The Substation

The Substation 1 Market Street, Newport www.thesubstation.org.au

$35 FOR TWO SHOWS BUNDLE OFFER/Get two shows for $35 (U.P. $40)! Choose between:• Any session of The Enormous Radio + an...
16/09/2026

$35 FOR TWO SHOWS BUNDLE OFFER/

Get two shows for $35 (U.P. $40)! Choose between:
• Any session of The Enormous Radio + any session of Registrations: Hidden Door Journal
• Both weekends of Registrations: Hidden Door Journal on Saturday 3 and 10 October
Note: Ticket bundle is only valid via The Substation website at our link in bio.

--
THE ENORMOUS RADIO/

PRESENTED BY THE SUBSTATION, CHAMBER MADE & MELBOURNE FRINGE

30 September – 10 October
12 – 9pm
Hourly sessions, final session at 8pm

Chamber Made's The Enormous Radio is a new large-scale immersive audio experience by artists Roslyn Oades and Bob Scott with collaborators. A ring of old radios replete with glowing dials, crackling speakers and twitchy antennas fill The Substation Main Space. This strange hive has been hacked, revived and repurposed to operate as an interconnected machine-medium capable of seeking, receiving, translating and transmitting uncanny messages from the animal world.
made



--
REGISTRATIONS: HIDDEN DOOR JOURNAL/

PRESENTED BY THE SUBSTATION & MELBOURNE FRINGE

Registrations unfolds across two Saturdays and an exhibition at The Substation as both public program and publishing experiment: Issue 3 of Hidden Door Journal, produced by Ranch Pressing in real time and under pressure.

Part exhibition, part séance, part print room, the project treats performance as inscription — something registered, duplicated, transmitted, worn into matter. Sounds, gestures, voices and their residue become transcripts, proofs, annotations, copies: published as they occur, before they disappear.




Credit
Sarah Walker

Applications close in two weeks for The Substation’s 2027 Artist Opportunities, including an experimental club night, an...
16/09/2026

Applications close in two weeks for The Substation’s 2027 Artist Opportunities, including an experimental club night, an ambitious dance program, a First Nations curatorial opportunity, the chance to join our Resident program, and short-term access to our spaces at no cost.

APPLICATION DEADLINE/

Wednesday 30 September, midnight

Visit the link in bio for more information and to apply now.

Credit
Resonance, James Batchelor, 2025, documentation by Sarah Walker Sarah Walker
The Street Dance Exchange, 2026, documentation by Namchops Namchops
In The Air, exhibition and public program, curated by Jessica Clark, 2025, documentation by Cassie Sullivan Cassie Sullivan
Club Ecstasy, Marcus Whale, 2025, documentation by Damien Raggatt Damien Raggatt
claire rousay + Lisa Lerkenfeldt, 2026, documentation by Damien Raggatt

15/09/2026

On the Couch features Roslyn Oades - who with Bob Scott and collaborators has created The Enormous Radio - which will be presented by Chamber Made at The Substation, Newport, as part of the 2026 Melbourne Fringe Festival, from 30 September - 10 October.

15/09/2026

TICKETS ON SALE NOW/

PRIME TIME/
BORN IN A TAXI/

PRESENTED BY THE SUBSTATION, BORN IN A TAXI & MELBOURNE FRINGE

14 October – 17 October
• Wednesday, 6 pm (Preview)
• Thursday – Friday, 6:30pm
• Saturday, 2pm (Review)

A celebration of life in all its stages, Prime Time interrogates the relationship between age, power, visibility, and value. This new intergenerational work challenges our assumptions and expectations about age and ageing. Featuring a cast of 14, aged between 5 and 93, Prime Time forges new dialogues across generations through shared stories, perspectives, dance and sound.

Tickets are on sale now, book at our link in bio.

Accessibility: Open Captions | Saturday matinee is Relaxed | Wheelchair accessible | Gender-neutral and accessible bathrooms available



Credit
Original video by Underground Media

ANNOUNCING/NO DRAMAS BY APHIDS/PRESENTED BY THE SUBSTATION & APHIDS18–21 November, 7.30pmWednesday 18 November - Preview...
14/09/2026

ANNOUNCING/
NO DRAMAS BY APHIDS/

PRESENTED BY THE SUBSTATION & APHIDS

18–21 November, 7.30pm
Wednesday 18 November - Preview
The Substation Main Space

Aren't you sick of surprises?

Don't you crave a day, a week...a life where there is nothing to worry about, no problems, no dramas?

Is it possible? Is that what we want?

A new stage work by Mish Grigor / APHIDS makes an attempt at a life with NO DRAMAS.

In a series of games, tasks and social encounters, two women attempt to keep things aggressively chill. They smile with tears in their eyes and push their feelings down, down, down. Into the sock drawer. Never seen again.

See? Easier this way.

Tickets are on sale now—book through our link in bio.
pdf


Credit
Lauren Dunn

This project has been supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts investment and advisory body, The City of Melbourne, and Creative Victoria through its Creative Enterprises Program, the City of Melbourne through its ACIP program, and Creative Victoria through its Creative Enterprises Program. With special thanks to Robert Salzer Foundation for their support.

11/09/2026

TICKETS ON SALE NOW/

PRIME TIME/
BORN IN A TAXI/

PRESENTED BY THE SUBSTATION, BORN IN A TAXI & MELBOURNE FRINGE

14 October – 17 October
• Wednesday, 6 pm (Preview)
• Thursday – Friday, 6:30pm
• Saturday, 2pm

A celebration of life in all its stages, Prime Time interrogates the relationship between age, power, visibility, and value. This new intergenerational work challenges our assumptions and expectations about age and ageing. Featuring a cast of 14, aged between 5 and 93, Prime Time forges new dialogues across generations through shared stories, perspectives, dance and sound.

Tickets are on sale now, book at our link in bio.

Accessibility: Open Captions | Wheelchair accessible | Saturday matinee is Relaxed | Gender-neutral and accessible bathrooms available.

Born In A Taxi

Credit
Original video by Underground Media Underground Media

ANNOUNCING CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS/REGISTRATIONS: HIDDEN DOOR JOURNAL/Saturday 3 October, 4–6pm• David Chesworth and Sonia ...
10/09/2026

ANNOUNCING CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS/
REGISTRATIONS: HIDDEN DOOR JOURNAL/

Saturday 3 October, 4–6pm
• David Chesworth and Sonia Leber .d
• Jonnine Nokes, Joel Stern, and Melanie Evans

Saturday 10 October, 4–6pm
• Sam Dunscombe
• Karina Utomo

Tickets on sale now via our link in bio. BUNDLE OFFER: Get two shows for $35 (U.P. $40)! Choose between:
• Any session of The Enormous Radio + any session of Registrations: Hidden Door Journal
• Both weekends of Registrations: Hidden Door Journal on Saturday, 3rd and 10th October
Note: Ticket bundle is only valid via The Substation website at our link in bio.
--
REGISTRATIONS: HIDDEN DOOR JOURNAL/

PRESENTED BY THE SUBSTATION & MELBOURNE FRINGE

Registrations unfolds across two Saturdays and an exhibition at The Substation as both public program and publishing experiment: Issue 3 of Hidden Door Journal, produced by Ranch Pressing in real time and under pressure.

Part exhibition, part séance, part print room, the project treats performance as inscription — something registered, duplicated, transmitted, worn into matter. Sounds, gestures, voices and their residue become transcripts, proofs, annotations, copies: published as they occur, before they disappear.




Credit
Sarah Walker
Karina Utomo, Ravyna Jassani
Sam Dunscombe, Cristina Marx

The team behind The Enormous Radio shed some light on how they brought their "uncanny audio encounter with the animal wo...
08/09/2026

The team behind The Enormous Radio shed some light on how they brought their "uncanny audio encounter with the animal world" to life, including what local wildlife we will hear and why we should listen closely to what they have to say. Read the full Q+A at our link in bio now.
--

THE ENORMOUS RADIO/

PRESENTED BY THE SUBSTATION, CHAMBER MADE & MELBOURNE FRINGE

30 September – 10 October
12 – 9pm
Hourly sessions, final session at 8pm

Chamber Made's The Enormous Radio is a new large-scale immersive audio experience by artists Roslyn Oades and Bob Scott with collaborators. A ring of old radios replete with glowing dials, crackling speakers and twitchy antennas fill The Substation Main Space. This strange hive has been hacked, revived and repurposed to operate as an interconnected machine-medium capable of seeking, receiving, translating and transmitting uncanny messages from the animal world.

Drawing on Australian wildlife field-recordings, spatialised composition, translation software, and techno-spiritualism, the installation conjures haunted transmissions that speculate on the possibility of interspecies communication. As acoustic ecologists make breakthroughs in deciphering animal languages, this work asks: what if we could tune into the non-human, the endangered, and the wild? What might they say?

In the time of human-made climate emergency, The Enormous Radio stokes our longing to connect and tune into the unknown and the wild.

Chamber Made
Roslyn Oades
Bob Scott

Credit
Sarah Walker Sarah Walker
Additional images provided by Chamber Made

07/09/2026

As part of this year's Melbourne Fringe Festival in October, The Substation is home to theatre, installation, and everything in between.

✨Catch 'Prime Time' a new intergenerational theatre work by award-winning local theatre company, Born in a Taxi.

✨If installations are more your thing, artists Roslyn Oades and Bob Scott will be giving animals a voice in their work ‘The Enormous Radio’.

✨'Registrations,' a collaboration between Hidden Door and Ranch Pressing will involve both an exhibition and performance as part of their programing.

Link below to view the full Fringe program around Hobsons Bay 👇
https://www.hobsonsbay.vic.gov.au/Community/Arts-events-and-culture/Events-and-festivals/Major-events-and-festivals/Melbourne-Fringe-Festival

REGISTRATIONS/ABOUT HIDDEN DOOR JOURNAL & RANCH PRESSING/Hidden Door Journal is a sound-studies publication with a focus...
03/09/2026

REGISTRATIONS/
ABOUT HIDDEN DOOR JOURNAL & RANCH PRESSING/

Hidden Door Journal is a sound-studies publication with a focus on horror, Gothic, and the weird. They are interested in possible/impossible intersections between artistic practice, music, literature, philosophy and theory-fiction. Issues of Hidden Door Journal are printed and hand-bound by Ranch Pressing.

Ranch Pressing is an independent small press that publishes limited-edition art, design, poetry and critical theory books on recycled, found and discarded stock. They design, commission, hand collate and bind with sustainability in mind.

--
REGISTRATIONS: HIDDEN DOOR JOURNAL/

PRESENTED BY THE SUBSTATION & MELBOURNE FRINGE

Ticketed sessions:
• Saturday 3 October, 4–6pm
• Saturday 10 October, 4–6pm
Traces from the live sessions will remain in the galleries as part of the free exhibition, open Wed–Sat, 11am–5pm.

Registrations unfolds across two Saturdays and an exhibition at The Substation as both public program and publishing experiment: Issue 3 of Hidden Door Journal, produced by Ranch Pressing in real time and under pressure.

Part exhibition, part séance, part print room, the project treats performance as inscription — something registered, duplicated, transmitted, worn into matter. Sounds, gestures, voices and their residue become transcripts, proofs, annotations, copies: published as they occur, before they disappear.

Set within the industrial architecture of The Substation, Registrations is a factory for the uncanny. Dead air. Corroded transmissions. Signal noise. Across performances and durational acts of reproduction, the program turns toward conditions increasingly difficult to ignore: mortality, necropolitics, disappearance, survival, return. Life and death are not treated as beginning or endpoint, but as atmosphere, infrastructure, afterlife.

Radiotherapy recordings, suburban séance tapes, sonic residues and spirit duplications—analogue publishing as real-time feed, repetitive labour, insistence against loss. To register something is to sense, but also to make a copy. The copy is the trace that outlives the event and begins a life of its own.


Address

1 Market Street
Melbourne, VIC
3015

Opening Hours

Wednesday 12pm - 6pm
Thursday 12pm - 6pm
Friday 12pm - 6pm
Saturday 12pm - 6pm

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Substation posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share