Bundanon has announced its 2024 exhibition season program and the plans for a dedicated new Collection gallery designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects.

Building on the success of the 2023 exhibition season – currently showing Miwatj Yolŋu – Sunrise People (until 11 February 2024) – the 2024 exhibition season will see three major exhibitions by renowned artists Jumaadi, Sancintya Mohini Simpson, and Jonathan Jones, as well as Arthur Boyd.

Throughout 2024 Bundanon will work with Kerstin Thompson Architects to reimagine the existing architecture inside the award-winning subterranean Art Museum to create a dedicated gallery for the Bundanon Collection. Awarded the Sulman Medal for Public Architecture in the 2022 NSW Architecture Awards for the design of Bundanon Art Museum & Bridge for Creative Learning, Kerstin Thompson Architects will significantly expand the existing gallery footprint, creating additional exhibition space and a dedicated gallery for the permanent Collection. A significant part of Arthur and Yvonne Boyd’s gift of Bundanon in 1993, the Bundanon Collection includes an extensive collection of artworks by Arthur Boyd and his family, in addition to works by Sidney Nolan, Brett Whiteley, Joy Hester and Charles Blackman. Today, the Collection also includes contemporary work from previous artists in residence, new commissions and private donations.

Image: Jumaadi, A Wedding Gown, 2021; Ishmael Marika, GayitGara, 2021, MiwatjYolŋu–Sunrise People, install view, Bundanon, 2023. Photo: Zan Wimberley; Arthur Boyd, Early Light, 1984

Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) has announced the 14 contemporary artists who have been selected as finalists for the $30,000 National Photography Prize 2024, Australia’s longest running acquisitive photographic award. The finalists’ works will be presented in an exhibition at MAMA, judged on Friday 22 March, with the winning works announced at the opening on Saturday 23 March 2024.

Established in 1983, the biennial acquisitive Prize offers a unique opportunity to consider the vital role of photography in contemporary art in Australia. The Prize brings together artists from across the nation who are pushing the boundaries of photographic practice, expanding and developing existing languages and techniques.

The 2024 National Photography Prize finalists include leading Australian artists and collectives Alex Walker & Daniel O’Toole, Ali McCann, Ali Tahayori, Ellen Dahl, Ioulia Panoutsopoulos, Izabela Pluta, Kai Wasikowski, Nathan Beard, Olga Svyatova, Rebecca McCauley & Aaron Claringbold, Sammy Hawker, and Skye Wagner.

The University of Melbourne has unveiled a major exhibition by Melbourne-based artist Nadine Christensen, representing her first career survey to date. Titled Around, the exhibition is presented at Buxton Contemporary, the University of Melbourne’s contemporary art museum, from 24 November 2023 to 7 April 2024.

Spanning more than two decades of work, this milestone moment in Christensen’s career will see key works from 1998 to now. The exhibition will include rarely seen works from private lenders and a new series of ambitiously scaled paintings, alongside five new commissions including interventions to the museum’s architecture and large-scale audience-activated kinetic works.

Over 80 artworks will detail an exploration into the enduring nature and complex legacy of painting, an enquiry that lies at the heart of Nadine Christensen’s practice. Large-scale sculptural and kinetic works created from seemingly incidental and overlooked source material gathered from Christensen’s immediate environment reveal her ongoing interest in the interplay of everyday life and art.

Heide Museum of Modern Art has unveiled 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.

While known for her war work and portraits of her famous contemporaries like Picasso (who painted Lee Miller six times), it is Miller’s surrealist images that endure with a fresh directness. Through the 100 photographs on display at Heide, audiences will discover the artist’s strong sense of the surrealist notions of incongruity, dislocation, dark humour and the uncanny, and her ability to perceive and capture surprising juxtapositions or elements of the marvellous in everyday subjects. Miller’s surrealist eye extends to her remarkable work as an official correspondent during the Second World War and creation of images in which the unreality of war assumes a disquieting beauty.

CRITERIA, a leading curator and gallery for contemporary design, has announced the premiere of the first Australian exhibition of works by acclaimed French designer Pierre Yovanovitch. The curated selection of his iconic designs will be presented from 14th March to 2nd May 2024 at CRITERIA’s new South Yarra showroom, set within an interior custom-designed by Yovanovitch exclusively for the exhibition. Yovanovitch’s debut Australian exhibition will offer a unique insight into his approach to contemporary interior design and unparalleled commitment to quality and craftsmanship. The exhibition will present a selection of his acclaimed design pieces including the Mama Bear Armchair, Asymmetry Armchair, Mindy Sofa, Roze Dining Table, and Flare Lamp.

Known for his timeless and sophisticated haute couture aesthetic, Yovanovitch founded his Paris-based design atelier in 2001 after a career as a menswear designer for Pierre Cardin led him to follow his creative passions into interior architecture and design. In 2021, Pierre Yovanovitch Mobilier was established having evolved from his experience creating custom luxury design furniture and lighting for his interiors.

Direct from Egypt, the highly anticipated exhibition, Ramses & the Gold of the Pharaohs, opens to the public at the Australian Museum on Saturday 18 November 2023 and runs until 19 May 2024. This spectacular new exhibition – in Australia for the very first time, will showcase 182 exquisite antiquities direct from the pyramids and museums of Egypt, together with their extraordinary stories. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see treasures of these ancient wonders, right here in Sydney.

Ancient Egypt, the land of pharaohs, extraordinary art, cultural splendour, and home to the only remaining Ancient Wonder of the World: the pyramids, has captivated the imagination of people across the globe and across generations. The name of its legendary pharaoh – Ramses the Great, has also endured.
Now, visitors to Sydney can discover the legacy of Ramses the Great and the treasures of the ancient pyramids for themselves.

Carriageworks has unveiled the first major solo exhibition by Sydney-based Australian-Fijian artist Salote Tawale, titled I remember you, now open until Sunday, 28 January 2024. Across two spaces at Carriageworks, the exhibition considers how identity is formed through memory.

In Bay 21, the Carriageworks Clothing Store resident artist responds to the expansive scale of Carriageworks’ architecture. Conceived as a ‘memory bank’, the ambitious presentation of new work immerses visitors in a whole environment that brings together paintings, sculptures, and karaoke. Inside the gallery we encounter cardboard hanging masks; plywood cut-outs of people and plants placed like theatrical set pieces; and a hibiscus floral pattern loosely painted across the gallery wall. A partial replica of the artist’s Fijian family home known as a vale – built on cinder blocks and clad with corrugated iron – stands complete with a clothesline out the back. At the rear of the gallery, pop songs play from a makeshift karaoke booth, inviting visitors to pick up a mic and sing along. With panels missing from the house, flowers fading out, and song lyrics misremembered, the installation is partially formed, materializing the fallibility of memory.

Alongside the installation in Bay 21, Tawale’s almost 14-meter-long bamboo raft, titled No Location (2021), is moored in the Public Space. Originally presented as part of the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, the work is based on a childhood memory. On a visit to the Fiji Museum in Suva at 10 years old, Tawale recalls seeing a scale model of the traditional Fijian watercraft known as a bilibili. At the time, Tawale imagined the vessel as a way to move between her home in Australia and her family in Fiji. No Location reinterprets the established method of making a raft. Using the labor-intensive process of bundling and binding bamboo for the structure, Tawale distinctly incorporates tarps and ropes – everyday materials typical of her work – alongside personal items chosen for the artist’s journey. In title and form, No Location embodies Tawale’s experience of displacement.