If RISING's 2025 Program Wasn't Already Big Enough for You, Melbourne's Winter Arts Festival Has Just Expanded Its Lineup
Tropical Fuck Storm, a Miranda July film retrospective and a Zoë Coombs Marr variety show are just some of the fest's new additions.
When RISING 2025 announced everything that'll fill Melbourne across 12 June days, it didn't skimp on details. A free installation by a teamLab alum, exclusive Suki Waterhouse gigs, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, an art exhibition that's also a nine-hole mini-golf course in Flinders Street Station Ballroom, Yasiin Bey with Talib Kweli, Portishead's Beth Gibbons, Aotearoa favourite Marlon Williams, Olivier-winning hip-hop dance work BLKDOG: they were just some of the standouts. What happens when you've already unveiled a huge 65 events featuring 327 artists, but you still have more fun to share with the Victorian capital? Enter a new round of additions to RISING's 2025 program.
More music, more comedy, a fest-within-the-fest: that's where the latest batch of RISING events starts, jamming even more things to do into its Wednesday, June 4–Sunday, June 15 dates. If you didn't already feel spoiled for choice — whether you're a Melburnian kicking off winter in the best possible way at home or you're making plans to head to the festival from interstate — you will now.
"This next chapter of the program expands RISING's reach across the city — with more artists, more public moments and more ways to encounter art in the everyday," explains RISING Co-Artistic Directors Hannah Fox and Gidoen Obarzanek.
"From the full-scale Fed Square takeover led by some of Pakistan's most-vital contemporary musicians, to a new live variety show by the brilliant Zoë Coombs Marr, to an all-in community dance at Melbourne Town Hall with Country Struts, these works speak to the energy, humour and cultural depth that define RISING."
Fox and Obarzanek have mentioned some of the new highlights, such as the lineup for BLOCKBUSTER, a free ode to South Asian culture in Federation Square — and also Zoë Coombs Marr's new variety show. The first features street food, Pakistani R&B, Punjabi rap, art trucks, workshops and more in general, and Faris Shafi, Zulfiqar Jabbar Khan aka Xulfi, Annural Khalid, Zain and Zohaib, Sherry Khattak and the Coke Studio Pakistan house band specifically. The second, Wrap It Up, takes its cues from Coombs Marr's love of late-night television.
Also now part of RISING's program: Tropical Fuck Storm playing The Forum, in what'll be their last show in Melbourne before heading to Europe; a film retrospective dedicated to Miranda July, fittingly given that the Me and You and Everyone We Know, The Future and Kajillionaire filmmaker is among the artists curating Swingers: The Art of Mini Golf 's greens; and Matthew Barnes aka Forest Swords putting on his first Melbourne live show in a decade, blending electronic landscapes on ACMI's cinema screen with electronic tunes
Jamie Wdziekonsk
The Country Struts Winter Hoedown at Melbourne Town Hall also joins the lineup, if you're keen to make boot-scootin' shapes. Then there's the free roster of tunes and performances as part of the returning Night Trade between Capitol Arcade and Howey Place, with Kgomotso, LUNA, Zjoso and Nyege Nyege Collective all on the bill. Prefer a pop-up tiny rave? These little dance floors are also a Night Trade special, and will boast big-name DJs.
That Melbourne Art Trams' latest iteration would roll around town during RISING was both expected and confirmed in the initial program drop, but now the artists doing the honours have been revealed. This year's talents include Kelly Koumalatsos, Maree Clarke, Jennifer Mullett and Patsy Smith, all creating works about the lived experience of First Nations women. One tram will sport a collaborative piece by Laurel Robinson, Amy Briggs, Cynthia Hardie and Rochelle Patten, while Beruk's Corroborree (Women in possum skin cloaks) from 1897 will also feature.
Tamarah Scott
There's still more from there — back from the March program drop and from the just-announced new additions. So, get ready for return of eight-hour music fest-meets-block party Day Tripper, spontaneous supergroups forming at The Toff in Town, septuagenarian grime stars Peter Bowditch and Basil Bellgrave, Black Star, RONA, Soccer Mommy, Japanese Breakfast, The Wrong Gods from Counting and Cracking's S Shakthidharan and a celebration of Divinyls legend Chrissy Amphlett via cabaret, too.
Or, get excited about artists talks, food specials, sound artist Sara Retallick using The City Baths as a composition space, SHOUSE's Communitas making a comeback, a playful stage musing on heartbreak with the appropriate soundtrack, six performers working through 36 Shakespeare plays using household objects and Hamlet staged by a neurodiverse cast as well.
Eugene Hyland
Mathieu Bitton
Ryan Cara
Woopsyang
RISING 2025 runs from Wednesday, June 4–Sunday, June 15 across Melbourne. Head to the event's website for further information.
Top image: Tobias Titz.
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