Paintings of every Melbourne shule unite in new exhibition
Artist-architect Ilana Razbash has painted all 54 of the city's synagogues and brought them together in a single installation, responding to rising global attacks on Jewish sites.
Melbourne artist-architect Ilana Razbash began painting urgently in mid-2025. The trigger was the antisemitic arson attack on the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation.
And the result is Temple Fragments, a solo exhibition opening at Goldstone Gallery in Collingwood on April 19.
The show brings together 54 oil paintings, one for each synagogue building in Melbourne, arranged into a site-specific installation that takes the shape of a temple-like structure. Each panel was painted en plein air during 2025–2026, capturing the city’s synagogues as they merge with their surrounding streetscapes.
Layered across each painting are semi-transparent impressions of the Beit Hamikdash, the Second Temple in Jerusalem, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The approach draws on an idea explored by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l; that when the Temple fell, Jewish people carried a small spiritual fragment, a mikdash me’at, with them into the diaspora. These fragments became synagogues.
Goldstone Gallery artistic director Nina Sanadze said the exhibition was timely given the alarming rise in attacks on Jewish sites, particularly in recent months.
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