On Thursday 20 February, Wiradjuri /Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones’ new public artwork was unveiled to media ahead of the public opening on Thursday 20 February. Speakers included the Hon. Don Harwin, Minister for the Arts & Aboriginal Affairs, Adam Lindsay, Executive Director, Sydney Living Museums, Clover Moore, Sydney Lord Mayor, and artist Jonathan Jones.

Covering 2500 square metres of Hyde Park Barracks courtyard, Jones’ art installation untitled (maraong manaóuwi) is comprised of 65 tonnes of red and white stones from Wiradjuri Country in NSW (Cowra & Griffith) and took ten days to install. The artwork juxtaposes two remarkably similar symbols, the maraong manaóuwi – meaning emu footprint in Gadigal language – and the English broad arrow – evoking colonial military power – to re-contextualise the vastly different stories and experiences of the same historical period.

Image: Jonathan Jones,, untitled (maraong manaouwi), Presented by City of Sydney and Sydney Living Museums. Image: Pedro Greig

From 21 March – 14 June 2020, Heide Museum of Modern Art will celebrate the centenary of Australian modernist artist Joy Hester (1920-1960) with a major survey of her distinctive oeuvre. Joy Hester: Remember Me is the first solo exhibition of Hester’s art in almost twenty years and brings together more than 130 significant works from public and private collections, including seldom-seen impromptu studies that shed light on Hester’s unique style and creative process.

Acknowledged today as one of Australia’s most original and compelling artists of her generation, Joy Hester worked almost exclusively in brush and ink, focusing on the expressive potential of the figure and face as metaphors for the human condition. Unconventional and courageous, she freed herself from orthodox methods and brought a powerful female sensibility to subjects considered provocative during her life time such as love, sex, birth, and death.

This long-overdue survey traces Hester’s artistic trajectory from early naturalistic student drawings to her psychological portraits, her powerful responses to the oppressive climate of war, and later investigations into human intimacy and the theme of childhood. Joy Hester: Remember Me includes a number of Hester’s defining series—the Incredible Night Dreams, Faces, Lovers, and Girls—and reveals her experimentation with remarkably diverse stylistic modes as she found her own voice, using drawing as a vehicle to represent life in all its complexity.

Image: Joy Hester, Untitled (From the Love series) 1949

Carriageworks and Sydney Chamber Opera (SCO) will present Breaking Glass, four world premiere operatic works by Australian female composers: Peggy Polias, Josephine Macken, Georgia Scott and Bree van Reyk. In partnership with the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Composing Women Program these new one-act operas will premiere at Carriageworks on 28 March until 4 April. The season is directed by Clemence Williams and SCO Artistic Associate Danielle Maas, two women determined to expand the possibility for operatic storytelling.

Image: Sydney Chamber Opera, Breaking Glass, Carriageworks 2020. Image Samuel Hodge

The Biennale of Sydney has revealed details of the program for its 22nd edition, titled NIRIN. Under the artistic direction of acclaimed Indigenous Australian artist, Brook Andrew, NIRIN, is an artist- and First Nations-led endeavour, presenting an expansive exhibition of contemporary art and events that connect local communities and global networks.

Meaning edge, NIRIN is a word of Brook’s mother’s Nation, the Wiradjuri people of western New South Wales.

NIRIN is a world of endless interconnected centres; a space to gather and to share, to rejoice, disrupt, and re-imagine. Through their own interpretations and experiences, more than 100 artists from around the world will be inspired by, and reflect on, the world today, challenging dominant narratives and proposing exciting new futurisms and paths to healing.

The exhibition is open free to the public from 14 March until 8 June 2020 at six sites in Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artspace, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Cockatoo Island, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and the National Art School.

For all of the 87 days of the exhibition, these projects and ideas will also be activated and explored through an interconnected program of free and ticketed events called NIRIN WIR spanning from the Blue Mountains to La Perouse. NIRIN, meaning edge, and WIR, meaning sky, is a series of activations and creative partnerships with communities, arts organisations and tertiary institutions such as the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney Observatory, Parramatta Female Factory and Sydney University.

To find out more and to book for the NIRIN WIR program visit: www.biennaleofsydney.art

Image: Aziz Hazara, Bow Echo, 2019 (video still), 5-channel digital video, colour, sound, 4:17 mins. Produced by the Han Nefkens Foundation