CABINET OF CURIOSITIES
Facing the staircase at Fern Bar & Dining, stretching across three levels of wall space, is a mural that refuses to be seen all at once.
You might notice it while climbing the stairs, or from the upper landings. You might catch it from your seat at the bar, glimpsed between bottles and glassware. Wherever you encounter it, the effect is the same. It makes you look twice.
This is the Cabinet of Curiosities, a large-scale hand-painted mural by Lisa King. It’s not a literal cabinet, and it’s not confined by frames. Instead, it’s a layered, vertical canvas of surreal imagery and symbolic fragments, stacked across the building’s internal void like a dreamscape assembled over time.
Lisa King is an Australian artist known for her large-scale murals and expressive portraits. Her work often explores feminine strength and fluidity, blending realism with abstraction, past with future. Her murals have appeared on walls from Adelaide to Berlin, including her well-known collaboration with streetwear label Vans and her towering portrait of activist Aretha Brown. In each piece, there’s an interplay between beauty and distortion, between surface and suggestion.
The Cabinet of Curiosities continues that exploration, but through the lens of curiosity and discovery, themes that echo throughout the hotel. The work is intentionally ambiguous. It resists clear narrative. Some objects feel botanical. Others seem mythical. Figures emerge then dissolve. Colours shift depending on the light.
The mural responds to its environment. The tall cathedral windows beside Fern’s Garden allow sunlight to wash across it throughout the day. In the morning, cool light sharpens the edges. By afternoon, warmth brings out unexpected tones. At night, shadows deepen, and the mural becomes something else entirely. It is never static.
From the stairwell, the perspective changes with each level. What looks abstract from the bar becomes detailed from above. Guests stop mid-step to make sense of what they’re seeing. And that is the point. You are not meant to solve it. You are meant to observe, to wonder, and to move on with a question rather than an answer.
The name itself nods to the old-world tradition of Cabinets of Curiosities, which were collections of rare, obscure or imaginative objects designed to inspire awe. Lisa King’s mural draws on that spirit, translating it into something uniquely Melbourne. It reflects a city that hides its best stories behind laneways, favours the obscure over the obvious, and rewards those who are willing to look again.
You don’t need to understand the mural. You just need to let it shift your attention.
