The Art Gallery of South Australia today announces Quilty, the first major survey exhibition in a decade of one of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, Ben Quilty. Developed by the Art Gallery of South Australia and curated by co-Acting Director Lisa Slade, the exhibition will be unveiled in Adelaide on 2 March 2019 before a year of touring to the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Lisa Slade, Curator, Quilty and Co-Acting Director, Art Gallery of South Australia says ‘The exhibition presents a portrait of a socially engaged contemporary artist who is committed to art’s capacity to instigate change. Quilty’s subjects are never objectified, but always rendered through the lens of personal experience.

The exhibition extends from Quilty’s early reflections on the initiation rituals performed by young Australian men to his experience as an official war artist in Afghanistan and his campaign to save the lives of Bali Nine pair Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. The exhibition also includes works inspired by Quilty’s visits with author Richard Flanagan to Lebanon, Lesbos and Serbia, his revisions of the Australian landscape, and raw, intimate portraits of himself, his family and his friends.

Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with Barangaroo Delivery Authority, have unveiled three works by Contemporary visual artists who have created site specific works that will sit throughout Barangaroo’s financial, retail and dining precinct in the lead up and during the Fair from the 20th August – 24th September.

Monument #32: Helter Shelter by Callum Morton is a piece of temporary minor architecture, akin in scale to a bus shelter or a parade float. Half of the shelter bears the unmistakable characteristics of Donald Trump rising out of the ground and the other half forms a space for seating and cover from the weather. This voiceless, hollowed out, fun fair head, that reminds one of the famous Luna Park entrance across the harbour, conscripts the image of the current American President to play a role in our everyday lives by providing a place to rest and be protected.

Mel O’Callaghan presents Breath repertoire, 2018, a breath-work performance for Sydney Contemporary, 2018 activating the public forum at Exchange Place, Barangaroo. A rhythmic breath repertoire, performed by dancers of Sydney Dance Company’s Pre-professional Year 2018 and musicians Clare Cooper and Verna Lee, is choreographed by the intersecting lines of the forum and accompaniment of a percussive harp. Considering the rich history and contemporary significance of the Barangaroo site, Mel O’Callaghan asks how a poetry of the body in highly urbanised space might play out, informed by the primal breath as an elemental form of knowledge and knowing.

Cameron Robbins’ Remote Sensor, 2018 works to make tangible the underlying structures and rhythms of natural forces. Using his wind-powered drawing instruments on site, Robbins’ installation transcribes the invisible energies of nature, the wind, and light to create drawings, photographs, and moving image works along the foreshore of Barangaroo.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Carriageworks and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) have announced that The National 2019: New Australian Art will present the work of 65 emerging, mid-career and established Australian contemporary artists living across the country and abroad.

A major collaborative venture, The National 2019 is the second edition of a six-year initiative presented in 2017, 2019 and 2021, exploring the latest ideas and forms in contemporary Australian art.

Connecting three of Sydney’s key cultural precincts – The Domain, Redfern and Circular Quay – The National 2019 follows a successful first edition of the exhibition held in the autumn of 2017 that attracted 286,631 visitors.

The 2019 exhibition is curated by AGNSW Curator of Photographs, Isobel Parker Philip; Carriageworks Senior Curator of Visual Arts, Daniel Mudie Cunningham; and MCA Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collections and Exhibitions, Clothilde Bullen with MCA Curator, Anna Davis.

Image: Troy-Anthony Baylis, Postcard (Bella and Cherry), 2010, reconstructed faux-mesh, 167 x 97 cm

The 12th annual Sydney Architecture Festival returns to the heart of the city this September, with events unfolding over four days from Friday 28 September until Monday 1 October 2018. The Festival presents a program of talks, tours and exhibits exploring ‘what makes a building truly great’ from Saturday 29 to Sunday 30 September and is bookended by The Architecture Symposium, presented for the first time in Sydney on Friday 28 September, and the annual World Architecture Day Oration on Monday 1 October.

2018 marks the centenary of Jørn Utzon’s birth, 45 years since the opening of Sydney Opera House, the 30th anniversary of Canberra’s Parliament House, and one hundred years of the architecture program at the University of Sydney. These major milestones underpin a weekend program of talks and events that explore the heritage and future of two of the greatest examples of our built environment, with all talks to be held in the Utzon Room of Sydney Opera House.

New York based critic, writer, editor and architectural consultant Karen Stein delivers this year’s World Architecture Day Oration on Monday 1 October, in the Utzon Room of Sydney Opera House. Drawing on almost decade of experience as a juror of The Pritkzer Architecture Prize and as editor and contributor to some of the most respected design publishers and publications including Phaidon Press and Architecture Record, Stein explores the fundamentals of architecture as a public act – asking what is architecture? Who makes architecture? And why is it meaningful?

Sydney Contemporary, presented by Deutsche Bank and Carriageworks, one of Australasia’s most significant and celebrated art events on the cultural calendar, has announced over 25 Australian and international artists for their Installation Contemporary and Performance Contemporary programs. Spanning a range of mediums from painting and sculpture, sound and ceramics, through to installation and video, as well as performances, the artists will present ambitious, large-scale and interactive works across the entire Carriageworks multi-arts precinct in Redfern, Sydney for the Fair being presented from 13 to 16 September 2018.

Now approaching its fourth edition, Sydney Contemporary welcomes Installation Contemporary back this year as one of the significant highlights of the Fair, presenting Australian and international artists, whose innovative and often site-specific installations range from the handcrafted to the digital.

Performance Contemporary will showcase bold performance pieces for this year’s Sydney Contemporary by artists including Lauren Brincat, Michaela Davies, River Lin, Julie-Anne Long and Emily Parsons-Lord. Performance Space curators Jeff Khan (Artistic Director) and Tulleah Pearce (Program Manager) have curated a program that will take place throughout Carriageworks over the four Fair days, with the greatest concentration of performative events on Opening Night on Thursday 13 September.

Image: Julie-Anne Long, The Invisible. Image Heidrun Lohr, courtesy of Sydney Contemporary

Australian artist Charles Blackman’s daughters Christabel Blackman and Bertie Blackman have been newly appointed co-managers of the Charles Blackman Foundation.

Blackman’s artistic practice spans painting, prints, drawing, sculpture and tapestry, using his multidisciplinary approach to explore the female psyche, poetry, music, aesthetic philosophies and the mysticism of cats. In The Evening is the Morning Blackman brings these familiars forward through bronze maquettes and illustrations from Mark Twain’s A Cat’s Tale. WATCH AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTABEL & BERTIE 

The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, presented by Woollahra Council, today announced 48 emerging and established artists as finalists for the 18th annual Prize and exhibition. The finalist group was selected from 666 entries this year including artists from Australia, India and the United Kingdom, highlighting the Prize’s growing international reputation.

The innovative submissions – each for a freestanding sculpture of up to 80cm in any dimension – were selected by a judging panel comprised of Australian arts administrator Michael Lynch AO CBE and Director of independent art advisory LoveArt, Amanda Love.