Shop and Dwelling (SaD) was a studio and home with storefront visibility on Brunswick Street in North Fitzroy, Melbourne/Naarm. A place for ‘work’ to be displayed to the public, SaD was a project that aimed to push the creative potential of what working in a shop can be, with a particular focus on contemporary modes of publishing, distribution, labour and production and what their alternatives could be.

The space allowed many ideas to be tested out and a lot was learned about what it takes to manage a public space and a private-working studio. SaD resulted in many loose ends and unfinished ideas, some of which will continue on - below is a selection of these ideas.

The Shop and Dwelling website is archived, here. For a period SaD was open for 2 hours on a saturday afternoon, this opened the space up for public interaction. Our visitor-base consisted mostly of friends on their way past and curious neighbours. With nothing in particular to sell, apart from our risograph off-prints, visitors would stay and chat whilst ruffling through the offprints bucket. The shops predominant transactional structure was through knowledge.

A sample of the poster catalog curated by purchased off-prints

On the side of the studio was a large billboard. Each month or so the billboard would be changed - with each change we took a photograph from the same spot across the street.


One of the more successful pursuits of shop and dwelling were film screenings. SaD laid host to multiple small scale, intimate screenings and dinners for a small donation. By removing some of the existing consumer and capitalist expectations of a public screening a space was created to foster knowledge exchange as an alternative to monetary exchange.


Selected invitations for screening events