Arts House unveils bold, community-led 2026 season of music, theatre, performance and immersive art

Arts House has unveiled a bold and wide-ranging 2026 program, setting the stage for a year shaped by community connection, experimental performance, intergenerational storytelling and major new commissions from some of the country’s most compelling contemporary artists.

Head of programming Naomi Velaphi told North West City News the season brought together “exciting new music, theatre and dance” led by artists and communities from across Melbourne and beyond.

The year opens on February 12 with the free Neighbourhood Gathering, inviting locals and Arts House friends to share drinks, food and conversation while previewing the year ahead.

Visitors will be able to explore the building, meet the programming team and experience artworks already in place, including Rel Pham’s epic video installation When Your Number’s Up in the Supper Room, new window works by Pey Chi and Jessica Wilson’s joyful portrait installation I See You Like This, made with children during the recent Queensberry Cup. Velaphi will introduce the ideas and artists shaping the season, setting the tone for an ambitious year of contemporary performance.

The first major performance arrives the very next night with the world premiere of Stable Confusion (Live A/V), a collaboration between electronic musician Worlds Only and visual artist Junior Major, presented with Liquid Architecture. The work mischievously scrambles the relationship between human and machine, with real-time visuals generated by improvised code that confounds AI interpretation. Guitarist Liam Keenan opens the evening with melodic, place-led improvisations. Running concurrently from February 12 to March 6, Rel Pham’s When Your Number’s Up continues the meditation on prediction and perception, exploring humanity’s enduring obsession with prophecy – from mysticism to data analytics – and asking whether we are seeking truth, or merely comfort in a world of uncertainty.

Later in February, award-winning composer and guzheng artist Mindy Meng Wang joins forces with sound technologist Monica Lim for Opera for the Dead | 祭歌, a contemporary Chinese cyber-opera running February 26 to March 1. Audiences move freely through the space as it shifts from stage to cinema to dance floor, merging live musicians and singers with electronic processing, 3D animation and ambisonic sound. Drawing on Chinese mourning traditions while speaking to universal experiences of death, grief and ancestry, the work reflects on how rituals evolve in a digital age.

In March, Kath Duncan’s Specials makes its world premiere following sold-out development showings in 2024. Featuring disabled performers and based on real experiences of Australia’s Special School system, the production is at once comedic, furious and deeply revealing as two former students find themselves transported back to their school days, confronting the adults, structures and compromises that shaped their lives.

April sees the return of Outer Urban Projects with the installation of their award-winning film VIGIL (April 9 to May 1), an intimate reflection on the ripple effects of gender-based violence. Audiences can step behind the film’s surface, viewing fragments of its creative evolution. The project culminates in a major world-premiere performance of VIGIL from 22 April to May 3 – a polyvocal work set aboard a crowded tram where stories of war, domestic violence, displacement and racism intersect. Asking the urgent question “What lives matter?”, it brings together writers, performers, dancers and community members to examine public and private safety in contemporary Australia.

The first season concludes in June with a bit thing, a powerful new intergenerational exhibition led by Dr Paola Balla with Rosie Kalina and Katen Balla. Centred on Blak and neurodivergent lived experience, the free exhibition celebrates the “special interests” that sustain creativity, culture and joy. Through painting, weaving, photography, moving image and digital work, alongside yarning circles and screenings, the exhibition creates a sensorial, communal space for connection and respite.

Together, the works form a season defined by curiosity, cultural depth and community-led practice – a year that invites audiences not only to watch, but to gather, question and participate as Arts House continues to push the boundaries of contemporary performance in North Melbourne. •