The Dax Centre

The Dax Centre Understanding mental illness through art We use the Collection to raise community awareness about mental illness.

The Dax Centre houses the Cunningham Dax Collection - a collection of over 16,000 works created by people with experience of mental illness or trauma. The Dax Centre not only exhibits the artworks, but offers a range of innovative programs for children, young adults, professionals and the community. These are designed to educate, build empathy and understanding, and reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness. The reduction of stigma dismantles the obstacles to people seeking help.

Mental health week is coming up - October 4-12!Are you looking for a unique, creative wellbeing activity for your group ...
21/09/2025

Mental health week is coming up - October 4-12!

Are you looking for a unique, creative wellbeing activity for your group as part of your mental health week activities? We've got you covered!

We offer 1 or 2 hour engaging, interactive, creative guided tours for corporate and community groups. The tours are able to be tailored to suit your needs and can include facilitated creative mindfulness activities or a presentation and discussion with a trained mental health Advocate sharing their personal mental health lived experience story⁠⁠.

Bookings are filling up fast! For more info and to book click 'Guided Group Tours' in the link in our bio

Image: Installation view of Dax exhibition 'A Subtle Omen’ by France Cannon

Just a reminder - our Repeat Pattern Design Workshop with Karen Yvette Clarke is coming up next week! ✨⁠⁠📅 Friday 26 Jul...
14/07/2025

Just a reminder - our Repeat Pattern Design Workshop with Karen Yvette Clarke is coming up next week! ✨⁠
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📅 Friday 26 July, 1-3pm
📍 The Dax Centre, Parkville
🎟️ $25 + booking fee (supports artists with lived experience of mental illness)⁠
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Step away from the screen and into a relaxed, phone-free creative space where you’ll:
🖍️ Make your own hand-drawn motifs
🔁 Learn how to turn them into repeat patterns
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No experience needed. All materials provided
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Tickets are nearly gone – don’t miss your chance to slow down, make art, and connect IRL.
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🎟️ Book now via the link in bio!⁠
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Led by visual artist Karen Yvette Clark, the Repeat Pattern Design Workshop is an interactive, hands-on creative session...
07/07/2025

Led by visual artist Karen Yvette Clark, the Repeat Pattern Design Workshop is an interactive, hands-on creative session that invites participants to explore pattern making through playful mark-making and digital design
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🗓️ 26 July, 1–3pm
📍 The Dax Centre, Parkville⁠
🎟️ $25 + booking fee (all proceeds support artists with lived experience of mental illness)⁠
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Join us for a hands-on session where you'll:⁠
🖍️ Create hand-drawn motifs⁠
🔁 Turn your drawings into repeat digital patterns⁠
🥤 Enjoy drinks, great convo, and a welcoming, inclusive space⁠
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Part of the Re/Connect exhibition and Analog Art Club, this phone-free event is about slowing down, getting creative, and connecting IRL. No experience needed - just bring your curiosity!⁠
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Limited spots available - link in bio to book!⁠
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07/07/2025

With so many wonderful events and programs running throughout, it can be hard to know where to start when it comes to celebrating NAIDOC week. Bigger crowds or louder events aren’t for everyone, so we sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed and let the week pass without engaging in any activites that support First Nations people. However, it’s important to find your own way to celebrate!

At The Dax Centre, you can celebrate First Nations artists in your community by supporting proud Murri woman Laiken Jackson’s Mindful Movement workshop.

In this wellbeing workshop, Laiken will share the importance of mindfulness tools in her own practice, especially in feeling grounded and connected to self, spirit, culture and Country.

This workshop will focus on breathwork, meditation and gentle movement, and presents an opportunity to engage meaningfully with the work of a First Nations artist this NAIDOC week.

This event is also part of Analog Art Club is a statewide initiative that invites Victorians to slow down, switch off their screens and connect in real life - through art. Hosted by galleries across Victoria, these phone-free events offer a welcoming space to reflect, discuss and experience art together, making creativity social, accessible and refreshingly analog.

Tickets are $20 - available via the link in our bio. Proceeds from ticket sales go towards the artist. Free for First Nations participants.

Artwork Spotlight ✨ Presenting ‘Where My Miwi is Strong #1 and #2’ by Tupun Wultatinyeri, exhibited as a part of Inter...
03/07/2025

Artwork Spotlight ✨

Presenting ‘Where My Miwi is Strong #1 and #2’ by Tupun Wultatinyeri, exhibited as a part of Internal Landscapes.

Wultatinyeri shares, “The Ngarrindjeri concept of miwi, being your spirit, is believed to be your liver and entrails. With the liver also considered to be the seat of your emotions. The practice of strengthening this was to sit or lay and focus thought on this area of your body. For me, in my adopted home town of Mildura, I had a place I went often to strengthen my miwi. In King’s Billabong, a place I sat often was Duck’s Foot Lagoon. Here I have depicted the body of water as my liver, my miwi, my spirit. This is one place it always grew strong. In these paintings, just near the Billabong itself, sits a remnant of another Billabong that fills and drains often, with the river levels. This spot was special, as at the tip of the inlet, the sun would set directly across the bend towards it’s lower flood plain. I spent many nights sitting here. I have depicted the inlet of this body of water as my miwi.”

Tupun Wultatinyeri is represented by The Torch, a not for profit First Nations-led organisation that provides art, cultural, and arts industry support to First Nations people who have lived experience of incarceration in Victoria. The core business of The Torch is to address over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within Victoria’s legal system through its Statewide Indigenous Arts in Prisons and Community Program.

All of the Internal Landscapes artworks are for sale, with 100% of proceeds going to the artist. Please go to the link in our bio to explore purchasing Wultatinyeri’s works on The Torch website.


Join us for Mindful Movement with Laiken Jackson. A calming workshop of meditation, stretching & dance led by artist Lai...
25/06/2025

Join us for Mindful Movement with Laiken Jackson. A calming workshop of meditation, stretching & dance led by artist Laiken Jackson as part of our NAIDOC Week celebrations 🖤💛❤️

This is an opportunity to reset, relax and prioritise self-care, all surrounded by the beautiful artworks of the Internal Landscapes exhibition

Support emerging First Nations artists, connect with self and spirit, and unwind in the heart of Internal Landscapes at The Dax Centre

📅 Sat July 12 | 1–2PM
📍30 Royal Parade, Parkville
🎟️ $20 / Free for First Nations people

✨ Internal Landscapes - Opening Night Reminder! ✨Don’t forget - the opening of Internal Landscapes is happening THIS WED...
16/06/2025

✨ Internal Landscapes - Opening Night Reminder! ✨

Don’t forget - the opening of Internal Landscapes is happening THIS WEDNESDAY, 18 June from 6–8pm at The Dax Centre!

Come experience this new exhibition featuring emerging First Nations artists Alena Landers, Anna Ellis, Laiken Jackson, and Tupun Wultatinyeri

🖼️ Expect an evening of inspiring art, thoughtful conversation, and deep connection - all exploring creativity, mental wellbeing, and Country

📍 Free event – RSVP via the link in bio

Developed with and supported by , this is a celebration of strength, healing, and innovation in First Nations artistic practice

We can’t wait to see you there!

jacksonellis.fibrearts

🌟 Artist Spotlight: Tupun Wultatinyeri 🌟⁠Meet Tupun Wultatinyeri – a proud Ngarrindjeri and Kukabrak artist born in Adel...
08/06/2025

🌟 Artist Spotlight: Tupun Wultatinyeri 🌟⁠

Meet Tupun Wultatinyeri – a proud Ngarrindjeri and Kukabrak artist born in Adelaide and raised in the Riverland of South Australia. Tupun is one of four powerful voices featured in our upcoming exhibition Internal Landscapes, presented in collaboration with and supported by the arts grant.

Tupun began painting in November 2022 as a personal journey toward peace and healing. What started as a quiet exploration quickly became a meaningful and ongoing practice. Through his striking acrylic landscapes, Tupun maps the emotional and physical terrain of his homelands—paying homage to the Country that grounds and restores him.

His work is deeply tied to cultural reclamation and storytelling. With a palette rich in greens, blues, and yellows, he evokes the lush vegetation, flowing waters, and golden sands of home. Each canvas becomes a meditative expression of memory, resilience, and connection to place.

Tupun is an artist supported by

🗓 Exhibition opening: Wednesday, 18 June 2025, 6–8PM at The Dax Centre. Free RSVP link in our bio.

Artwork in imagery: Tupun Wultatinyeri, Kingullun, 2024, acrylic on canvas, courtesy of the artist.

This National Reconciliation Week we are delighted to announce our upcoming exhibition Internal Landscapes, featuring Al...
30/05/2025

This National Reconciliation Week we are delighted to announce our upcoming exhibition Internal Landscapes, featuring Alena Landers, Anna Ellis, Laiken Jackson and Tupun Wultatinyeri - with the 2025 NRW theme “Bridging Now to Next” being especially relevant to our group of incredibly talented emerging First Nations artists creating new artworks for the exhibition supported by The City of Melbourne arts grants.

In collaboration with The Wilin Centre, the exhibition explores the important role that creative practice plays in each artist’s mental wellbeing, especially in processing emotions and experiences, creating a sense of purpose and motivation, feeling in control, and connecting to Country and culture.

With a strong focus on repetition and meditative processes, the artists find healing and clarity through their practices, helping to navigate their internal landscapes. This can be discovered in the meticulous line work in Wultatinyeri’s representations of Country, the methodical production of Lander’s hundreds of hand-made paper works, the rehearsal of movement required in the development of Jackson’s performances and the therapeutic nature of wool preparation and felting as demonstrated by Ellis.

Internal Landscapes honors the strength, depth, and innovation of First Nations ways of being, knowing, creating, and caring for self and spirit.

We hope you can join us for the opening celebration on Wednesday, 18 June, 6-8PM at the gallery. RSVP in our bio.

Image Credit: Tupun Wultatinyeri, Kings Billabong at Night, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. On display at the Confined 16 exhibition at Glen Eira City Council Gallery until 22 June.





- Alena Landersjackson - Laiken Jacksonellis.fibrearts - Anna Ellis

✨ Collection Highlight: Richard McLean✨ In the early 1990s when Richard McLean started his tertiary degree in drawing, ...
29/05/2025

✨ Collection Highlight: Richard McLean✨

In the early 1990s when Richard McLean started his tertiary degree in drawing, conversations about mental health were lacking.

To make sense of the world around him and his diagnosis of schizophrenia, Richard explored his childhood and different societal questions in his artwork. While personal inquiry was at the heart of his artistry, he also invited viewers to form their own interpretation based on the images and words that are sprinkled throughout.
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In this drawing, hundreds of people are all in rows, but only three people are highlighted. These people are not verbally comunicating with the people next to them, but huge concentric circles radiate out from them. Richard describes this as…”looking at the energetic transfer of people over distance” which he regards as a fairly spiritual concept. 🎨✨

To see more of Richard's work, head to the 'Explore the Collection' link in our bio.⁠

Artwork: Richard Mclean, Untitled, 1995, 48.5 x 33 cm, digital print on rag watercolour paper. From the Cunningham Dax Collection. ⁠

Address

30 Royal Parade
Melbourne, VIC
3052

Opening Hours

Wednesday 11am - 3:30pm
Thursday 11am - 3:30pm
Friday 11am - 3:30pm

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+619349 2538

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Our Story

The Dax Centre is a leader in the use of art to raise awareness and reduce stigma towards mental illness. Through our exhibitions and educational programs we seek to engage, inform and encourage community connections and conversations about mental health.

Image: Elizabeth Turnbull, My Ancestors & Me, 2010, acrylic on paper, Cunningham Dax Collection