Cameron Grant’s Australian Theatres Unveiled photography exhibition is a striking reminder that some of the most dramatic parts of theatre happen before you ever walk through the doors. He’s taken the places we usually rush through on the way to our seats and made them the main event.
Hosted at fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne’s gorgeous little underground gallery space, the exhibition feels like the perfect match for Grant’s work. There’s something fitting about descending beneath the city streets to look at photographs that ask you to slow down and really see the spaces where stories are made. Not the actors, not the applause; the architecture itself.
The opening showcased more than 60 of Grant’s works, each one a love letter to Australian theatre design. And not in a nostalgic, dusty way. These images are bold. They’re sharp. They celebrate the uniqueness of our cultural spaces with a kind of reverence that never slips into sentimentality.
Grant’s strength is in how he frames these buildings. He’s not trying to capture the magic of what happens inside, but the personality sitting right there on the street.
The entrances, the odd angles, the signage you normally walk past without thinking. In his hands, a theatre exterior stops being just a frontage and starts feeling like a character.
The lines are sharp, the shadows do a lot of heavy lifting, and suddenly a simple brick wall looks like it has a story to tell before you’ve even bought a ticket.
What really sets Australian Theatre’s Unveiled apart is how specific it is. This isn’t a general tribute to theatre as an idea. Grant has gone straight for the buildings themselves, the physical places that shape the experience long before anyone steps on stage.
A gallery show purely about theatre architecture feels strangely rare, especially when you realise how much these spaces are tied up in who we are culturally.
And it feels properly Australian. Not in a flag-waving way, just in the fact that these buildings look like the theatres we actually have. They’re not these ridiculous gold opera houses from overseas that feel like museums. They’re places with a bit of wear on them.
Some are beautiful, some are a little odd, some look like they’ve been patched up three times and kept going anyway. But they all have character. Grant doesn’t try to make them look grander than they are. He just lets them be themselves, and somehow that’s what makes them interesting.
It also makes you realise how much theatre starts before you’re even inside. We always talk about what happens on stage, but half the feeling of a night at the theatre is walking up to the building in the first place. The front doors, the old sign, the way it sits there like it’s been waiting for people to come back.
After you leave fortyfivedownstairs, you do catch yourself looking at theatres differently. Not in a deep and meaningful way, just in that small way where you actually notice the outside for once. Like: oh yeah, that’s a great old building. Or: I’ve walked past that a hundred times and never really looked at it properly.
Cameron Grant is not just taking pretty photos here. He’s basically saying these places matter too. Not just the shows inside them. The buildings are part of the whole thing. And it’s nice seeing them get a bit of the spotlight for once.
Australian Theatres Unveiled runs to 14 February at fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane Melbourne Vic 3000.
Tuesday – Friday 12-7pm, Saturday and Sunday 12-4pm
Tickets are free but must be booked here.
Website: https://parenthesyprints.com.au/pages/exhibitions-events
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/parenthesyprints/
Photo credits: Sulaiman Enayatzada aka Lazy Fair @lazyfairr
