Vinyl Factory Reverb Lands at ACMI

The Vinyl Factory’s archive of 100 iconic pressings – including Massive Attack, Grace Jones and Daft Punk – arrived at ACMI on 22 May, marking the first time the London-born exhibition has been mounted in Australia.

The Melbourne edition of The Vinyl Factory: Reverb features 14 immersive installations, a sculptural sound system that lets you remix vinyl loops, and a dedicated Listening Room curated by Triple R’s Yasmine Sharaf.

The exhibition runs until 31 August, well beyond the RISING festival (27 May to 8 June). Tickets are $13 to $25, but the real bargain comes during RISING’s opening weekend: $10 entry after 5pm on 28, 29 and 30 May. After that, the price climbs to standard admission.

Yasmine Sharaf, host of Cease + Desist on Triple R, will program the weekly deep-listening sessions inside the Listening Room. Entry is by ballot only for exhibition ticket holders. The room stays active after RISING closes, giving the project a life beyond the festival cycle.

The broader exhibition travels through film, fashion and social movements. A six-hour jam film unfolds inside a reconstruction of The Church, the legendary New York recording studio. A fantasy rap battle traces copper lines from Cairo to London. Works by Stan Douglas, Jenn Nkiru, William Kentridge, Jeremy Deller, Virgil Abloh and others sit alongside the Vinyl Factory’s own archive of 100 pressings.

Time Out called the original London staging “a love letter to the power of music”, and The Guardian described it as “a joyous, time-forgetting labyrinth of sound and vision”. Melbourne’s version swaps three London artworks for a sharper focus on the Listening Room experience.

For vinyl collectors, that Listening Room is the reason to go. Sharaf’s curation rewards commitment over casual drop-ins, and the ballot system means you’ll need to plan ahead. For everyone else, the installations deliver a rare proposition: a gallery where sound is the lead material.

Don’t assume the exhibition packs up with RISING on 8 June. The long run until late August means you can catch it on a quiet winter weekday, when Fed Square is less crowded and the sound installations have room to breathe.

Tram routes 70, 75 and 96 stop at Federation Square, and Flinders Street Station is a five-minute walk. Parking is limited. Before your session, grab a coffee at St Ali in the nearby laneways, or check for overlapping RISING performances across the precinct. The NGV is a short stroll away.

When the exhibition closes at the end of August, the Listening Room will have hosted dozens of sessions. The vinyl loops, once set spinning, will keep playing in the memory of everyone who heard them.