Step out of the Little Eveleigh Street exit of the newly upgraded Redfern Station, take a left and walk a few metres. Among the tightly packed terraces and behind a brightly painted roller door, a new artist-run gallery has opened for business. Daryl Lo’s brainchild, Revolve Gallery, aims to be a place for experimentation, for conceiving and implementing.
It’s a multi-use concept, combining a coffee shop, an artist-supply shop, an artist workshop and studio hire into a wonderful exhibition and event space where young and emerging artists can have the time and space to spread their wings and realise ideas their passions dictate.
Its name hints at the gallery’s dynamic approach to an expanded idea of an exhibition. Open to everyone, including the uninitiated, Revolve encourages exhibitors to look at their proposals from different viewpoints. Hanging works from a wall is one approach. What other ways can an artist show their works? Move around your initial concept, revolve it. You may see an unexpected aspect that can speak to a new and unrealised possibility. This is the avant-garde’s garden of dreams and a place where an artist can try out and break out. Failure is not an option as it is the least of all concerns. In fact, experimentation – trying out new ways of doing things – is in the DNA of this gallery, and there will always be a process of re-evaluation.
Revolve Gallery had its first show in late December 2025. Curated by Amelia Rand, one of its directors, it expressed the theme of Revolve: to show a series of works that iterate around one idea or composition. This is at the heart of all art-making and expresses the importance of process in an artist’s oeuvre.
Continuing this approach, where the theme mirrors an aspect of art-making, the gallery’s second show, opening February 13, ‘Second Serve’, asks artists to present at least two works that show the transformation of an initial work into something entirely new – a kind of before-and-after transformation. The analogy, of course, is that one can have a second serve in tennis and hopefully score an ace.
There are no double faults at Revolve Gallery, so come and play, sit in the wings and watch, have a drink, buy some art materials, or maybe just fix the leg of that coffee table!
Exciting, 😄😄😄