Meet: -TOPIA: Tessellate Club returns to the Abbostford Convent with a new name & vision

Tessellate, beloved Naarm/Melbourne event series, has today announced the return of and slight rebranding of its festival iteration, -TOPIA.

Last year, the event took over the much-adored Abbotsford Convent just north of Naarm's CBD, for a sold-out day of outsider art, music, installations and stalls that brought the best of its city's multi-hyphenate creatives into the same space.

In 2025, -TOPIA, as it is now called, will return and build upon the reputation it's earned, offering a "transformative convergence of art, music and collaborative movement", with its theme of re-imagine, (em)body and co-create.

Alongside the announcement, Festival Director James Benjamin shared that this year, “the purpose of the festival is to unite community, collaboration & creativity, with the representation of the arts and its creators being equally important."

Read: Many hands make lighter work at Tessellate-topia

That merging of creative disciplines sees TOPIA focusing on immersive experiences across the various spaces of the Abbotsford Convent, with each dedicated to depicting a different stage of the cycle of life. From The Rebirth, Sacred Corruption, to Rapture Reformed, Imitations // Reflections, and the Souls Waiting Room, TOPIA's programming, which encompasses music, sound, art, dance, light, and even smell, is set to take attendees on a thoughtful and purposeful journey, alongside a brand new stage, named ‘Sirens’.

This journey has, as one would expect, no shortage of guides handling each of those spaces. Musically, -TOPIA sees the likes of Simona Castricum, UK artist Richard Sen and Spike F*ck, to name a few, presenting a range of forward-thinking takes on electronic music of various kinds. On the DJ-focused end of the spectrum, Andy Garvey and DJ Scorpion, renowned for their back-to-backs, bring their simultaneously deep and high-energy selections to the table, with none other than local legend DJ PGZ closing out the day with a spotlight on Black and Indigenous futurism.

Tickets for -TOPIA's 2025 journey are available now, set to take place on Saturday, September 26.

View the full lineup below:

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Jack Colquhoun is Mixmag ANZ's Managing Editor, find him on Instagram.