First Site Gallery

Come and explore your creative side at RMIT's student gallery.

Current & upcoming exhibitions

Sweet Enough

25 Feb 2025 - 21 Mar 2025

Sweet Enough looks at sugar from a feminist perspective, examining the complex history, uses and roles of the medium, while celebrating the artists layered relationship with the sweet stuff.

tên tôi (my name)

15 Jul 2025 - 08 Aug 2025

Names can connect us and embody our stories. tên tôi (my name) is a community-driven project that embraces and celebrates ethnic names through bead-making workshops and participatory installations.

Previous exhibitions

PDA (Public Display of Affection)

PDA (Public Display of Affection) is an open love letter to the many films, television series’, and characters I have adored throughout my life — Jale Sezai

Lovely Bibbles explores the embodiment of 'girliness' and new expressions of 'girlhood' in art. Focusing on interweaving painting and sculptural methodologies, this work challenges the dismissal of feminine-like aesthetics.

This Hideous Replica

Lifting its title from a misheard line in a 1980 song by The Fall about a reclusive dog breeder whose 'hideous replica' haunts industrial Manchester, this experimental project—a concoction of artworks, performances, screenings, workshops, a 'replica school' and other uncanny encounters—adopts monstrous replication as a tactic, condition and curatorial framework for exploring algorithmic culture, simultaneously alienating, seductive and out-of-control.

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About

First Site is RMIT's student gallery, that presents student exhibitions and events throughout the year. In the past First Site have been led by a student committee who rotate on a yearly basis.

First Site is part of RMIT Culture.

RMIT Culture brings together the university’s cultural spaces, creative programs and art, film, design and research collections, providing opportunities to inspire the whole community and valuable support for the university’s learning and teaching activities. By showcasing and expanding RMIT’s cultural assets through new initiatives and vibrant partnered projects RMIT Culture helps facilitate an enterprise-wide approach to cultural engagement.

Featured

Re-Orient Podcast

Re-Orient is a podcast miniseries of conversations with creative students, alumni and staff from the RMIT Asian Australian community. Hosted by Committee Chair Monica Do, a Vietnamese-Australian woman, Re-Orient looks at migration, identity, belonging, creativity and accessibility.

Find out more

Alumni profile: Claudia Hogan and Carla Serrano

Arts Management alumni Claudia and Carla curated a group exhibition at First Site Gallery in 2019. We caught up with them to chat about collaboration, securing funding and making the most of opportunities whilst a student at RMIT.

We are COVID safe

We look forward to welcoming you to First Site Gallery!

RMIT is committed to protecting the health, safety and wellbeing of our students, staff and the wider community and preventing the spread of COVID-19.

For the safety of other visitors and staff, we strongly encourage visitors to maintain at least 1.5m distance between yourself and others, and mask-wearing is strongly encouraged.

If you are feeling unwell, please do not visit First Site Gallery.

Other measures in place at First Site Gallery include enhanced cleaning throughout the gallery and hand sanitiser on offer.

For more information on how we are keeping safe, please see the University’s commitment here.

Our history

The antecedent of First Site Gallery can be traced back to the formation of a Gallery Collective in 1968 that was created soon after the establishment of RMIT Union (now RMIT Student Life). The first gallery, known as ‘The Collective Space’ ran exhibition programs from June to December each year as well as events, such as chess club nights, music performances and discussion groups.

The union’s gallery was relocated and renamed three times over the next fifteen years until, in 1996, it was moved to its current site and named First Site. From its inception, First Site was conceived as a space to provide students with a conduit into creative practice, independently from RMIT’s teaching programs.

As its founders imagined, First Site provided students with a space where they could experiment, take risks and learn about presenting their work publicly. In the past 23 years, First Site has presented over 850 exhibitions involving 4000 students that were appreciated by audiences of over 400,000.

Stay in touch

RMIT Culture keeps audiences in the loop about the latest cultural events and activities across the university.

Contact

Physical Address: Storey Hall Basement, 344 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Australia.

Location: Melbourne City campus, Building 16

Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday, 11am to 5pm

Email: galleries@rmit.edu.au

Phone: +61 3 9925 1717

Get in touch

Accessibility status

First Site is accessible via a lift. The entrance is on Rodda Lane opposite Building 8. First Site has DDA compliant and gender neutral bathrooms.

First Site is committed to increasing accessibility to our exhibitions and events. If you have specific requirements please get in touch.

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.

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Acknowledgement of Country

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First Site Gallery