Night is often imagined as a space of absence: a pause between days, a period of withdrawal, and rest. Yet darkness sings and shimmers. Flowers bloom, and bodies quiver in the dark.

The Night Blooms and Sings considers the effervescence of the night with an invitation to collectively dream the dark. In Dreaming the Dark (1982), ecofeminist writer Starhawk, calls for unlocking our internal sense of strength and knowledge. This New Age thinking of the 1980s called for sensing power from within as a way to challenge ‘power from above’ in a contrived society in which the oppression of womenx and the destruction of nature are one. The night exacerbates systems of values and domination whilst offering escape, refuge, and self-determination. The Night Blooms and Sings invites us to listen to the dark across pleasure, labour, myth and magic to dream of a different political future.

Artists in the exhibition are interested in the multitude of night and its rhythms, what the dark brings, its poetry, and what protection and care at night means. The exhibition is grounded in night-time experiences and histories of Muloobinba/Newcastle, listening to its environment, considering the city’s gay cruising areas, dark tales of homophobia and stigma of sex work.

The exhibition also proposes that cultural institutions have a role to play as public infrastructures in the night as a shared social reality. For long, galleries have been structured around the schedules and privilege of daytime life. The Lock Up gallery hours will be extended weekly, with access until 10 pm every Thursday, as a proposal for structural change and a prompt for the gallery to find its own rhythm.

The Night Blooms and Sings seek to empower night-time communities and challenge the othering of night. To know the dark might be to develop a relationship with opacity, attention, and the porosity of our bodies.