Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with Principal Partner MA Financial Group, today announces its dynamic and extensive curated programs and a selection of presentation highlights from the more than 85 participating galleries across the Fair. Eleven major artworks will be presented for Installation Contemporary, the leading voices across art and design will join this year’s Talk Contemporary, including a conversation with Mona’s Kirsha Kaechele, a new performance work honouring recently passed artist Sēini ‘SistaNative’ Taumoepeau will be presented as part of Performance Contemporary, and artist Lara Merrett will lead Kid Contemporary. Sydney Contemporary will be presented from 5 – 8 September 2024 at Presenting Partner Carriageworks.

Image: Darren Sylvester, Transformer, 2021, steel, neon, transformers, animator unit, mixed media, 220 x 130 x 48cm. Courtesy of the artist and Neon Parc

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra will perform with special guest Japanese soprano Yukie Sato in her highly anticipated Australian debut for the next concert series Handel’s House. Showcasing her technical skill, innate musicality and natural charisma, Sato will perform a program of Handel’s most cherished arias. The concerts will take place at Sydney’s City Recital Hall from 30 August – 7 September, Brisbane’s Queensland Performing Arts Centre on 10 September, and the Melbourne Recital Centre from 12 – 15 September.

In a rare opportunity to see the artist perform outside her native Japan, Yukie Sato will bring to life a program of dramatic arias by the German-British Baroque composer Handel, perfectly befitting her signature theatricality, emotional intensity and dazzling voice. Exploring themes of love, angst and revenge characteristic of Handel’s timeless operas, program highlights include ‘Ombre pallide’ and ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ from the much-loved Alcina. Composed for Handel’s first season at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London in 1735, and introducing English audiences at the time to Italian opera, it tells the story of a knight Ruggiero, who becomes entangled with two sorceresses—the sisters Alcina and Morgana—on Alcina’s enchanted island.

Ames Yavuz, a leading contemporary art gallery in the Asia Pacific, presents its second solo exhibition by Western Aranda artist Vincent Namatjira OAM. Titled King Dingo, the exhibition features an ambitious new body of work, alongside two significant new paintings by artistic duo Alec Baker and Eric Barney, who are from Namatjira’s home in Indulkana, South Australia. King Dingo will be presented from 31 August – 5 October 2024 at Ames Yavuz’s second Sydney space on Commonwealth Street in Surry Hills, Sydney.

Featuring major paintings that depict a dingo dressed in royal regalia, Namatjira’s new series is imbued with the artist’s signature biting and irreverent wit. King Dingo presents subversive portraits that are an unapologetic celebration of Aboriginal leadership, influenced by Namatjira’s ongoing research and engagement with his great-grandfather Albert Namatjira’s work as well as his own recent plein air painting expeditions on Country.

Firstdraft today announced the return of its popular annual Firstdraft Auction, celebrating its 15th anniversary and featuring works by more than 140 Australian artists and over 160 artworks. The 2024 Firstdraft Auction runs for 10-days, with online bidding open from 11am Wednesday 7 August until 9pm on Friday 16 August. A free exhibition of all works offered in the auction will be presented at Firstdraft’s gallery space in Sydney’s Woolloomooloo, running concurrently with the bidding period, from 7-16 August 2024 and culminating in an Artists’ Party on Friday 16 August from 6-10pm.

“The Firstdraft Auction is one of Australia’s most celebrated art fundraising events which returns critical funding to the sector. For the past 15 years, Firstdraft has raised a quarter of its annual revenue from the auction and, last year alone, the generosity of our community allowed us to deliver 29 individual exhibitions and contributed to paying 81 artists for their participation in our annual program,” said Director of Firstdraft Caity Reynolds.

Participating artists for 2024 include Tony Albert, Ken Done, Huseyin Sami, Amelia Skelton, Belem Lett, Emma Pham, Catherine Clayton-Smith and Koji Ryui. The full list of 140 participating artists will be announced on 24 July 2024.

Bundanon has unveiled WILDER TIMES: Arthur Boyd and the mid-1980s landscape, a major new exhibition and live program of 80s-inspired events, on now until 13 October 2024. WILDER TIMES provides a snapshot into a period of cultural dynamism in Australia, when ideas of landscape, land ownership and environmental protection were actively interrogated.

The exhibition includes the work of more than 25 Australian artists of the mid-1980s. The starting point of the exhibition is Arthur Boyd’s renowned 1984 commission of fourteen powerful landscape paintings for Arts Centre Melbourne, which have returned to Bundanon for the first time since they were created. These monumental works are presented alongside over 60 works by other seminal Australian artists of the era.

Artists include David Aspend, Mac Betts, Vivienne Binns, Brian Blanchflower, Arthur Boyd, Mike Brown, Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, Judy Cassab, Bob Clutterbuck, Liz Coats, Bonita Ely, Gerrit Fokkema, Helen Grace, Robert Jacks, Tim Johnson, Robert Macpherson, Susan Norrie, John Peart, Toni Robertson, Howard Taylor, Rover Joolama Thomas, Imants Tillers, Timmy Payungu Tjapangati, Richard Woldendorp, and The Women of Utopia.

The National Art School (NAS) will present a major survey exhibition of Anne Zahalka, one of Australia’s most highly regarded photo-media artists, at NAS Gallery from 16 August – 19 October 2024. First exhibited at the Museum of Australian Photography (MAPh) in 2023, ZAHALKAWORLD – an artist’s archive brings together key bodies of work from Zahalka’s renowned photographic practice.

Spanning more than 40 years, the exhibition at NAS Gallery will see over 100 works from 15 different photographic series, alongside collected ephemera from her studio and archive. Anne Zahalka has worked closely with the National Art School to include six artworks from their collection, alongside five new works created between 2023–2024. Following the NAS iteration, ZAHALKAWORLD – an artist’s archive will commence a national tour, with further details to be announced.

Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with Principal Partner MA Financial Group, has announced the expansion of the popular WORKS ON PAPER sector, with six major galleries taking part for the first time. Also announced are the initial music and performance artists for its dynamic Art Night and Friday Night program.

Following its most successful year in sales in 2023, WORKS ON PAPER will have an expanded footprint with 26 galleries exhibiting. For the first edition under the direction of new Fair Director Zoe Paulsen, six major Australian galleries will join the sector for the first time, presenting works on paper by leading artists including Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Chuck Close, Abdul Abdullah, Zico Albaiquni, Cybele Cox, Sarah Drinan, Solomon Kammer, Tom Polo, Caroline Rothwell, Manit Sriwanichpoom, David Fairbairn, Danie Mellor, Ah Xian, Fang Lijun, Chen Wenling and Geng Xue.

New galleries include Ames Yavuz (Singapore | Sydney / Gadigal Land), Australian Print Workshop (Melbourne / Naarm), Nanda\Hobbs (Sydney / Gadigal Land), N.Smith Gallery (Sydney / Gadigal Land), Utopia Art Sydney (Sydney / Gadigal Land) and Vermilion Art (Sydney / Gadigal Land).

A major new public artwork by internationally-acclaimed, Filipino-born artist duo Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan was today unveiled at Sirius Sydney in The Rocks. Titled Bound, the work is a six-metre long cast bronze sculpture in the form of a sea vessel comprised of 85 pieces of luggage tied together by more than 150 metres of rope. The work is the first permanent public artwork by the celebrated artists whose works are collected by institutions around the world.