About the exhibition
Working with the question of how an exhibition might be a book, Flat earth presents a diagrammatic flat plan of a proposal in space.

Stolon Press is a Sydney-based art and publishing collective whose work sits somewhere between art and book, image and text. Established in 2019 by writer Tom Melick and artist Simryn Gill, Stolon Press has published twenty books to date, regularly involving an extended network of collaborators and friends.

Conceived as a flattened ‘map’, Flat earth creates a shared space where artistic, linguistic and material practices converge. Artworks overlap across the galleries as a material gesture toward cohabitation and neighbourliness. Flat earth brings together work by longtime Stolon Press collaborators, including writer, translator, and anthropologist Elisa Taber, and Lebanese-born, Sydney-based artist Khaled Sabsabi. Considering the postponement by Monash University on March 25, 2025, the artists have chosen to show works from their practices and processes made from residual materials.

Public Programs
Commune: Simryn Gill and Nick Croggon in conversation 
Date: Tuesday 27 May 2025
Time: 6pm
Duration: 75 mins
Location: State Library Victoria, Theatrette
Cost: Free but please register here
Join artist Simryn Gill and art historian Nick Croggon at the State Library Victoria for a discussion on the ethics, poetics and politics of togetherness that underpin Stolon Press.

Curatorial tours
Dates/times:
Tuesday 3 June, 11am + 2pm
Thursday 5 June, 10am + 2pm
Wednesday 11 June, 10am + 2pm
Location: Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA
Duration: 30 mins
Cost: Free but please register here
Join MUMA’s curatorial team for a guided tour of Stolon Press: Flat earth that will take visitors behind the works and enable reflections on the art to be shared in a supportive environment.

Biographies
About Stolon Press
Established in 2019 by Tom Melick and Simryn Gill, Stolon Press is a Sydney-based art and publishing collective working between art and book, image and text. Its name referring to the stolon, a plant stem or runner that propagates where its parts touch the ground, Stolon Press embodies rootedness, connection and collaboration. With a portfolio of twenty publications, the collective works closely with an extended family of artists, writers, and friends to circulate images and texts that might otherwise remain unseen, fostering new ways of thinking and being.

About Elisa Taber
Elisa Taber writes and translates herself into an absent presence. An Archipelago in a Landlocked Country is her first book.

About Khaled Sabsabi
Khaled Sabsabi (born 1965, Tripoli, Lebanon. Lives and works Sydney and Tripoli) is a socially engaged artist who works across mediums, geographical borders and cultures to create immersive experiences. His work questions the complexities of nationhood, identity and change. Sabsabi has exhibited in over 90 exhibitions in Australia and abroad. His work is held in a number of public and private collections including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney; Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney; and Italy Casoria International Contemporary Art Museum.

Access:
Physical access: MUMA is a ground-floor, wheelchair-accessible gallery with accessible and all-gender bathrooms. Gallery spaces are well lit and on a level surface. Contact us for a parking map or further information.
Visually described tours: Get in touch by email to muma@monash.edu or phone 03 9905 4217 to make an appointment for a visually described tour (for blind or low vision visitors).

^{Image: Stolon Press, in or as if in a deep sleep 2025 (process image). Courtesy of the artists.}

The University recognises the work of Stolon Press as curator of, and featured artist in, the exhibition Flat earth and its patience while the University conducted its consultations to ensure the exhibition proceeds in the manner and spirit originally curated by Stolon Press.

About the exhibition
How might an exhibition be understood as a form of publishing? This is the provocation that underpins Stolon Press' Flat earth.

Stolon Press is a Sydney-based art and publishing collective whose work sits somewhere between art and book, image and text. Established in 2019 by writer Tom Melick and artist Simryn Gill, Stolon Press has published twenty books to date, regularly involving an extended network of collaborators and friends.

Conceived as a flattened ‘map’, Flat earth creates a shared space where artistic, linguistic, and material practices converge. Long-time Stolon Press collaborators, Buenos Aires, Asunción and Montreal-based writer and anthropologist Elisa Taber and Lebanese-born, Sydney-based artist Khaled Sabsabi, each contribute lesser-known aspects of their artistic practices–works that Stolon Press foregrounds as part of its commitment to publishing material that might otherwise fall through the cracks or remain unseen. The exhibition fosters ongoing engagement with locality and the idea of multiple centres, prioritising relationships and sustained dialogue over singular, overarching narratives.

Stolon Press contributes a long-form essay displayed in the gallery as a series of panels. Like an open notebook, their work incorporates text, drawing, photographs, references and annotations. Taber shows microfilms alongside text drawn from her ethnographic practice to think about translation, memory, and the ways language shapes and unsettles belonging. Sabsabi presents large, coffee-infused calligraphic paintings rooted in tasawwuf (Sufism), alongside abstracted silhouette works that employ numerology and repetition to explore spirituality and our shared human condition.

The exhibition examines the function of language, the movement of meaning in written text, and what remains beyond its reach—whether in spirituality, the shifts between geographical contexts, or the interplay between text, image and space.

Publications
Each artwork is accompanied by a room sheet that offers an editorial interpretation of the exhibition. These interconnected texts invite audiences to carry forward the ideas at the heart of Flat earth.

About Stolon Press
Established in 2019 by Tom Melick and Simryn Gill, Stolon Press is a Sydney-based art and publishing collective working between art and book, image and text. Its name referring to the stolon, a plant stem or runner that propagates where its parts touch the ground, Stolon Press embodies rootedness, connection and collaboration. With a portfolio of twenty publications, the collective works closely with an extended family of artists, writers, and friends to circulate images and texts that might otherwise remain unseen, fostering new ways of thinking and being.

About Elisa Taber
Elisa Taber (born 1990, Asunción, Paraguay. Lives and works Buenos Aires, Argentina; Asunción; and Montreal, Canada) is a writer, literary translator, editor, and researcher. Her first published book An Archipelago in a Landlocked Country (11:11 Press) multi-sequentially shifts in genre from ekphrastic descriptions of 30-second films shot in Asunción, Filadelfia, and Neuland; to a short story collection inspired by metonymically translated Nivaklé myths; and a novella that mythologises the life of a third generation Mennonite woman. Her forthcoming projects include the publication Otra isla rodeada de tierra (Another island surrounded by land); the translation of Horacio Quiroga’s Beyond (Sublunary Editions) and Miguelángel Meza’s Dream Pattering Soles (Ugly Duckling Presse). Her writing and translations have appeared in a wide variety of venues, ranging from the Journal of the Royal Anthropology Institute to Words without Borders. With Tom Melick, she runs the experimental pamphlet series, Slug (www.slug.directory).

About Khaled Sabsabi
Khaled Sabsabi (born 1965, Tripoli, Lebanon. Lives and works Sydney and Tripoli) is a socially engaged artist who works across mediums, geographical borders and cultures to create immersive experiences. His work questions the complexities of nationhood, identity and change. Sabsabi has exhibited in over 90 exhibitions in Australia and abroad. His work is held in a number of public and private collections including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney; Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney; and Italy Casoria International Contemporary Art Museum.

Access:
Physical access: MUMA is a ground-floor, wheelchair-accessible gallery with accessible and all-gender bathrooms. Gallery spaces are well lit and on a level surface. Contact us for a parking map or further information.
Visually described tours: Get in touch by email to muma@monash.edu or phone 03 9905 4217 to make an appointment for a visually described tour (for blind or low vision visitors).

^{Image: Stolon Press, in or as if in a deep sleep 2025 (process image). Courtesy of the artists.}