Our Story.
Growing from a slightly insane idea born in the great lockdowns of 2021, Great Space has a storied history.
We (Chris and Jade) met at the famous Michaels Cameras in 2019, where we worked running the media school. When the business unfortunately went kaput, we kept in touch and started scheming of ways to continue the teaching work we’d done at Michaels. The result was Kindred Cameras, originally envisioned as a satellite-style workshop business centred around photographic education.
After almost a year of planning satellite workshops at locations around Melbourne, we unexpectedly got the opportunity to take on a huge derelict retail tenancy in the District Docklands. Putting our initial ambitions on hold and working within the existing fit-out, we then transformed the space into a hybrid photo/artist studio and gallery, and Kindred Cameras (the space) began.
There was one core aim - to keep our services affordable. We had both spent years working in the arts and understood the struggle of pursuing a creative career. We wanted to create a space that made pursuing creative work easier, not harder.
Over the next few years the studio went through many iterations. With feedback from members, photographers and artists, the facilities were added to and tweaked, evolving over time. We slowly began to find our footing within the Melbourne creative scene through our exhibition call outs, and started booking regular studio hires, but the workshops fell by the wayside while we grew the business around the physical facilities.
In 2025 however things started to change with some unexpected success through our @kindredcameras Instagram account. All of a sudden some of Chris’ whacky little art experiments started to go viral, and with this newfound audience, there was suddenly an opportunity to teach not just the Melbourne arts community, but the international one too.
We quickly grew our online audience through a mix of tutorials and demos, and found a new way to share our slightly weird approach to photography. Inspired by people’s enthusiasm to learn about alternative photographic processes, we doubled down on social media, growing tens of thousands of followers in the span of a few months, and finally launched our workshops in our Docklands classroom in 2026.
We quickly learned what people were interested in and leant into the old, analogue photographic processes, but this also led to a bit of a dilemma. We struggled to reconcile the casual, craft-based nature of the workshops with the technical and often commercial work of the photo studios. The gallery also transformed from having sporadic photography exhibitions to a packed yearly calendar of all sorts of visual art. Over the three years we’d been operating the business had evolved, and we were ready for a change.
We decided to revert Kindred Cameras to its original purpose - education - and find a new name for our studio and gallery space that better represented what it had become. Over the years, there’s one thing we’ve heard from almost everyone who walks through our door: “Great space you have here.” We’ve heard it hundreds of times. And so we decided to embrace it. In July of 2026, Great Space was born.
While Kindred Cameras lives on through our workshops and online education, Great Space continues our physical legacy by providing affordable facility access to Melbourne’s creative community. Whether it’s an exhibition of paintings in the gallery, an editorial shoot in the photo studio, or a collage workshop in the classroom, with a bit of imagination, there isn’t much that isn’t possible at our studio!
Thanks for the support through it all, we hope to see you at the space soon.
Chris & Jade
Our Team
Chris Bowes
Chris is a creative soul who has a hard time focusing on doing one thing. He left his hometown of Brisbane for the greener pastures of Melbourne back in 2017, and in the last ten years has bounced around between being a professional artist, studio photographer and uni lecturer.
Chris has done a few interesting things in his time as an artist, including a practice spanning analogue photography, found objects, interactive artwork and film. His achievements include having work in LACMA’s collection and winning the Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize, however in 2021 he decided to put his practice on hold and focus on this business instead!
Currently Chris spends most of his time managing the day-to-day operations of the studio, creating content for @kindredcameras, and teaching, whether it’s at Great Space or RMIT. If you visit the studio, there is a good chance Chris will be around, so don’t be afraid to say g’day.
To see some of Chris’ work from his previous life, visit chrisbowes.com.au. To see some current work, see @kindredcameras.
Jade Richards-Butler
Jade has spent the better part of two decades chasing creative pursuits across Oceania. In 2008 she completed a diploma in filmmaking at the International Academy of Film & Television in Cebu, Philippines, before spending six years in Hong Kong, where she studied photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design. While there, she exhibited and worked across galleries and photographic institutions. She spent her last year in Hong Kong teaching art to children.
After returning to her hometown of Melbourne in 2017, Jade completed a Master of Fine Art at RMIT while continuing to exhibit, work behind the scenes in arts organisations and gradually expand her creative practice.
In 2023 Jade took on her most ambitious creative project yet: becoming a mum. When she's not wrangling a toddler, she somehow balances gallery management, administration and exhibitions at Great Space with a career in e-commerce.
Jade is the driving force behind Great Space's group exhibition program, curating shows including Lost & Found, Anomaly: Out of Place and Afterglow. She's passionate about creating opportunities for emerging artists and building a welcoming creative community, so if you're interested in exhibiting with us, she's probably the person you'll end up chatting to.
