethan Chiao - Cello
Kian Miguel - Clarinet
Alex Gorbatov - voice
Sonia Freiburg - cello
Zoë Bartholomeusz - violin

CONTENT WARNINGS
This performance includes high-pitched sounds, an extended blackout, and themes of ecological destruction and dystopia. Audiences also may be approached by the performers.

Image by Oliver Muller, 2026

Explore more Faculty of Fine Arts and Music events here.

Please join us for this free Melbourne Design Week public lecture. 

Design is never neutral. It carries the imprint of culture, memory, and values, shaping how societies see themselves and their futures. In Australia, the foundations of design extend far beyond the colonial narrative into deep time, where land, sea, and sky were understood as interconnected living systems. For First Nations peoples, all making of objects, shelters, pathways, and stories emerged from the Dreaming: an evolving body of cultural, ecological, and spiritual knowledge that sustained Country for millennia.

In this lecture, Alison Page explores BLAK as a powerful reassertion of Indigenous identity and creative sovereignty within contemporary practice. She introduces Designing with Country, a transformative placemaking movement that re-centres design within the wisdom of Country, inviting architects, designers, and communities to engage with place as a living system rather than an empty site. Through built and conceptual projects, Page demonstrates how embracing Indigenous knowledge systems offers a generous and necessary framework for defining a truly Australian design language.

Looking forward – looking Blak – this lecture calls for a future in which design in Australia is grounded in ancient knowledge, responsive to Country, and courageous in reimagining a national identity.

Alison is the 2026 Robert Garland Treseder Fellow at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne. This Fellowship enables artists, business innovators, designers, policy leaders, start-ups, architects, and scholars dedicated to the development and promotion of design-based innovation to visit Melbourne.

We are grateful for the generous ongoing support of the Robert Garland Treseder Fellowship.