The University of Melbourne has announced the new group exhibition, The same crowd never gathers twice, presented at Buxton Contemporary from 10 May – 13 October 2024. The exhibition features new work by Cate Consandine, Riana Head-Toussaint and Yona Lee, alongside significant projects by Taryn Simon, Angela Goh and Laresa Kosloff.

Spanning moving image, sound, sculptural intervention and performance, the exhibition tests the limits of the ‘arena’— the setting where people come together to collectively witness and participate in public life. Works consider the social and structural architectures that bind these spaces, and by extension, the elastic nature of performance and reality, audience and participant.

The same crowd never gathers twice invites audiences to consider their own presence and agency inside the gallery: their role as passive spectators versus the potential for a more active form of engagement. Annika Aitken, Curator, Art Museums at the University of Melbourne said: “Throughout the exhibition’s duration, the physical gallery is offered as an active site for discussions, new work and performance responses.