Paintings of every Melbourne shule unite in new exhibition

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.

“There is an urgency to present this exhibition now,” Sanadze said.

The skeletal armature holding the works together is designed to read as both fragile and aspirational. It’s a prototype for a speculative Great Synagogue of Melbourne. Surrounding it, paintings on linen canvas imagine a future in which external threats and internal division have been overcome.

Spiritgrow Synagogue rabbi Menachem Wolf said Razbash’s paintings reminded him of the Talmudic passage where Rabbi Akiva finds the seed of renewal within destruction.

“Her work offers a vision of a future where all shuls form one united temple,” Wolf said.

Also included in the installation is ‘The Young Kohen’, a figure evoking priestly lineage, and a portrait pair of Razbash and her wife titled ‘Submitted To CSG For Vetting I & II’, which is a comment on the level of security now required simply to gather and pray.

Through these works, Razbash draws a parallel between the LGBTQ+ pride movement and what she frames as the urgent civil-rights issue of Jewish Pride.

Kew Synagogue president Michael Krape said the exhibition showed that even in the face of enduring antisemitism, community persistence speaks to the strength of the human spirit.

“As the Talmud teaches, ‘Kol Yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh’ – all Israel is responsible for one another. This exhibition reminds us that, despite the repeated destruction of the First and Second Temples over 2,500 years ago, Jewish survival continues to inspire hope,” Krape said.

Razbash trained under Soviet immigrant artists Margarita Krivitsky and Joseph Edelman and holds two degrees in architecture from RMIT University. Temple Fragments is her second solo show at Goldstone Gallery, following her 2025 debut Architectures in C Major.

Temple Fragments runs April 19 to May 3 at Goldstone Gallery, Collingwood