Ilana Razbash: Reverence, Gratitude & Security Callouts - Artist Talk

Join artist-architect and very enthusiastic public speaker, Ilana Razbash for a talk and exhibition walkthrough of Temple Fragments. Razbash reveals the ups, downs and surprises of creating 54 paintings of every Shule building in Melbourne - and then going on to design a speculative Great Synagogue! Sitting somewhere between a serious exposé, very intentional lecture and a humorous confession, this talk unpacks what it means to to do this work in our present moment.

ILANA RAZBASH is an artist and practising architect born in Melbourne, Australia. Her oil paintings explore the melding of “the real” with “the imagined”, often through themes of architecture, place and Jewish spirituality. 

Through both systematic process and deeply intuitive exploration, Razbash searches to reveal the urgent work that she is compelled to make. In her surrealist-like style, Razbash’s compositions combine memory and photographic reference from her personal archive, observation from life, model sittings, and en plein air landscape. The narratives behind her work directly references jewish text, anchoring both big and small ideas in 4000 years of scholarship, wisdom and tradition.

She trained under local soviet immigrant artists Margarita Krivitsky and Joseph Edelman who shaped Razbash’s early practice and emergence of her own style. Razbash holds a Bachelor of Architectural Design with Distinction and Master of Architecture with Distinction from RMIT University where she took further electives from the Fine Art Faculty during her architectural training. 

Her 2025 debut solo exhibition Architectures in C Major at Goldstone Gallery brought together three central topics of creative enquiry - sound as design input, architectural form and plein air oil painting, resulting in a series of 7 distinct works grounded in research and architectural rigour, yet realised via a design through painting process.

Razbash continues to create new bodies of work and prepare for exhibitions whilst leading Melbourne-based architecture firm Studio Razbash as Director. Her work is held in local and interstate private collections. 

GOLDSTONE GALLERY: Despite relying entirely on volunteer efforts and without financial backing, Goldstone Gallery has delivered a rare and outstanding program of exhibitions that confront urgent political, moral, and social realities. The gallery brings together artists, writers, musicians, performers and community members to respond directly to the world as it unfolds. Operating outside institutional constraints, Goldstone presents museum-quality work with courage, moral clarity, and artistic brilliance (as reviewed by Art Collector magazine), creating a vital platform for Jewish creatives and other silenced voices. It is a small but powerful space delivering what few others are willing or able to do at a time of rising antisemitism and institutional cowardice.