3553 is proud to present Slumped Dreams, an exhibition featuring Nicholas Hubicki, Kelvin Skewes, and Damien Laing. The exhibition will run from 6-15 of June 2025.

Opening Event:
Date: Friday 6th June 2025
Time: 6pm - 9pm
Location: 35-53 Emma St, Collingwood

Opening Times:
Saturday 7th - 10am - 4pm

Wednesday 11th - 10am - 4pm

Thursday 12th - 10am - 4pm

Friday 13th - 10am - 4pm

Saturday 14th - 10am - 4pm

Artist Talk and Walk: - Register here
Photo walk on Moonee Ponds Creek
Date: Sunday 15 June
Time: 12-2pm
Location: Meet at Macaulay Station

The exhibition brings together photographic work of Nicholas Hubicki, Kelvin Skewes, and Damien Laing. Each with a concern for the forms of urban life; the ability for infrastructures to hold their promises. The photographs from inner and outer Melbourne provide a relief image, revealing those spaces that underlie urban life. All hold an cognizance of the phenomena described by Sieverts [Thomas] in Cities without Cities the ‘in-between’ the unfolding “beauty of this discontinuous area characterised over great stretches by the absence of what can be perceived as an event ….. the fractal richness and diversity of the newly arising forms of life which sustain themselves in the shadow of the competition” that is at the base of modern life. We see this in Nicholas Hubicki’s startling and uneasy photographs of the ‘new community’ in Melbourne’s V/line serviced west. The vinyl billboards are fading and rotting like white bread before the erecting of sound barriers to the freeway is complete. An action sealing the community from the clogged and potholed artery that connects the sub with the urbis. The diversity of these new communities is explored in Damien Laing’s photographs of places of worship. Expressing modernity’s continued confusion of centre and periphery, global and local. And Kelvin Skewes with his sumptuous images of the channelised Moonee Ponds creek examines the rich variety of forms of life and habitation that exist in the shadows; both of the freeway’s concrete forms and cast by our increasingly market based society. The slump test is a trial of concrete’s suitability before it is set. These images are an evaluation of some of the worlds we have built for ourselves.

Artist Talk and Walk - Register here
Sunday 15th of June 12-2pm with David Nichols from Macaulay Station - along the Moonee Ponds creek and then through Flemington (High Rise Public Housing) and Kensington (Build to Rent) finishing at Bonehead brewery/Back to Station approx 1hr of Walking - will meet at 3553 in the event of bad weather.

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Nicholas Hubicki was the 2023 recipient of the State Library of Victoria’s George Baldessin award and residency, winner of the 2022 Pool Collective grant, and was also included in Speculative Horizons at Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait City (2023). He has also been a finalist in the Bowness Prize at the Museum of Australian Photography in Melbourne, and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Prize (2024). His work has previously been included in Forum 50 at the Munich Stadtmuseum, Germany. Additionally, his work has been published in Der Greif, Musée Magazine, Phases Magazine and others. His current work focuses on both the constructed and natural world drawing upon sources such as landscape, entropy, architecture, botany and geology.

Kelvin Skewes is a photographic artist and photobook maker whose work concerns the man-altered landscape and those who inhabit it. He has been a previous finalist and was awarded an honourable mention in the Bowness Photography Prize. He has also been the runner-up in the Australian Photo Book of the Year Award with his newspaper style publication Nauru: What was taken and what was given. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Australian Photography, the State Library of Victoria and at the Obscura festival of Photography, Malaysia. Currently his work is concentrated on documenting the suburban and urban waterways of Melbourne.

Damien Laing is an urban planner and artist interested in the configuration of values in public space. He studied German and Urban Planning in Melbourne and Cottbus. Since 2019, he has been running a public art practice under the name telos. With telos he has organised a range of art events and programming. Exhibition participation includes At Home, Werribee in 2023, Partial Visions in 2024 and the solo exhibition Religions on the Fringe in 2020. Working primarily with photography and moving images, he is a member of the experimental filmmaking collective Artist Film Workshop.

Professor David Nichols teaches in urban planning history, theory, and social and cultural planning. He has published in 20th century Australian planning and urban history as well as on cultural, socio-historical and heritage issues. His recent books include the co-edited (with Sophie Perillo) Urban Australia and Post-Punk: Exploring Dogs in Space; the sole-authored The Alert Grey Twinkling Eyes of C. J. DeGaris; and the forthcoming co-authored (with Robert Freestone) Community Green: Rediscovering the Enclosed Spaces of the Garden Suburb Tradition.

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3553 is a public event space dedicated to the exploration of ideas that affect the built environment. Operated by OFFICE, a design and research practice committed to advancing critical dialogue, 3553 fosters collaboration across disciplines, communities, and borders. The space offers a platform for local, national, and international practitioners, students, researchers, and academics to showcase innovative work, share insights, and engage in meaningful conversations. Through a diverse program of exhibitions, lectures, workshops, and public events, 3553 invites audiences to engage with the evolving landscape of design, while creating a space for education, critical thought, and creative exchange.

Poster design by Madeleine Mittas