An epic Melbourne art crawl: how many gallery openings can I cram in in one night?

There’s a particular thrill in discovering new, interesting spaces in your own city – but even as a Melbourne local and a longtime art lover I find it near impossible to keep up with the independent openings happening in my city.

That’s why I’m grateful for the work of Charles Lai who, for more than a decade, has been doing the legwork. Lai runs an accessible free calendar populated with details of dozens of upcoming art openings, and, like a sort of Bill Cunningham for Melbourne, has become one of the city’s most active art chroniclers on Instagram.

“I’ve been asked many times why I didn’t try to monetise the calendar or seek to have galleries sponsor it,” Lai says. “My intention has always been to remain independent so I can keep my own counsel.”

Using his calendar as my map, on a Friday night I set out to see what I could discover on an e-bike. I ended up visiting seven art shows spaced over 15km. Here’s what I saw.

1. Takes me back to Berlin

I begin my art crawl in Thornbury in Melbourne’s inner north at MOM Gallery. It sits in a separate room to the back of Candy Cafe, a grungy cafe bar featuring secondhand records and DIY fanzines on racks.

When I visit, the space features the work of the ceramicist Jack Staley in a show called Earth 2 Earth, Ashes 2 Ashes. Of the 50 ceramic items on display, the most striking are Celtic-inspired insignia.

Over a craft beer, the gallery owner, Oscar O’Shea, also an artist and film-maker, explains that MOM features monthly solo or group shows and gladly welcomes expressions of interest or walk-ins. It transports me back to the type of artist-run spaces I used to visit in Neukölln, when I lived in Berlin.

MOM Gallery: 905 High Street, Thornbury. Click here for more

2. It’s tempting to stay here all night

A 15-minute bike ride from Thornbury takes me to the northern end of Nicholson Street, East Brunswick, to the quaint deco shopfront of OK Violet gallery. Housed in a former postwar lending library, the space has been lovingly renovated by its owner, Kirsten Perry, who greets me with bubbly in handmade ceramic mugs.

The gallery has been open for a year; her aim is to build community by providing a space especially for artists who haven’t exhibited for a while and want to return to their practice. The opening is for the South Australia artist Debbie Pryor with her show Shadows as Witness. It features ceramic framed drawings and markings that she says are her attempt to find a connection between the SA coastline and the rocky landscapes of her maternal homeland in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

I love the homeyness of this gallery and it’s tempting to stay here all night, especially given the massive wheel of brie before me, but I hit the road for my 5km journey to the next gallery on my map.

OK Violet gallery: 114C Nicholson Street, Brunswick East. Click here for more

3. A bin of ice-cold beers

After a 20-minute ride through the inner north I arrive at Cafe Gallery at the bottom of Johnson Street. I’m greeted by three young gallery operators and curators – Arjuna Das, Isobel Campbell and Claira Mitchell – who have set up a garbage bin with ice and cold beers on the street, selling them for $5 a pop. Housed in a 1930s redbrick art deco building, the gallery space is carved into two downstairs rooms.

The opening is for the emerging artist Oscar Elmes, whose work is made from bike tyres, a roll of toilet paper, glue tubes and a tape measure – all encompassed in wooden frames. Elmes describes his art as a “compulsive, chaotic” reaction to his wanderings around the city’s edges – under bridges and through disused laneways.

Cafe gallery: 411 Johnston Street, Abbotsford. Click here for more

4. My head is buzzing

Cycling back up Johnston Street, I make a beeline down Budd Street to Jacky Winter Gallery (formerly Lamington Drive gallery), where the Victoria-based Japanese artist Yoko Georgiou is opening her show Paper Binoculars. Her work comprises a collection of tufted rugs made into the shape of cute sea creatures and sea anemones – the largest of which is inspired by an okapi, a Congolese zebra giraffe.

I opt for an alcohol-free soda this time, from the well-stocked free bar – the sensory overload of new ideas and people has me buzzing already anyway. I head to the next location, just around the corner.

Jacky Winter Gallery: 52 Budd Street, Collingwood. Click here for more

5. A highlight of my night

A dense crowd is spilling on to the pavement outside Everfresh Studio as the night falls on Collingwood. The adjacent laneways have become an ever-changing gallery of the work of some of the 17 artists who have studios upstairs.

The opening is for the Melbourne street artists Abyss and Louis Moore and titled A DOG EAT DOG WORLD: cartoonish urban landscapes and hellish creatures on canvas. This is only the second show since Everfresh resurrected in Perry Street but the artist-run enterprise has been a vital incubator of Collingwood’s street art scene for decades, originally taking its name from a lollipop sign at a former gallery located inside a factory’s wall.

“We hand-designed this new space with a view to keep its gritty, industrial soul,” the co-curator and artist Tom Civil says. The aim is to support young and older artists “whose work doesn’t fit into other spaces”. This one is a highlight of my night.

Everfresh Studio: 5 Perry Street, Collingwood. Click here for more

6. A shop transforms into a happening

After a short pedal up Perry Street I arrive at Outré Gallery: essentially a poster store, but one that celebrates local and international artists with monthly openings. The counter turns into a free bar and the Fitzroy hipster crowd is well lubricated by the time I arrive.

The show features the Melbourne artist Greg Mount, whose work is inspired by 70s and 80s Americana – roadside hotels, drive-in theatres, lost characters sitting on suitcases in desolate car parks of liquor stores and gas stations, all rendered in vivid and cartoonish acrylics on panel.

The store owners appear to be enjoying themselves as their shop transforms into a happening; I admire their hustle.

Outré Gallery: 319 Smith Street, Fitzroy. Click here for more

7. The final stop in an huge night

I cycle up Victoria Parade through the north of the city to arrive at Hair Ari gallery, directly opposite the Queen Victoria Market. The artist-run gallery is a small shopfront exhibiting research-based installation and performance art. The curators and artists Cristea Nian Zhao and Jincheng Deng, who moved to Australia from China and met at university, have run the space for three years, helping predominantly Chinese artists get a foothold in Melbourne’s scene.

Tonight’s opening is for a Monash University PhD student, Rosie Isaac. She has placed prints on a series of fridges using iron filings to demonstrate the scientific proof of magnetism – an effort, she says, to make invisible forces visible, as a comment on unseen social forces. It’s well past 8pm by the time I leave (most openings finish at 8pm) but the gallery owners seem content to let the opening go on as long as people are still engaged.

Cycling back to St Kilda after my whistle-stop tour, I’m fully satiated by the art and the community around it. I hope this is what Lai intended.

“The calendar allows me to stay in touch with the local art scene,” he says. “Making it public is … my way of giving back.”

Hair Ari gallery, 514 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. Click here for more