Firstdraft has announced 136 artists are participating in the 14th annual Firstdraft Auction, one of Australia’s largest art fundraising events, with 148 artworks offered up for bidding on the Firstdraft Auction website starting from 11 am Friday 28 July 2023. A free three-day exhibition of all the 2023 auction artworks will be presented at Firstdraft in Sydney’s Woolloomooloo, from Wednesday 2 August until Friday 4 August 2023.

The Biennale of Sydney has today announced the curatorial vision and first 39 artists for the 24th edition, titled Ten Thousand Suns. This major international contemporary art festival will be open to the public from 9 March to 10 June 2024, presented in various locations across Sydney.

Led by Artistic Directors Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerrero, the 24th Biennale of Sydney proposes celebration as both a method and a source of joy, produced in common and broadly shared. With an exhibition of contemporary art at its core, the event will draw inspiration from histories of queer resistance and of coming-together to thrive in the face of injustice.

In partnership with Phoenix Central Park, a program of contemporary music will be presented alongside the exhibition, responding to the works on display and complementing Costinaș and Guerrero’s theme. Expanding beyond its multi-award-winning, architecturally celebrated home in Chippendale, Sydney, audiences can expect Phoenix’s widely-appreciated curatorial footprint to be translated to exciting new locations, with a line-up of bold and performative music experiences.

With the support of Principal Partner The Balnaves Foundation, Sydney Dance Company and Carriagework s are pleased to announce the four Australian dance makers commissioned to create works for this year’s exciting tenth anniversary of New Breed. Eliza Cooper, Tra Mi Dinh, Riley Fitzgerald and Beau Dean Riley Smith will each choreograph a new work which will have its world premiere at Carriageworks from 6 – 16 December 2023.

New Breed 2023 provides Australian choreographers with an invaluable opportunity to work with Australia’s leading contemporary dance company on a newly commissioned piece. New Breed is well established as Australia’s most exciting showcase of raw talent and fresh ideas from some of the country’s most gifted emerging choreographers.

Heide Museum of Modern Art will bring into dialogue a selection of significant works by contemporary Latin American and Australian artists. Presented from 29 July to 22 October 2023, the exhibition titled Beneath the Surface, Behind the Scenes explores the ways that art can take our imaginations beyond the limitations of the known world and the veil of visual appearances.

Beneath the Surface, Behind the Scenes considers art as a generative force and complex form of language, investigation and theatre. Artists in the exhibition embrace instability, and recognise forms of erasure and new realms of possibility, critically engaging with unacknowledged or difficult histories, as well as impacts on our changing society and natural environments.

A major new public artwork by internationally renowned artist Mel O’Callaghan has been commissioned by TWT Property Group. The large-scale artwork, titled Vertical Flow, measures more than 7 metres tall by 21 metres wide and will be completely integrated into a new development, ‘The Collective’, in St Leonards, Sydney, slated for completion in late 2025. O’Callaghan was chosen out of a field of several esteemed Australian artists to create a public artwork on the façade of the building to celebrate TWT Property Group’s commitment to community and creativity.

One of Australia’s most respected contemporary artist duos Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro will present new work in a free public exhibition at Art Space on The Concourse in Chatswood from 9 August until 3 September 2023. The artists, who represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2009, present Persistence of Vision; The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, an exhibition comprising mosaic renderings of the paranormal created out of well worn, second-hand pieces of Lego – chosen for its nostalgic and playful overtones. With this new body of work Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro explore spectres of the past and the delusions of the near-present in an exhibition that questions our fascination with fear and the phantastic.

Source:
Enfield Poltergeist (detail), 2023, repurposed Lego Claire Healy / Sean Cordeiro.
Photo: Osamu and Occam’s Box Cutter, 2023, repurposed Lego

Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with MA Financial Group, has announced the program for Installation Contemporary, as well as the inaugural MA Art Prize, for its anticipated seventh edition at Carriageworks from 7 – 10 September 2023.

This year Installation Contemporary presents ambitious large-scale artworks by 12 leading contemporary artists; Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Alex Seton, Brian Robinson, Jenna Lee, Jon Rafman, Julie Rrap, Lindy Lee, Louise Zhang, Mikala Dwyer, Roy Wiggan, Sarah Smuts-Kennedy and Tony Garifalakis.

Curated by Sarah Hetherington, Director, Galleries at Sydney Contemporary, Installation Contemporary is designed to showcase works that extend beyond the traditional booth presentation, providing an opportunity to experience innovative, site-specific, and interactive installations within the unique architecture of Carriageworks

The inaugural MA Art Prize has been established in 2023 to help identify, promote and realise the potential of emerging artists in Australia. The acquisitive prize valued at $10,000 will be awarded to one emerging artist showcasing work at Sydney Contemporary, selected by the judging panel comprised of Andrew Martin, Managing Director at MA Financial, Janna Robertson, Chief Operating Officer of MA Financial, Amelia Hill, Senior Advisor at MA Financial, Sue Cato, Collector, Philanthropist and Advisory Council member at Sydney Contemporary, and Ursula Sullivan, Co-Director Sullivan+Strumpf.

Image: Brian Robinson, Banks Bounty: Exotic Cargo 2022. Photo: Michael Marzik. Courtesy of the artist and Mossenson Galleries.

Bundanon has unveiled its major new exhibition season, The Polyphonic Sea, in the award winning Art Museum, open to the public until 8 October 2023.

The exhibition explores the wealth of languages around us, from speech and writing, gesture, and music, to the flow of the natural environment. Curated by Sophie O’Brien, it showcases recent and new works by twelve leading artists from Aotearoa New Zealand: Antonia Barnett-McIntosh, Andrew Beck, Ruth Buchanan, The Estate of L. Budd, Sione Faletau, Samuel Holloway et al., Sarah Hudson, Sonya Lacey, Nova Paul, Sriwhana Spong, and Shannon Te Ao.

Arising from Ancient Greek, the word polyphony refers to ‘many voices’; specifically, however, it refers to multiple melodies, all simultaneously maintaining their independence. The Polyphonic Sea prioritises sound, music and languages of many kinds (whether written or spoken, read by the eyes or experienced through the body).

Image: Sione Faletau, Fou ki moana / By way of the ocean, 2023. Photo: Zan Wimberley