Footscray

Welcome to the west. The vital community of Footscray is often reduced to lazy evaluations of cheap rent, cheap food and the impending doom of gentrification. Through a fairer and meaningful view, you will find an inclusive area where inner-city living is at its realest, as has been for a long time. In a short single block you can find a university, an Ethiopian restaurant, a new bar & gallery, an Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, an organic produce co-op and a DIY community space. A conflicting place, impossible to pin down in one paragraph. Footscray was built on the stolen traditional lands of the Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung people of the Kulin nation.

All photography by: Gianna Rizzo

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Gift Shop

Address
108-110 Nicholson Street

Part of the curator’s role for On The Grid means giving up your precious local secrets. However, any hesitation was put aside knowing this mammoth store will never ever run out of crazy crap that you never knew you needed. Granted, there is a big problem with single-use plastics and consumerism, this Gift Shop will still dig you out of the domestic dirt, time and time again – with style! Lost your phone charger? Here, have a red one for $2! Need a storage container? Here, choose from 20,000 different options (not exaggerating)! Need a shitload of fake flowers for some urgent reason? Here, drown yourself in multi-coloured plastic roses! When you want to break away from the monotony of Ikea, get lost in the aisles here for an hour. You can overhaul your entire kitchen with an array of pastel-coloured collanders for under $20. We’d like to see you try find a task they can’t be used for. Photography by Gianna Rizzo.

Gift Shop
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Gift Shop
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Gift Shop
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Gift Shop
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Gift Shop
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The Vintage Workshop

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