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Love bizarre and beautiful art? We’ve got a night of strange creations for you! Come along for stories of hair with a will of its own, shadow flowers, monsters beyond the garden and much more. There will be haunting, emo-country inspired music. And the macabre, spring time birth of LOST SOULS MAGAZINE Issue 2.
Get awed and get mesmerized at Gang Gang cafe on WED 19th November, 2025!
BOOK HERE
LOST SOULS Issue 2 is about to arrive! We’re honoured to celebrate its release with performances by another crew of fantastic Canberra writers. Join us and share in their dark and beautiful stories about strange creatures, or uncanny journeys through the mind.
'Strange Creations' is part of the magazine's Macabre Dreams series and will be held:
6:30pm - 9pm, Wednesday 19th November (doors open 6pm)
Gang Gang cafe (Shop4/2 Frencham Pl, Downer ACT 2602)
The night aims to help celebrate and promote the work of local artists and professionals creating “beautiful, strange and dark” work, with a focus on “strange creations” as the growth of spring time nears its end.
The event features performers reading stories about the alluring and sometimes terrifying imaginings of creatures and experiences natural, artificial and fantastic. Of changes difficult, even horrific, but still illuminating. And the emotional intensity and “re-births” possible from our journeys through weird and compelling forms of creative expression.
Performances include readings from LOST SOULS Issue 2, which will be officially launched on the night. The magazine’s second issue features a variety of creatures borne from the imagination of Canberra writers, as well as those from Melbourne and Adelaide. We will also be joined by one of the magazine’s interstate contributors.
Readings will be complemented with a solo musical performance of raw emotions and inspired by emo country sounds.
The evening will conclude with an interactive conversation with the performers about their work and the processes, expressions and meanings possible from 'strange creations', including how this connects us to a sense of place.
ENTRY AND REGISTRATION
Entry is $10 or $25 (entry fee + copy of LOST SOULS Issue 2) via Humanitix.
https://events.humanitix.com/strange-creations-readings-and-music
Line up
Dr Cobi Calyx (writer)
Fionn MacPherson (writer, editor)
S.R. Underschultz (writer)
Imogen Wall (writer, artist)
Brendan Vincent (singer, musician)
Host: Ben O’Mara (writer, researcher; Lost Souls 'Chief Spooky Officer')
Food, drinks and merchandise
Food and drink will be available for purchase from Gang Gang cafe.
LOST SOULS Issue 2, books and other work by artists will also be available.
LOST SOULS Issue 2 purchased with an event ticket ($25) can be picked up at the venue.
Location and parking
Gang Gang (Shop4/2 Frencham Pl, Downer ACT 2602) is a cafe, bar and a live music venue
located in Downer Shops. The cafe is about a 10 minute drive from the middle of Canberra city, or 20 minutes by bicycle.
Parking is available in Downer Shops and along the ovals of Downer Playing Fields.
Why hold this event? Compelled to be disturbed and delighted
Many Canberrans and others across Australia are fascinated by dark, strange and beautiful arts. From horror novels, cyberpunk short stories, weird nonfiction and macabre poetry, to movies about the supernatural, witchy crafts, albums of beguiling and seductive rock and graphic novels about the monstrous and grotesque, we are primed to be creeped out. To be afraid, but to also listen, question and learn.
Many of us like to experience the gothic, uncanny and fantastic as a way of making sense of the past and present. Perhaps so that we can reveal unsettling truths about a world that often feels like it teeters on the edge of destruction. Or know more about the perils and joys of daily life. And, simply, to find pleasure in creativity and the mystery of the unknown.
Despite such interest, there are few regular events featuring local artists with their own unique spin on the beautiful and dark arts. This is a unique opportunity given Canberra has a strong and diverse group of artists who shed a bizarre and illuminating light on a variety of issues and topics. Their work contributes insights about identity, memory, love, politics, technology, survival and so much else of what it means to live in the 21st century. Often, with grace, style, wonder and infectious black humour.
We hope to help share the work of many talented artists and increase their opportunities to engage with audiences offline as well as online.
We also feel that spring time in Canberra, with its natural and cultural experiences of growth and rebirth after winter, can help to explore the weird beauty of storytelling and the creatures of the mind we invent to help tell our stories and make sense of our world, and each other.
References
Allison, Richard, ‘CROP WATCH’ (2017) 167(11) Farmers Weekly 64
Billyou, Mary, ‘The Chainletter Tapes’ (2017) 44(6) Afterimage 2
Datli Beigi, Roohollah, Pyeaam Abbasi and Zahra Jannessari Ladani, ‘Urban Decay or the Uncanny Return of Dionysus: An Analysis of the Ruins in Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ (2022) 34(1) Critical survey (Oxford, England) 74
Dunlap, Thomas and Thomas R Dunlap, DDT, Silent Spring, and the Rise of Environmentalism Classic Texts (University of Washington Press, 2009)
Fujita, Hiroko and Fran Stallings, The Price of Three Stories: Rare Folktales from Japan (Parkurst Brothers Publishers, First edition, 2015)
Giangrande, Carole, ‘Spring Unsettled’ (2015) 122(2) Queen’s quarterly 296
Greven, David, ‘Demeter and Persephone in Space: Transformation, Femininity, and Myth in the Alien Films’ in Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan US, 2011) 117
Martin, Michael S, ‘“I Saw a Concourse of Strange Figures”: The Masque, Voyeurism, and Coverdale’s Self-Consciousness in The Blithedale Romance’ (2014) 40(2) The Nathaniel Hawthorne review 85
Morgan, Frances, ‘WEIRD HARMONY’ (2013) 23(6) Sight and sound (London) 72
Nelson, Brent, ‘Cain-Leviathan Typology in Gollum and Grendel’ (2008) 49(3) Extrapolation 466
Contact and more information
Ben O'Mara
Sophie Hoogewerff
e: lostsoulsmagazine@gmail.com
w: lostsouls.net.au
Event: Strange Creations - Readings and Music
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More on the blog
Lost Souls Magazine in print and online is proudly independent.
We are based in Melbourne and Canberra.
The design and development of this website was based on a scoping of best practice and relevant examples. Work included websites for Heat Magazine, Meanjin, Overland, The New Yorker, Rue Morgue, Dark Mountain, The Dark and Weird Studies.
We acknowledge, recognize and pay our respect to the Ancestors, Elders and families of the Bunurong/Boonwurrung, Wadawurrung and Wurundjeri/Woiwurrung of the Kulin who are the traditional owners of lands where we work and live in Victoria, and the Ngunnawal who are the traditional custodians of land in the Australian Capital Territory.
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