The University of Melbourne has announced a major exhibition by Melbourne-based artist Nadine Christensen, representing her first career survey to date. The exhibition, titled ‘Around’, brings together key works with a number of ambitious new commissions including interventions to the museum’s architecture. Presented at Buxton Contemporary, the exhibition will run from 24 November 2023 to 7 April 2024. Curated by Samantha Comte, Senior Curator, Art Museums at the University of Melbourne, the exhibition explores the enduring nature of painting as well as its complex legacy, which has been at the core of Nadine Christensen’s practice for more than twenty years.

Christensen has long engaged with notions of the every day, explored through the conventions of still life tradition and through her compositing of found objects. In gleaning what is seemingly incidental and overlooked from her immediate environment; studio, home, neighborhood, op shops, and the like, Christensen reflects on the fragility and precarity of life as well as human resourcefulness and adaptability, which she recognizes as often being found at the fringes or periphery.
‘Around’ will feature over 70 paintings ranging from 1998–2023, including a new series of ambitiously scaled paintings, and rarely seen works from private lenders. Christensen will also present several major sculptural works, including large-scale audience-activated kinetic works.

Anita Johnson has been announced as the winner of the 2023 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, coinciding with the opening of the 22nd anniversary exhibition at Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf.

The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize is Australia’s pre-eminent prize for small sculpture and the first national acquisitive prize for an original sculpture of up to 80cm, presented by Woollahra Council. Anita Johnson has been awarded the $25,000 award, for her work, Tenderness, which will be acquired for the Council’s permanent public collection joining previous winners Bruce Reynolds, Tim Silver, Robert Owen, Yvonne Kendall, Rhonda Sharpe and Mikala Dwyer.

TarraWarra Museum of Art today announced a major survey exhibition exploring the work of senior contemporary Melbourne-based artist Brent Harris, presented from 2 December 2023 to 11 March 2024. The exhibition Brent Harris: Surrender & Catch, curated by Maria Zagala and co-presented with the Art Gallery of South Australia, brings together over 100 paintings, drawings, studies, and prints, traversing the artist’s practice and stylistic shifts over his career.

Brent Harris: Surrender & Catch maps the ways Harris’s art has developed over the past four decades, featuring a broad selection of works from 1987 to 2022. Harris’s distinctive style, which moves between figuration and abstraction, deploys both humor and the grotesque to examine the psychological subject matter as he visualizes his complex and contradictory feelings. Indeed, the exhibition title refers to Harris’s interest in sociologist Kurt H. Wolff’s notion of ‘surrender and catch’ as a process for self-analysis and as a method of working.

White Bay Power Station has been revealed today as the first location for the 24th Biennale of Sydney, marking the first time the revitalised site will open its doors to the public in over 100 years. The 2024 edition, titled Ten Thousand Suns is curated by Artistic Directors Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerrero, and will be presented across Sydney from 9 March – 10 June 2024.

Contemporary cultural precinct HOTA, Home of the Arts on the Gold Coast has announced the Australian premiere of Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street, opening 25 November 2023.

First unveiled by The Design Museum, London, Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street explores one of the most universal design objects, bought and worn by millions of people worldwide every day.

An Australian exclusive, the blockbuster summer exhibition at HOTA Gallery will present over 400 objects, including over 200 shoes, process material, photography, posters, videos and artworks, charting the design and cultural journey of sneakers.

From iconic collaborations that shaped the industry over the years with athletes including Chuck Taylor and Michael Jordan, sneakers like the Reebok InstaPump Fury, the Vans Half Cab, and the Asics Gel Lyte III, which became cultural symbols of our time, to runway reinventions by Comme des Carçons, Sacai, A-Cold-Wall* and Craig Green, this exhibition surveys a phenomenon that has challenged performance design, inspired new youth cultures and shaken the world of fashion.

Looking towards a future of sustainable footwear, the exhibition also shines a light on the designers working to make this industry change, from plant-based sneakers by brands including Veja and Native Shoes, to customised designs from Helen Kirkum and Alexander Taylor.

Heide Museum of Modern Art has today announced a major survey exhibition of ground-breaking twentieth century American photographic artist Lee Miller (1907–1977), presented from 4 November 2023 to 25 February 2024. Curated by Miller’s son Antony Penrose, the exhibition Surrealist Lee Miller brings 100 photographs from across the artist’s remarkable oeuvre to Australia.

A Surrealist before the movement had a name, Lee Miller was one of the most original photographic artists of the twentieth century. Defying the expectations placed on her as a woman and an artist, she was as unconventional in her life as in her work. The exhibition Surrealist Lee Miller reveals how Miller captured the intensity of her experiences in unforgettable images spanning a remarkably broad oeuvre: from portrait, fashion and surrealist photography in New York and Paris, to landscape and architecture, coverage of the horrors of the Second World War, and the extraordinary world of her creative circle, which included Man Ray, Picasso, Max Ernst, Dora Maar and many others.

Bell Shakespeare has announced its 2024 Season. For the first time in over a decade, the company presents a new production of King Lear, staging the epic work in an intimate setting as Australian audiences won’t have seen the play before. A Midsummer Night’s Dream will tour to over 23 venues throughout the country that it didn’t reach in 2021 after disruptions due to COVID lockdowns and border closures. Rounding out the Season, Artistic Director Peter Evans explores Shakespeare’s depictions of violence with In A Nutshell: The Poetry of Violence.

Australasia’s premier art Fair, Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with MA Financial Group, attracted over 25,000 visitors and recorded over $21million in sales over five days at the Fair, with further sales expected over the next few days. Held at multi-arts precinct, Carriageworks from 7–10 September 2023, Sydney Contemporary represents the highest concentration of art sales annually in Australasia, a significant boost to the art market, and critical to the growth of contemporary art in the region.

Sydney Contemporary 2023 saw the Fair’s largest edition to date featuring 96 emerging and established galleries and over 500 artists from Australia, New Zealand, and around the world. The Fair provides an incredible opportunity for collectors, curators, art lovers and institutions from across Australasia to come together on a grand scale to view thousands of contemporary artworks, and enjoy installations, performances and talks. Galleries showcased the best of Australian, Indigenous, and international art, attracting high profile collectors and visitors from across Australia, New Zealand, America, Belgium, France, Japan, Indonesia and South America.

Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with MA Financial Group, opens to the public today, showcasing its largest fair to date, and today announced the inaugural winner of the acquisitive $10,000 MA Art Prize as emerging Indigenous artist Corban Clause Williams.

Presented at Carriageworks from 7 – 10 September 2023, the fair hosts an expansive program of art, performance, talks, food and drink, featuring the work of more than 500 artists and 96 galleries. Sydney Contemporary is proudly supported by the NSW Government through its tourism and major events agency Destination NSW.

The 2023 Sydney Contemporary program presents a range of engaging activities and events. Alongside the best of Australian, Indigenous, and international art on display, curated programs of Installation Contemporary, Performance Contemporary, Talk Contemporary and Create Contemporary run throughout the Fair.