TarraWarra Museum of Art today announced the title and full artist list for the highly anticipated TarraWarra Biennial 2025, curated by Yorta Yorta woman, writer and curator Kimberley Moulton. Presented from 29 March to 20 July 2025, the exhibition titled We Are Eagles features newly commissioned works by 22 artists who centre regenerative practice and relational transcultural connections to land, object and memory.

Inaugurated in 2006, the TarraWarra Biennial was established to identify new trends in contemporary Australian art through an experimental curatorial platform. The ninth TarraWarra Biennial’s title We Are Eagles, is derived from a speech given at the 1938 Day of Mourning—the seminal south-eastern First Nations political movement held on 26 January on the 150th anniversary of the colonisation of Australia—where activist and change agent Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls KCVO OBE called for equal rights and an end to colonial oppression, stating “we do not want chicken-feed … we are not chickens; we are eagles.”

Anchored in this sentiment and important political moment in the nation’s history, We Are Eagles shares cross-cultural knowledge and stories through a network of regenerative practice that disrupts colonial temporalities. Connecting across cultures, beyond borders and through waterways, sky country and stars, to the totemic eagle and more-than-human connections, the exhibition shares the multiplicity of ways to connect to history, Ancestral knowledge, and expansive futures.

A ground-breaking exhibition of street art, The Outsiders Melbourne, opens this December on the corner of Flinders Lane and Hosier Lane, the street art hub of Melbourne. It will be open free to the public from Thursday 12 December 2024 until 25 May 2025. This world premiere exhibition, which features highlights drawn from The Sandrew Collection, celebrates artists defying the art establishment.

Over the past 15 years, Sandra Powell and Andrew King have amassed the largest collection of street art in Australia, including the largest collection of Banksy artworks in the country. The pair – collectively referred to as ‘Sandrew’ – are renowned for their ongoing support of street art. They have curated exhibitions at home and abroad and are passionate in their advocacy of street art.

TarraWarra Museum of Art, located in the picturesque Yarra Valley in Victoria, will open the doors publicly to its breathtaking new building, the Eva and Marc Besen Centre, from 4 March 2025. The Centre will be a dedicated place of learning and creative inspiration for all ages, utilising flexible and adaptable spaces to deliver a diverse array of events including exhibitions, educational workshops, talks, lectures, performances, classical music concerts and live arts events.

The new Centre will provide visible access to over 300 stored artworks from the TarraWarra Museum of Art permanent collection, providing a panoramic display of iconic artworks gifted to the nation by renowned philanthropists, the late Eva Besen AO and Marc Besen AC.

Adjacent to the TarraWarra Museum of Art and embedded within the landscape of the Yarra Valley, the new 2205-square-metre Centre was designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects (KTA), with landscape design by OCULUS and Wurundjeri horticulturalist and artist Craig Murphy-Wandin.

COMA is set to unveil a new gallery space in the heart of Marrickville, launching on 31 January 2025 with a solo exhibition of new works by New Mexico-based Australian artist Justin Williams.

Inspired by the major warehouse-style galleries of Los Angeles, the 490-square-metre space, located on Chapel Street, has been transformed from a former coffee factory warehouse into a cutting-edge contemporary gallery, featuring an expansive exhibition space, private viewing rooms, on-site storage, and merchandise space.

Bundanon has unveiled bagan bariwariganyan: echoes of country, an exhibition of new works created by Walbunja/Ngarigo artist Aunty Cheryl Davison, Gweagal/Wandiwandian artist Aunty Julie Freeman, and Wiradyuri/Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones, open until 9 February 2025.

Celebrating South Coast stories and upholding local Aboriginal values and kinships, this major collaboration between the renowned First Nations artists features a large-scale architectural gunyah structure made from Bundanon’s Turpentine (Syncarpia glomulifera) trees, a 75-metre-long mural tracking the coastline from Sydney to just over the Victorian border, a suite of paintings, and ambitious large-scale screenprints. The season also includes drawings by nineteenth century Yuin artist Mickey of Ulladulla, loaned from key collections across Australia, providing a historical anchor point for the new commissions and connecting South Coast narratives from past to present.

The University of Melbourne has unveiled a major exhibition by Tony Clark, one of Australia’s most respected artists, at Buxton Contemporary, open to the public until 1 June 2025.

Titled Tony Clark: Unsculpted, the exhibition is a multifaceted overview of more than four decades of work, exploring the capacity of painting to test the boundaries between genres and disciplines.

Curated by Jacqueline Doughty, Head Curator, Art Museums, University of Melbourne, in close consultation with the artist, the exhibition brings together over 100 works spanning a 40 year period, including a number of new works and major works on loan from public and private collections, marking the most extensive presentation of Clark’s practice since 1998.

Heide Museum of Modern Art has unveiled a new exhibition showcasing many of the most significant achievements in the history of twentieth-century Italian design, presented by Italian civil engineering group Webuild and supported by the Italian Australian Foundation and John and Rose Downer Foundation.

Drawn from public and private collections and leading design brands, the objects in the exhibition include vintage and re-editioned classic chairs and furniture, lighting, espresso machines, typewriters and examples of landmark transport designs. Through recognisable and rare pieces, the exhibition explores the breadth of materials and manufacturers, and diverse approaches to form and function adopted by Italian designers in a rapidly evolving social and industrial landscape. Highlights include Gio Ponti’s ground-breaking Superleggera chair, a Vespa GS 150 and 1957 Fiat Nuova 500, Joe Colombo’s futuristic Elda chair of 1963, a gallery dedicated to work of the recently deceased visionary designer Gaetano Pesce, and an array of playful postmodern creations by Ettore Sottsass and the Memphis group.

The National Gallery of Australia has announced multi-disciplinary team CO-AP Holdings, comprising CO-AP, Studio JEF, TARN and Plus Minus Design, as the winner of the National Sculpture Garden Design Competition.

The winning team was selected for their vision of the National Sculpture Garden based on respect, care and future ambition for the iconic three-hectare site. The National Gallery and the CO-AP Holdings team will work together on the revitalisation of the National Sculpture Garden to create a living gallery for the 21st century.

Sydney Dance Company, led by Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela, has announced its 2025 Program: Come Closer; a captivating year of contemporary dance bringing together iconic and emerging Australian creatives with the formidable Sydney Dance Company ensemble.

2025 features new works by Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela, Stephen Page AO and Tra Mi Dinh, alongside the return of the sell-out Somos and the 12th edition of New Breed.

Ames Yavuz, a preeminent contemporary art gallery in the Asia Pacific, has unveiled a new solo exhibition by New Zealand-born Vienna-based artist André Hemer at their Reservoir Street gallery, open to the public until 9 November.

Titled Techno Dreaming, the exhibition features a series of new paintings and video works exploring the artistic possibilities arising from digital technology. With a complex creative process that traverses the boundaries between nature, generative algorithms and artistic labour, Hemer’s works bring into question what it means to make paintings at a time in history when our experiences of objects are increasingly blurred between physical and digital states.

The University of Melbourne has today announced its revitalised flagship art museum, the Potter Museum of Art (The Potter), will reopen to the public during Reconciliation Week on 30 May 2025. An exhibition celebrating the longevity and brilliance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art will open the Museum in May and run until 23 November 2025. Titled 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art, the exhibition features more than 400 artworks, including important public and private loans, and new commissions.

The Museum has undergone extensive redevelopment by Wood Marsh Architects and will feature an impressive new entrance on the University’s campus, along with new and improved spaces for the Museum’s leading collection-based learning programs made possible by the generous support of The Ian Potter Foundation and Lady Primrose Potter AC.

TarraWarra Museum of Art today announced a major group exhibition featuring artists who work out of the nationally and internationally renowned Arts Project Australia (APA), a gallery and studio that supports artists with intellectual disabilities and which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary. Presented from 30 November 2024 to 10 March 2025, Intimate Imaginaries is the first major survey of the work of APA artists in an Australian museum, highlighting the vital contemporary practices of 13 artists that have emerged from the studio over the past five decades.

Ames Yavuz, a preeminent contemporary art gallery in the Asia Pacific, has today announced two solo exhibitions of new works by New Zealand-born, Vienna-based artist André Hemer and renowned Kamilaroi artist Reko Rennie, opening at their neighbouring Surry Hills galleries in Sydney.

Internationally recognised artist André Hemer will present a series of new paintings and video works at the Reservoir Street gallery from 10 October – 9 November. Working at the forefront of the artistic possibilities arising from digital technology, Hemer unveils new paintings and video work in his solo exhibition ‘Techno Dreaming’.

Interdisciplinary artist Reko Rennie presents ‘Urban Rite’ at the Commonwealth Street space from 17 October – 9 November. Featuring a suite of new abstract figurative paintings that see a fresh direction for the artist, the exhibition expands upon Rennie’s pursuits into reclaiming Indigenous ownership over space and place within the urban landscape.

Bell Shakespeare has announced its 2025 Season, as it prepares to celebrate the company’s 35th anniversary next year. For the first time in Australia in nearly 30 years, the company stages Shakespeare’s political epic Coriolanus in the intimate surrounds of The Neilson Nutshell in Sydney and the Fairfax Studio in Melbourne. Acclaimed director Marion Potts returns to Bell Shakespeare for the first time in 15 years at the helm of a new production of Henry 5. Rounding out the Season, Artistic Director Peter Evans’ raw 2023 production of Romeo & Juliet will tour across the country to metropolitan and regional centres for the annual national tour.

Sydney Dance Company and Carriageworks have announced the Australian dance makers commissioned to create world premiere performances for New Breed 2024, generously supported by The Balnaves Foundation.

Presenting innovative vision and a rich diversity of choreographic ideas, rising dance makers Amber McCartney, Dean Elliott, Piran Scott, and Siobhan McKenna will debut new works, performed by members of Sydney Dance Company, at Carriageworks from 4-14 December 2024, offering a glimpse into the future of Australian dance.

Ames Yavuz presents its first solo exhibition of new works by celebrated Australian artist Karen Black. Titled ‘alternative frequency’, the exhibition will be on view from 31 August – 5 October at Ames Yavuz on Reservoir Street in Surry Hills, Sydney.

In alternative frequency, Black’s intuitive relationship with paint is revealed at its most raw and courageous. Made in the round, each painting holds manifold swathes and daubs of paint that are responsive to constant shifts in gravity and mood, allowing for a depth and movement on the canvas.

Heide Museum of Modern Art has today announced a new exhibition showcasing many of the most significant achievements in the history of twentieth-century Italian design, presented by WeBuild and supported by the Italian Australian Foundation and John and Rose Downer Foundation. On display from 26 October 2024 to 23 March 2025, Molto Bello: Icons of Modern Italian Design tells the remarkable story of how, through the marriage of Italy’s rich craft tradition, technological advances and a capacity for creativity, experimentation and invention, Italian design became admired throughout the world.

Molto Bello: Icons of Modern Italian Design brings together more than 170 objects spanning the sixty year period from the first Milan Design Triennale in the 1930s to the Memphis Group of the 1980s. Held across Heide’s Main Galleries and Heide Modern, the exhibition celebrates key figures in the industry and their enduring contribution to global culture. From the dynamic early work of architect–designers such as Gio Ponti and Carlo Mollino, through the ingenious and stylish creations of Gae Aulenti, Joe Colombo, and the Castiglioni brothers, to the quirky and provocative Radical Design movement, Memphis Milano, prominent design figures Ettore Sottsass, Nanda Vigo, Gaetano Pesce, and more.

The University of Melbourne has announced a major exhibition by Tony Clark, one of Australia’s most respected artists, presented at Buxton Contemporary from 1 November 2024 – 27 April 2025. Titled Tony Clark: Unsculpted, the exhibition is a multifaceted overview of more than four decades of work, exploring the capacity of painting to test the boundaries between genres and disciplines.

Tony Clark: Unsculpted is the most extensive presentation of Clark’s practice since 1998. Curated by Jacqueline Doughty, Head Curator, Art Museums, University of Melbourne, in close consultation with the artist, the exhibition brings together over 100 works spanning a 40 year period, including a number of new works and major works on loan from public and private collections.

This September, Sydney Dance Company presents Twofold, a monumental double bill with the return of Rafael Bonachela’s celebrated Impermanence alongside the world premiere of Melanie Lane’s compelling new work, Love Lock. Showing from 18 – 28 September 2024 at Roslyn Packer Theatre in Sydney, Twofold celebrates the breadth of choreographic dynamism and diversity with two formidable full-ensemble works from these renowned choreographic powerhouses.

TarraWarra Museum of Art has unveiled a major exhibition of new and existing works by leading contemporary Australian artists Su san Cohn and Eugenia Raskopoulos, on display until 10 November 2024. The exhibition (SC)OOT(ER)ING around Su san Cohn and Eugenia Raskopoulos, curated by Victoria Lynn, explores how the human body expresses social and cultural experiences.

The human body wears lived experience both on its skin and within. It expresses the cultural, sexual, racial and diverse geographic histories of individuals. Craft artist Su san Cohn and visual artist Eugenia Raskopoulos have explored the human body, often specifically female, for decades, their practices arising from their personal lived experiences and ageing bodies. The exhibition (SC)OOT(ER)ING around is conceived as an artistic collaboration by the two artists and the curator, bringing together 20 works that break down conventional understandings of the body.

Tasmanian-based artist Zoe Grey has been announced as the winner of the esteemed 2024 Hadley’s Art Prize for her work The Shape of Rock. One of Australia’s most lucrative art awards worth $100,000, the annual acquisitive art prize is awarded to the most outstanding portrayal of the Australian landscape.

The 28-year-old second-time Hadley’s Art Prize finalist’s work was selected out of 35 finalists by an expert judging panel comprising the Senior Curator, First Nations Art at the National Gallery of Australia Tina Baum; Senior Curator, Exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Jane Devery; and celebrated British-Australian artist and Associate Head of Art at the University of Tasmania, Dr Neil Haddon.

Zoe Grey works in the field of painting, as well as drawing, collage and ceramics, her practice exploring notions of home, connection to place and the experience of landscape. Her winning work The Shape of Rock depicts the rugged landscape of Marrawah, a remote coastal community on the northwest edge of Tasmania where the artist grew up.

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.

BLEACH* Festival, the Gold Coast’s annual contemporary arts festival, returns this Winter with a packed program, presenting over 30 shows and 110 performances of music, dance, theatre and visual art, from 1–11 August 2024.

The 11 day program presents 8 world premieres and 18 Queensland premieres, and brings together over 400 Australian and international creatives including Bree Van Reyk, Ellen van Neerven, Erik Griswold, The Farm, Gravity and Other Myths, Karul Projects, Lucy Guerin AO, Wayfinders – A Pacific Journey and Tim Munro.

Now in its 13th year, BLEACH* Festival celebrates the region’s world-renowned natural landscape as a unique stage for authentic and unexpected cultural experiences that inspire a deeper connection to place. The festival will be presented across four unique festival hubs including North Burleigh, Broadbeach Cultural Precinct, HOTA, Home of the Arts and the Tallebudgera Valley.

An exhibition celebrating the longevity and brilliance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art headlines the reopening of the University of Melbourne’s flagship art museum, the Potter Museum of Art (The Potter), next year.

Titled 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art and featuring more than 400 artworks, the exhibition is part of a year-long program to mark the Museum’s reopening.

The Museum has undergone extensive redevelopment by Wood Marsh Architects and will feature an impressive new entrance on the University’s campus, along with new and improved spaces for the Museum’s leading collection-based learning programs made possible by the generous support of The Ian Potter Foundation and Lady Primrose Potter AC.

65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art stares into the dark heart of Australia’s art history and is curated by Professor Marcia Langton AO, Associate Provost, Ms Judith Ryan AM and Ms Shanysa McConville in consultation with Indigenous custodians.

The City of Melbourne’s newest major festival, Now or Never, will return this August following a phenomenal debut last year.

More than 250 local and international creatives, musicians, artists and thought leaders will take over iconic venues across Melbourne – presenting immersive digital art experiences, cutting-edge performances, groundbreaking music and captivating talks.

This year’s festival theme, ‘Look through the image’ invites audiences to interrogate what’s in front of them to explore deeper meanings and contemplate the layers of symbolism and hidden messages within.

Ames Yavuz has unveiled a second Australian gallery space at 114 Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills, launching with the major program MEMORY/MYTH.

Curated by Director of Ames Yavuz Ananya Mukhopadhyay, the presentation features video installations by 27 internationally renowned artists from across the world, including Brook Andrew (Wiradjuri, Ngunnawal/Australia), Mónica Alcázar-Duarte (Mexico), Choy Ka Fai (Singapore), Tuan Andrew Nguyen (Vietnam), Joy Gregory (UK), Thania Petersen (South Africa), and Stanislava Pinchuk (Ukraine).

The 24th Biennale of Sydney, titled Ten Thousand Suns, closed on Monday 10 June, following a record-breaking three-month run that attracted over 771,000 visitors. White Bay Power Station, one of seven sites for the edition, was revitalised and opened to the public for the first time in over 100 years, welcoming 172,000 visitors alone, making it the most attended non-museum site in the history of the Biennale.

After 50 years of presenting the most dynamic contemporary art in Sydney’s unique cultural hot spots, the Biennale continues to innovate, inspire, and captivate audiences, both locally and internationally.

Ten Thousand Suns featured 400 artworks by 96 exhibiting artists and collectives. The exhibition, with free admission, was presented with an eclectic program of events with 140 musicians, performers, and creatives across live music, performance art, workshops, talks, feasts, guided tours, theatre, education programs and family days. The events program booked out, with over 20,000 tickets booked.

TarraWarra Museum of Art today announced a major exhibition of new and existing works by leading contemporary Australian artists Su san Cohn and Eugenia Raskopoulos, presented from 3 August to 10 November 2024. The exhibition (SC)OOT(ER)ING around Su san Cohn and Eugenia Raskopoulos, curated by Victoria Lynn, explores how the human body expresses social and cultural experiences.

The human body wears lived experience both on its skin and within. It expresses the cultural, sexual, racial and diverse geographic histories of individuals. Craft artist Su san Cohn and visual artist Eugenia Raskopoulos have explored the human body, often specifically female, for decades, their practices arising from their personal lived experiences and ageing bodies. The exhibition (SC)OOT(ER)ING around is conceived as an artistic collaboration by the two artists and the curator, bringing together 20 works that break down conventional understandings of the body.

Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with Principal Partner MA Financial Group, today unveiled first details for the Fair’s eighth edition. The Fair has announced the initial list of 81 galleries and the curators for Installation Contemporary, Performance Contemporary and Talk Contemporary. Presented from 5 – 8 September 2024 at Carriageworks, this edition marks the first under the direction of new Fair Director Zoe Paulsen.

The Fair program for Sydney Contemporary 2024 caters for collectors and the art-loving public alike, presenting engaging activities alongside the extensive artworks on show. Senior Curator at Artspace Talia Linz will curate Installation Contemporary, the section of the Fair dedicated to large-scale artworks, and Director of Friends with Strangers Samantha Watson-Wood will curate Performance Contemporary. Talk Contemporary will have two strands, one focused on architecture and design curated by Design Editor of Australian Financial Review Stephen Todd, and another on art curated by Curator of Contemporary Art at the Sydney Opera House Michael Do. Further details are soon to be announced.

The National Art School has announced undo the day, a new exhibition curated by Gina Mobayed, bringing together work from 10 earlier career and established contemporary artists, exploring the human response to move towards the light when in darkness. Presented across two floors of the NAS Gallery from 14 June – 3 August 2024, artists include Karen Black, Nathan Hawkes, Irene Hanenbergh, Ruth Hutchinson, Nabilah Nordin, Mel O’Callaghan, Tom Polo, Ronan Pirozzi, Jodie Whalen and Coen Young.

Working in and around abstraction and figuration, undo the day explores the notion of finding hope, and a way forward in times of doubt and change. As curator Gina Mobayed explains: “In darkness there is less definition and more uncertainty, there is an instinctual urge to move forward through both vision and feeling. We rely on light for orientation to mark the distance between what we desire, what we are looking for, and sometimes what we know. A flicker or a spark can be enough to offer hope, even if blurred and ambiguous”.

The Biennale of Sydney is delighted to announce Hoor Al Qasimi as the Artistic Director of the 25th Biennale of Sydney, which will take place from 7 March – 8 June 2026.

Hoor Al Qasimi is the President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, the independent public arts organisation in the UAE founded by her in 2009 as a catalyst and advocate for the arts around the world. Al Qasimi has been the Director of Sharjah Biennial since 2002, an internationally recognised platform for contemporary artists, curators and cultural producers, and curated the critically acclaimed Sharjah Biennial 15 in 2023. She was appointed as the President of the International Biennial Association (IBA) in 2017 and serves as the President of The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah and President and Director of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial.

Al Qasimi was appointed as the Artistic Director of the sixth Aichi Triennale (2025), becoming the first person to be chosen for the role from outside of Japan. She has also co-curated exhibitions at leading organisations around the world, including the Serpentine Gallery in London and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Image: Dan Boud.

Hadley’s Art Prize has today announced 35 contemporary Australian artists selected as finalists for the 2024 edition of the esteemed annual $100,000 acquisitive landscape prize. The finalists’ works will be presented in an exhibition at Hadley’s Orient Hotel from 3 – 25 August 2024, this year marking the hotel’s 190th birthday, with the winning work announced on 2 August.

Selected for the best portrayal of the Australian landscape, the finalists for this year’s Hadley’s Art Prize feature an exciting cross section of established and early career artists including Robert Fielding, Zaachariaha Fielding, Rosie Hastie, Naomi Hobson, Harrison Bowe, Belinda Yee,  Jane Burton, Helen Mueller, and Stephanie Tabram

The 35 selected artworks encompass a wide array of mediums including oil, acrylic, graphite, pencil, enamel, woodcut prints and digital etching, offering diverse and contemplative interpretations of the Australian landscape.

The 2024 judging panel of art specialists is comprised of the Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the National Gallery of Australia Tina Baum; Senior Curator of Exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Jane Devery; and celebrated British-Australian artist and Associate Head of Art at the University of Tasmania, Dr Neil Haddon.

Alongside the Major Prize of $100,000, there is the $10,000 Residency Prize, the $2,500 People’s Choice Award, the $1,000 Packing Room Prize, and $1,500 worth of prizes for students. Artworks are for sale and entry to the exhibition is free.

Archie Moore’s exhibition kith and kin at the Australia Pavilion has been awarded the prestigious Golden Lion for Best National Participation at La Biennale de Venezia 2024. This is the first time in history an Australian artist has received this accolade.

In kith and kin, Moore transforms the Australia Pavilion with an expansive, genealogical chart spanning 65,000 years. kith and kin is curated by Ellie Buttrose and commissioned by Creative Australia.

kith and kin; an enveloping artwork created in situ by First Nations artist Archie Moore, premieres at the Australia Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Commissioned by Creative Australia, the exhibition is curated by Ellie Buttrose and is on view from 20 April – 24 November 2024.

In kith and kin, Moore transforms the Australia Pavilion with an expansive, genealogical chart spanning 65,000+ years. Drawing on his Kamilaroi, Bigambul, British and Scottish heritage, the installation embodies Moore’s enduring exploration of history and identity, central themes in his artistic practice spanning over 30 years. His work brings international awareness to the vitality of First Nations kinship, in spite of facing systemic injustices since British invasion in 1770. kith and kin provides audiences with the first significant opportunity to experience a solo exhibition of Moore’s art outside of Australia.

Photo credits: Archie Moore / kith and kin 2024 / Australia Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2024 / Photographer Andrea Rossetti / © the artist / Images courtesy of the artist and The Commercial

The National Gallery of Australia’s iconic sculpture garden is set to undergo a $60 million revitalisation with the launch of the Sculpture Garden Design Competition today.

The National Gallery will conduct an open-call, two stage, competition to select a design team who can create an innovative design incorporating a public place for experiencing art, education, cultural and social events, while respecting the garden’s original design intent and heritage values.

The winner of the competition will lead a major redevelopment to revitalise the three-hectare garden surrounding the National Gallery, reinforcing its position as the most significant sculpture garden in Australia. The National Sculpture Garden project will be realised through philanthropic support.

In May 2024, the National Gallery of Victoria presents the 10th annual Melbourne Art Book Fair, a state-wide celebration of art book publishing and Melbourne’s status as a UNESCO City of Literature. Over 11 days, from 23 May to 2 June 2024, the Fair will enliven venues across Melbourne and Victoria with book launches, talks, exhibitions and more, including a special in-conversation with art historian Katy Hessel, a TV gameshow pop-up and showcase art and design publishing from across Australia and beyond.

Grace Crowley & Ralph Balson is the first-ever major exhibition to explore in-depth the longstanding creative partnership and artistic synergies between pioneering abstract artists Grace Crowley (1890-1979) and Ralph Balson (1890-1964). Opening 23 May 2024 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, the exhibition charts their radical leap into pure abstraction, and the important role they played in shaping the modern art movement in Australia.

Painting exclusively together for many decades, Crowley and Balson’s dynamic exchange extended and challenged both artists. Crowley and Balson respectively produced some of the earliest and most important works of abstract art in the country. Their collaborative approach to painting – the sharing of ideas, techniques and materials – resulted in two significant bodies of work that broke new ground in Australian art.

By presenting the work of Crowley and Balson together, the exhibition invites audiences to trace the shared influences and harmonies between their works, as well as to appreciate the centrality of collaboration to their individual practices. The exhibition comprises more than 75 paintings and works on paper, with some of these never-before-seen by the Australian public, and drawn from Victorian and interstate collections, major institutions including the Art Gallery of New South Wales and National Gallery of Australia, regional and private collections.

Image: Grace Crowley, Abstract painting, 1950, 61 x 75.8 cm, oil on hardboard, Art Galley of New South Wales, Sydney, Purchased with funds provided by the Art Gallery of New South Wales Foundation, 2019, © Grace Crowley Estate

A Secondary Eye has announced the launch of a new gallery space located within the arts district of Woollahra, Sydney on Friday 3 May 2024.

Led by Jesse-Jack De Deyne, a specialist with extensive experience working in the secondary market for Australian Indigenous art and Boris Cornelissen, former Contemporary Art Specialist at Sotheby’s London and Hong Kong, A Secondary Eye was founded in 2020 with a focus on further developing the secondary market for art and collectibles in Australia.

The University of Melbourne has announced the new group exhibition, The same crowd never gathers twice, presented at Buxton Contemporary from 10 May – 13 October 2024. The exhibition features new work by Cate Consandine, Riana Head-Toussaint and Yona Lee, alongside significant projects by Taryn Simon, Angela Goh and Laresa Kosloff.

Spanning moving image, sound, sculptural intervention and performance, the exhibition tests the limits of the ‘arena’— the setting where people come together to collectively witness and participate in public life. Works consider the social and structural architectures that bind these spaces, and by extension, the elastic nature of performance and reality, audience and participant.

The same crowd never gathers twice invites audiences to consider their own presence and agency inside the gallery: their role as passive spectators versus the potential for a more active form of engagement. Annika Aitken, Curator, Art Museums at the University of Melbourne said: “Throughout the exhibition’s duration, the physical gallery is offered as an active site for discussions, new work and performance responses.

Two major art projects by multidisciplinary artists Lauren Brincat and Rochelle Haley are set to enliven Randwick Health & Innovation Precinct in April and June as part of a new Laneway Art Program.

The leading Australian artists have been commissioned by Randwick Health & Innovation Precinct and supported by Transport for NSW’s Safer Cities program, with an aim to improve the night-time connectivity and comfort in the precinct through performance-based and site-specific artwork.

Heide Museum of Modern Art announces a new exhibition that will explore the complex significance of hair in contemporary culture through a selection of Australian and international works of art. Presented from 4 May to 6 October 2024, the exhibition titled Hair Pieces brings together historic and recent works encompassing a wide array of media such as painting, photography, video, installation, sculpture and recorded live performance.

The 24th Biennale of Sydney, titled Ten Thousand Suns, opens to the public this weekend. Over 400 artworks by 96 artists and collectives, alongside a dynamic public program, will be presented across the city from 9 March to 10 June 2024.

A major international art festival and the largest contemporary art event of its kind in Australia, the 24th Biennale of Sydney is presented at Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artspace, Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney Opera House, UNSW Galleries and at the iconic and recently restored White Bay Power Station, which opens its doors to the public for the first time in over 100 years.

With the artistic direction led by Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerrero, the 24th Biennale of Sydney proposes celebration as both a method and a source of joy, inspired by legacies of collective resistance and coming together to thrive in the face of injustice. With an exhibition of contemporary art at its core, the event draws from multiple histories, voices and perspectives.

Image caption: Installation view, Ten Thousand Suns, 24th Biennale of Sydney 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales, featuring art by Pacific Sisters (foreground) and Robert Gabris (wall) photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Christopher Snee.

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, one of Australia’s pre-eminent commercial galleries, has announced an exhibition to mark the launch of its major new publication. The opening of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery: The First 40 Years, published by Formist, will coincide with the official release of the book on 14 February. The exhibition will be on display until 2 March 2024.

Curated by the publication’s author and editor Felicity Fenner, the exhibition will feature artworks and excerpts from the book that pay tribute to four seminal decades of the Gallery. In the book, which shares the exhibition title, Fenner’s voice provides the central narrative and is augmented by around 50 contributions from leading artists, curators and art world figures including Bill Henson, Tracey Moffatt, John Kaldor and Djon Mundine. The publication is bookended with a Foreword by Anna Waldmann and Afterword by Paul Foss.

As a physical homage to the history of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, the accompanying exhibition celebrates the role that the Gallery has played in fostering the careers of some of the most respected Australian and international contemporary artists of our time.

Creative Australia has today unveiled the title and first details of Archie Moore’s presentation at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Ellie Buttrose. Titled kith and kin, Moore’s exhibition in the Australia Pavilion will be a powerful and poignant exploration of his Kamilaroi, Bigambul, British, and Scottish heritage. Moore is only the second First Nations artist to have a solo presentation in the Australia Pavilion. On view from 20 April to 24 November 2024, kith and kin will mark the 25th anniversary of Australia’s participation in the Biennale Arte 2024.

For three decades, Moore (b. 1970, l. Redlands, Queensland) has created thought-provoking art that bridges the personal and the political. His work is rooted in experiences around identity and heritage, and speaks to wider themes of memory, racism, and the universality of the human family. In kith and kin, Moore will reflect on the nature and strength of Indigenous kinship, issues of surveillance and incarceration, the enduring impact of colonisation and First Nations language revival.

The guiding principle in kith and kin is that relationality is the root of identity. The exhibition draws upon Moore’s extensive research and unravels how his family history is entwined with the chronicles of the continent and more recently the nation of Australia. By tracing his Kamilaroi and Bigambul family back 65,000+ years, Moore asserts Indigenous sovereignty. Although First Nations peoples have been threatened by invasion, massacre, disease, and dispossession, Moore celebrates their continuing vitality. While the stories in kith and kin are often specific to the artist’s family, they mirror the narratives of indigenous and colonised people throughout the world.

Photo credit: Archie Moore / Fredrick Noel Clevens in kith and kin 2024 / Digitally altered found photograph / Australia Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2024 / Graphic design work: Žiga Testen and Stuart Geddes / © the artist / Courtesy: the artist and The Commercial

TarraWarra Museum of Art today announced three new exhibitions open to the public concurrently from 23 March to 14 July 2024. Featuring new work by Melbourne-based contemporary artists Peter Atkins and Dana Harris, the exhibition SUPERsystems is presented in conversation with The Industrial Design of Clement Meadmore: The Harris/Atkins Collection, a comprehensive survey of innovative modernist designs by the acclaimed sculptor and designer Clement Meadmore. Also on display is Systems and Structures, featuring a selection of works by leading Australian artists drawn from the Museum’s collection.

Bundanon has announced further details for its 2024 Exhibition Season 1: Tales of Land and Sea, open to the public from 2 March – 16 June 2024. Three major projects will be presented across the galleries of the Art Museum, exploring storytelling, mythological narratives, migration and the diasporic experience, by renowned contemporary artists Jumaadi, Sancintya Mohini Simpson and Isha Ram Das, as well as Arthur Boyd’s collaboration with printmaker Indra Deigan.

Bell Shakespeare presents A Midsummer Night’s Dream, opening in Sydney in March and marking the first time the company has staged the play in NSW’s capital since 2004. The production will travel to 22 other venues across Australia in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and ACT.

Directed by Artistic Director Peter Evans, this fast-paced production takes Shakespeare’s classic comedy and gives it new life, brimming with magic, mirth and mayhem. The season will open at the Sydney Opera House from 2 – 30 March, before travelling nationally to venues that it didn’t reach in 2021 after disruptions due to COVID lockdowns and border closures, offering audiences in these states and territories another chance to see the funny and family-friendly reimagining of this perennial favourite.

Acclaimed British-Australian actor Richard Pyros, who recently appeared in hit Hulu TV series The Great, will star as Oberon, alongside Māori actor Matu Ngaropo as Bottom, known for his recent role as George Washington in the Australian version of the Broadway sensation Hamilton. They join cast members Ahunim Abebe, who makes her mainstage theatre debut as Hermia, Isabel Burton (Helena), Mike Howlett (Demetrius), Ella Prince (Puck), Imogen Sage (Titania/Hippolyta/Quince) and Laurence Young (Lysander).

Hamilton Gallery unveils the world premiere exhibition Emerging From Darkness: Faith, Emotion and The Body in the Baroque, presenting over 70 important works by world-renowned baroque masters, including several never-before-seen in Australia.
Drawn from the partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), as well as loans from the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) and private lenders from across the country, Emerging from Darkness will showcase rare and iconic works by the world’s most significant baroque artists including Artemisia Gentileschi, Peter Paul Rubens, Bartolomeo Manfredi, Guercino, Lavinia Fontana, Sofonisba Anguissola and Valentin de Boulogne. This collection of historical pieces, displayed together for the first time, will be exhibited alongside works by contemporary artists, Robyn Stacey and Angela Tiatia, who are active in the baroque style today.

With the support of Principal Partner The Balnaves Foundation, Sydney Dance Company and Carriageworks  present the commissioned works of four Australian dance makers for this year’s exciting tenth anniversary of New Breed. Eliza Cooper, Tra Mi Dinh, Riley Fitzgerald and Beau Dean Riley Smith have each choreographed a new work which has its world premiere at Carriageworks until 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.

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.

The Biennale of Sydney has today announced the artists, locations and initial programming for its 24th edition, titled Ten Thousand Suns, being presented free to the public from 9 March to 10 June 2024.

A major international art festival and the largest contemporary art event of its kind in Australia, the 24th Biennale of Sydney will be presented at Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artspace, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and for the first time at Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney, UNSW Galleries and at the iconic and recently restored White Bay Power Station.

With the artistic direction led by Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerrero, the 24th Biennale of Sydney proposes celebration as both a method and a source of joy, inspired by legacies of collective resistance and coming together to thrive in the face of injustice. With an exhibition of contemporary art at its core, the event draws from multiple histories, voices and perspectives, to explore connected thematic threads, from the celebration of the resurgence of First Nations technologies and knowledges, the history of Islam in Australia, to Queer resilience, and the international expression of Carnivale. The program also explores the atomic era, a concentrated time of climate alteration through human exploitation, within the context of today’s moment of climate emergency and a refusal to concede to an apocalyptic vision of the future.

Marking the Biennale of Sydney’s 50th anniversary year, the 2024 edition challenges Western fatalistic constructions of the apocalypse and embraces a hopeful outlook around a possible future lived in joy, produced in common and shared widely.

The 2024 edition will feature 88 artists and collectives from 47 countries including Australia, Indonesia, Brazil, Ukraine, United States of America, United Kingdom, Mexico, Aotearoa New Zealand, India, and Japan. Selected artists have practices firmly rooted in diverse communities and artistic vocabularies.

Featuring some of the most iconic photographs ever created alongside contemporary approaches to the photographic medium, Photography: Real & Imagined is the largest survey of the NGV’s Photography collection in the institution’s history and features more than 300 photographs by Australian and international practitioners.

Four years in the making, this landmark exhibition features photographs from across the 200-year period since the invention of photography in the 19th century, including work by leading international photographers including Man Ray, Cindy Sherman, Wolfgang Tillmans, Gilbert & George, and Nan Goldin, alongside Australian photographers Max Dupain, Olive Cotton, Mervyn Bishop, Polly Borland, and Darren Sylvester.

Through twenty-one thematic sections, this large-scale exhibition explores the proposition that a photograph can be grounded in the real world, recording, documenting, and reflecting the world around us; or be the product of imagination, storytelling, and illusion; and on occasion operate in both realms. The thematic sections explore subject matter such as light, place and environment, consumption, conflict, community, and death.

Ngununggula, the Southern Highlands’ first regional art gallery, has commissioned ten Australian contemporary artists to create new works for the Gallery’s upcoming exhibition New Dog Old Tricks. Presented from 18 November 2023 – 4 February 2024, the exhibition invites the artists to re-think and question how we perceive dogs, and imagine the dog as a key to other physical and emotional worlds.

The commissioned artists include Billy Bain, David Griggs, Guido Maestri, Jason Phu, Julia Gutman, Madeleine Pfull, Marc Etherington, Nadia Hernández, Noel Mckenna and Todd Fuller. They will be presented alongside loaned artworks from the Art Gallery of NSW, National Gallery of Victoria and private collections by artists including Jeff Koons, Adam Cullen, Aleks Danko, Richard Walker, Del Kathryn Barton, Louise Hearman and William Wegman.

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.

Bell Shakespeare’s production of Twelfth Night arrives in Canberra and Sydney this October, presented at Canberra Theatre Centre from 13 – 21 October and Sydney Opera House from 26 October – 19 November.

Directed by Heather Fairbairn, who has worked internationally with companies including the Royal Opera, Covent Garden and the Royal Court Theatre in London, this production of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s most musical play, features original music from Aria Award winner Sarah Blasko. Six new songs are sung live onstage by the cast, and the plot is carried along by Blasko’s melancholic score.

Fairbairn places the characters in a garden setting that transforms throughout the play, linking the characters’ own mortality to life cycles in nature and asking them, along with the audience, to find light in the darkness.

Powerhouse has unveiled 1001 Remarkable Objects, a major new exhibition led by Leo Schofield AM.

‘Our vision for 1001 Remarkable Objects was a seemingly simple one: to create an exhibition celebrating the sheer scale, breadth and relevance of the Powerhouse Collection. But how to choose? We rejected the nomenclature of ‘treasures’ or ‘masterpieces’ and instead determined all choices must be in some way ‘remarkable’ – whether by virtue of rarity, visual appeal, social history or an ability to invoke wonder. The result is a cornucopia of eras, styles, form, function, size and colour, to stoke memories that so many have of this iconic institution and signal the beginning of a new phase in its marvellous existence’, said Curatorium Chair Leo Schofield AM.

Leo Schofield AM has worked in collaboration with advisors Ronan Sulich, Mark Sutcliffe and Powerhouse curator Eva Czernis-Ryl to select 1001 objects from the more than half a million objects within the collection. This selection includes objects that have never been exhibited before alongside much loved collection icons.

Yavuz Gallery will present a major debut exhibition Desert Songs by Western Aranda artist Vincent Namatjira OAM  from 5-28 October 2023 at their  Surry Hills space in Sydney. The exhibition will coincide with a forthcoming monograph published by Thames and Hudson and major survey, Australia in colour, presented at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2023 and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, in 2024.

Featuring thirteen new paintings, the exhibition tackles the rich themes and concepts of leadership, power and legacy. A show for these times, Desert Songs provides a platform for Namatjira to explore his own deeply personal histories through portraits of well-known figures that have shaped his life through art, music, and politics. Through these bold and unapologetically political paintings, Namatjira explores what it means to be Indigenous in Australia, or the world.

Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, presented by Woollahra Council, has today announced the finalists for the 22nd edition of the esteemed annual prize. The finalist works will be presented in an exhibition at Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf, unveiled on 27 September, with the winning sculpture announced at the opening.

Established in 2001, the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize is Australia’s pre-eminent award for small sculpture and is the first national acquisitive prize for an original sculpture of up to 80cm in any dimension.

Now or Never is set to transform the city with large-scale outdoor sculptural installations and projections, an immersive 360° pop-up dome cinema and a slew of boundary-breaking performances that explore the realm where technology and art converge. Presented across Melbourne over three weeks from 17 August until 2 September, the festival brings together more than 300 local and internationally-renowned artists, composers, change makers and innovators – with a vibrant program featuring 18 Australian premieres and 20 festival exclusive commissions.

Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with MA Financial Group, today announced the highly anticipated programs for Talk Contemporary and Create Contemporary, presented at Carriageworks, Australia’s largest multi-arts centre, from 7 – 10 September 2023.

With one month to go until the launch of Sydney Contemporary, the fair has unveiled Talk Contemporary’s engaging program of live conversations on art, design and architecture with a number of leading Australian creatives.

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

Powerhouse has today unveiled A Line, A Web, A World, the first in-depth survey of drawings from the museum’s collection. The new exhibition features 230 drawings by artists, designers, architects, musicians, engineers, scientists, and students. It embraces the democratic nature of drawing as a universal tool for communication and its unique ability to bring imagination and new ideas to life. One of the oldest forms of human expression, this exhibition of rarely seen drawings examines the integral role of drawing across different disciplines and cultures, from historical to new contemporary works, and considers the question of why we draw.

Melbourne will be transformed with art trails, sculptural illuminations and projections, a 360° pop-up dome cinema and a non-stop weekend of gigs, as the City of Melbourne debuts its spectacular new festival, Now or Never.

Now or Never is a 17-day festival in August designed to attract more visitors to Melbourne during a previously quiet period – invigorating the city and boosting the local economy.

The event will bring together more than 300 local and internationally-renowned artists, composers, change makers and innovators – with a vibrant program of events, featuring 18 Australian premieres and 20 festival exclusive commissions.

Bell Shakespeare’s new production of Romeo and Juliet is now showing in Sydney, marking its first full production in the company’s theatre The Neilson Nutshell at Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay Arts Precinct, showing until 27 August. The play will also tour to Arts Centre Melbourne for a two-week season from 13 – 29 July 2023.

The production gives audiences a closer look at arguably Shakespeare’s most famous play, delving into the intensity and the heartbreak of this evocative tragedy. The story of the young lovers’ chance meeting unfolds against an enchanting starry sky. Their forbidden love leads them down a dangerous path, and they will risk everything to break free of the unending, violent feud between their families.

TarraWarra Museum of Art today announced The Soils Project exhibition, presented from 5 August – 12 November 2023. The Soils Project brings together 13 practitioners and collectives from Australia, the Netherlands and Indonesia to explore the complex and diverse relationships between environmental change and colonisation.

The exhibition is the latest iteration of an ongoing research-based experimental project developed in collaboration with leading contemporary arts museum the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands and Struggles for Sovereignty, a collective based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The Soils Project arises from specific and situated practices that each of the participants and artists brings to their understanding of soil, as both metaphor and matter.

Desart, the peak body for Central Australian Aboriginal Art Centres, today announced that Desert Mob will return to Mparntwe /Alice Springs from Thursday 7 September – Sunday 22 October, 2023. A vibrant statement of contemporary cultural expression, the Desert Mob 2023 exhibition will be co-curated by Hetti Kemarr Perkins (Arrernte and Kalkadoon) and Aspen Nampin Beattie (Luritja, Warumungu and Yawuru) bringing together hundreds of new works by emerging and established artists. For its 32nd edition, Desert Mob 2023 will feature the work of 34 art centres with each art centre selecting the work to be shown. This unique exhibition and related events brings together communities from a geographic area that spans 1.221 million kilometres and sixteen languages.

Sydney Fringe Festival, New South Wales’ largest independent arts festival, today announced the program highlights for 2023. Presented across the city from 1 – 30 September 2023, this year’s Festival marks Kerri Glasscock’s 10th year as Festival Director and CEO, featuring a dynamic program spanning theatre, music, comedy, visual art, film, musical theatre, dance, circus, street festivals, literature and poetry, as well as a precinct takeover at Entertainment Quarter.

Bundanon today announced its major new exhibition season, The Polyphonic Sea, opening on 8 July 2023.

The Polyphonic Sea 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.

Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with MA Financial Group, today announces its highly anticipated Performance Contemporary program. The seventh edition of Sydney Contemporary returns to Carriageworks with its largest edition to date featuring 95+ emerging and established galleries from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore, from 7 – 10 September 2023.

Performance Contemporary, co-curated by Samantha Watson-Wood and Katie Winten from Friends with Strangers, presents a diverse and dynamic program of experimental and ephemeral performance works by some of Sydney’s most exciting contemporary artists; Amala Groom, Riana Head-Toussaint, Morgan Hogg and Fetu Taku. The four contemporary artists use the body as a medium to engage audiences in ambitious live performances that explore key social, cultural and political ideas.

Powerhouse today announced the Australian premiere of the major exhibition Atmospheric Memory by Mexican Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Opening 12 August 2023 at Powerhouse Ultimo, the sensory experience will present works that engage audiences with science, maths and climate alongside objects from the Powerhouse Collection.

Commissioned by Manchester International Festival, Atmospheric Memory debuted at their 2019 festival. Atmospheric Memory is a sensory exhibition exploring Babbage’s 1838 theory through cutting-edge technology and new interactive works transforming vibrations in the atmosphere into something visitors can see, hear and even touch. Works include a voice-controlled fountain where spoken words are formed in water vapor hanging momentarily in the air; a corridor of over 3000 different channels of natural and unnatural sounds including over 200 types of insects and 300 types of birds; a voice-controlled light beacon and the world’s first 3D printed speech bubble.

Ngununggula, the Southern Highlands’ first regional art gallery, is set to host the highly anticipated, second annual Midwinter Festival from 23 – 25 June, a site-responsive festival bringing together nationally acclaimed artists, musicians and local producers to celebrate the region for the winter solstice.

The festival is a three day event celebrating the deep chill of the Highlands through light, fire, food, music and storytelling.

Melbourne’s iconic Royal Exhibition Building will play host to a cutting-edge line-up of local artists and international headliners when the City of Melbourne premieres its vibrant new major festival Now or Never.

The inaugural 17-day event will transform Melbourne with immersive experiences of art, ideas, music and technology in August and September. Carlton’s Royal Exhibition Building has been unveiled as one of the festival’s major venues – marking the first large-scale live music performance in the historic building in more than two decades.

The University of Melbourne has today unveiled nightshifts, a contemplative new group exhibition considering the importance of solitude through contemporary arts practice. Presented at Buxton Contemporary from 26 May to 29 October 2023, the large-scale exhibition features more than 30 works drawn from the University of Melbourne’s art collection, alongside two new commissions.

Curated by Hannah Presley and Annika Aitken, nightshifts looks to the shadows and ‘after hours’ as metaphors for the work and thinking that happens beneath the surface, away from the public gaze: time alone in the studio, during the quiet of the night and while asleep. Spanning a range of themes, histories and media, the exhibition offers a meditative counterpoint to the recurring emphasis on collaboration and hyper-visibility in contemporary curatorial practice.

Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) today announced a major exhibition by internationally celebrated contemporary artist Newell Harry, the artist’s largest solo project to date, opening 28 July 2023.

After undergoing a major redevelopment and reopening in 2015, MAMA has become the most visited NSW public art gallery outside of Sydney, and a cultural highlight of regional Australia. The museum is home to the National Photography Prize, and has presented acclaimed exhibitions including SIMMER in 2021, Certain realities in 2019, and the nationally touring exhibition Material Sound in 2018. Titled Esperanto, this exhibition by Newell Harry marks the first time the gallery has presented a major solo exhibition of works by a contemporary Australian artist.

Newell Harry is an Australian born artist of South African and Mauritian descent who draws from an intimate web of connections across Oceania and the wider Indo-Pacific, to South Africa’s Western Cape Province where his extended family continue to reside. Influenced by almost two decades of travel between Australia, South Africa, the islands of Vanuatu and the wider Asia-Pacific region, Harry’s work examines the cultural agitation brought about by the movement of people, objects and knowledge as a result of colonial expansion, migration and globalisation.

Curated by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and delivered in collaboration with the Melbourne Art Foundation, Melbourne Design Fair 2023 has launched today at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) until 21 May. The centrepiece of Melbourne Design Week, Melbourne Design Fair is Australia’s largest presentation of contemporary and twentieth century collectible design by leading Australian and international practitioners.

This year Melbourne Design Fair features the work of more than 150 designers across 60+ presentations staged by prominent commercial galleries, design agencies, organisations and studios, and offers visitors the chance to view and purchase one-of-a-kind, limited edition and small batch design production, including furniture, lighting and contemporary jewellery. Melbourne Design Fair has representation from all Australian states and territories, with highlights including Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert from New South Wales, artisan QLD, South Australia’s JamFactory, Canberra Glassworks, Yarrenyty Arltere Artists from the Northern Territory presented by Agency, and Design Tasmania.

Hadley’s Art Prize today announced 30 contemporary Australian artists who have been selected as finalists for the $100,000 acquisitive landscape prize, representing one of Australia’s richest art prizes, presented in Hobart from 22 July – 20 August 2023.

Selected for the best portrayal of the Australian landscape, this year’s list of finalists features representation from every state in Australia and includes leading Australian artists such as Joan Ross (NSW), Raymond Arnold (TAS), Betty Chimney (SA), Sebastian Di Mauro (QLD), Megan Evans (VIC), Mabel Juli (WA), Kieren Karritpul (NT), Donna Marcus (QLD), Patrick Mung Mung (WA), Megan Walch (TAS), Philip Wolfhagen (TAS), alongside emerging and early career artists.

The 2023 judging panel comprises one of Australia’s most acclaimed and awarded artists Wendy Sharpe, celebrated Tasmanian artist Milan Milojevic, and artist, curator, writer and Associate Professor at The University of Queensland, Dr Fiona Foley. This year the judges have selected works that span a range of mediums, from oil, acrylic, gouache and beeswax, to natural ochre and dyes, weaving, crochet, aluminium and steel.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s most significant contemporary multi-arts organisations, will present Incredible Floridas by leading contemporary instrumental group Ensemble Offspring. At the centre of the program is Australian composer Richard Meale’s landmark piece of chamber music, a homage to the surrealist poetry of Arthur Rimbaud. Presented from 24 – 25 June 2023, Incredible Floridas will be performed alongside a program of original works for instrumental chamber combinations including two world premieres by French composer Augustin Braud and Australian composer Josephine Macken, drawing inspiration from Meale’s brooding and complex musical language.

Although considered one of Australia’s most important composers, Richard Meale’s significant output is rarely performed live for contemporary audiences. For their latest performance, Ensemble Offspring will revive Meale’s iconic composition Incredible Floridas in an immersive staging by creative director Michelle St Anne. First performed by the British chamber music ensemble Fires of London in 1971, Incredible Floridas is a homage to one of the most revolutionary French poets of the 19th century, Arthur Rimbaud. The work was also celebrated in an early documentary short of the same name, by Sydney-based filmmaker Peter Weir (The Truman Show, Dead Poets Society).

A major new permanent public artwork by the Ghost Net Collective is set to enliven Sydney’s Exchange Square at Barangaroo South from 12 May 2023.

Commissioned by Lendlease, the work has been created by a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists from Cairns, Townsville and Erub in the Torres Strait. The Collective are renowned for making creative use of harmful fish nets that have been abandoned, lost or discarded in the ocean, known as ‘ghost nets’, washed up on beaches all around the world.

Curated by Nina Miall, the site-responsive permanent installation titled Mermer Waiskeder: Stories of the Moving Tide will be one of the largest hand-crafted public artworks in Australia and draws inspiration from the artists’ own histories along with the rich history of the Barangaroo site.

Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with Principal Partner MA Financial Group, today unveiled details for the Fair’s seventh edition. This September, Sydney Contemporary returns with its largest edition to date featuring 96 emerging and established galleries from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore. Presented at Carriageworks, Australia’s largest multi-arts centre, from 7 – 10 September 2023 the Fair is the pre-eminent meeting place for the art world, and critical to the growth of the art market in Australasia.

The hugely popular Carriageworks Night Market returns on 16 June 2023 as part of Vivid Sydney’s brand new festival focus Vivid Food. Curated by Australia’s leading sustainable chef Matt Stone, the market will showcase over 45 stalls celebrating sustainable food practices and the best produce from across NSW, in line with Vivid Sydney 2023’s theme – Naturally.

With a line-up of NSW’s leading restaurants and producers, highlights include Rico’s Tacos’ menu centred on the use of sustainable wild game; Vannella Cheese’s creative use of whey by-product from their own ricotta cheese production; OzHarvest’s sustainably sourced vegetarian menu, designed to be zero waste with any leftovers distributed to those in need; and a dessert from Messina including an apple galette made from rescued apples sourced from Farmers Pick.

Carriageworks today announced its new Carriageworks Nights program featuring a line-up of boundary-pushing artists, performers, musicians and producers. Across 10 events, Carriageworks Nights invites audiences to gather after dark for a series of artist-led evenings, spanning performance, music, film and food.

Kickstarting the program on Thursday 11 May, Jazz Money together with Jason Phu present Silly Silly Party, featuring the artists favourite nostalgic activities, including big bubbles, bad face painting (by Jason Phu), mystic readings, magicians and giant games. Held in the Blacksmith’s Workshop, the night will include hands-on activities such as a superhero cape making workshop with artist Dennis Golding and weaving with writer and artist Anne-Marie Te Whiu. A free event for all ages, Silly Silly Party invites everyone to have a silly time.

On Thursday 25 May, artist Frances Barrett presents Mouth, a night focused on the voice presented at the Clothing Store Artist Studios. Through poetry, improvised performance and song, audiences are invited to explore the slipperiness, multiplicity and power of the voice with artists Sage Pbbbt, Jo Fabro, Tina Stefanou, Sonya Holowell, BLECK and Tarik Ahlip performing under simulated moonlight.

Carriageworks Nights events continue over three months, including video artist and curator EO Gill, who presents Softcore, a drive-in cinema featuring rare and classic experimental films; artists Sidney McMahon, Mistress Tokyo, Demon Derriere, Haiku Hands, BVT, Luke George and Weizen Ho explore artistic representations of Consent; and Salote Tawale feeds the soul with Feast, collaborating with Bloodwood’s Head chef and owner Claire Van Vuuren to present a celebratory banquet. Full program to be announced soon.

Ngununggula, the Southern Highlands’ first regional art gallery, will present the work of four contemporary Australian artists; Karen Black, Georgia Spain, Cybele Cox and Michelle Ussher. On display from 3 June – 6 August 2023, the exhibition titled Once More With Feeling will see the artists exhibiting together for the first time, using sculpture, painting and sound to investigate the relationship between the human form and culture, femininity, sexuality, theatre and ritual.

Once More With Feeling will invite viewers to explore how ideals around femininity could be explored through alternative perspectives. With a focus on shapes, expressions and actions that are associated with the female bodies, the works expose moments in which mundane behaviours and movements blend into acts of modern ritual, as well as experimenting with themes of occultism and theatre, allowing the body to be re-examined within a collaborative space.

From creating and making etchings at an Italian-inspired ‘Print Kitchen’, to exploring the role of First Nations design, and examining historical and contemporary publishing practices, the 2023 Melbourne Art Book Fair offers audiences the opportunity to discover some of the world’s best independent publishers, art book makers, authors, galleries and more.

Curated by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) as part of Melbourne Design Week, 18 to 28 May, and celebrating Melbourne’s status as a UNESCO City of Literature, the 2023 Melbourne Art Book Fair features a diverse program of workshops, talks, symposiums, readings, performances, exhibitions, and launches at venues across Victoria.

Eight plush wall hanging sculptural works, ranging from small to large scale, are encased by Temin’s signature medium of synthetic fur in Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Unified in a dusty pink palate, the works are individually sewn, stuffed, and covered with a soft, cuddly, toy-like, artificial fabric, challenging conventions of both taste and art history. Craft activities from the 1970s are combined with Minimalism that includes the grid, repetition, and the monochrome as objects for personal and collective remembering.

The exhibition Wall Works invokes notions of suburbia and interior design, structured around the tension between the familiar and the strange, the organic and the artificial, the literal and the metaphoric, the minimal and the anthropomorphic.

Powerhouse has announced 1001 Remarkable Objects, a new exhibition opening 22 July 2023, led by Leo Schofield AM.

Leo Schofield AM has worked in collaboration with advisors Ronan Sulich, Mark Sutcliffe and Powerhouse curator Eva Czernis-Ryl to select 1001 objects from the 500,000 objects within the collection,  including objects that have never been exhibited before alongside much loved collection icons.

Exhibition designers Pip Runciman, Julie Lynch, and Ross Wallace have created an exhibition that features 25 individual rooms, presenting an unexpected juxtaposition of objects that will lead us on a journey across time and memory. Powerhouse collection objects will be presented across the applied arts and applied sciences including the decorative arts, jewellery, costume, textiles, furniture, clocks, musical instruments, industrial design and social history.

The University of Melbourne today announced nightshifts, a contemplative new group exhibition considering the importance of solitude through contemporary arts practice. Presented at Buxton Contemporary from 26 May to 29 October 2023, the large-scale exhibition features more than 30 works drawn from the University of Melbourne’s art collection, alongside select loans and new commissions.

Curated by Hannah Presley and Annika Aitken, nightshifts looks to the ‘after hours’ as a metaphor to explore the potentially generative qualities of rest, privacy and temporary seclusion from peers and the public. Spanning a range of themes, histories and media, the exhibition offers a meditative counterpoint to the recurring emphasis on light and collaboration in art making and contemporary curatorial practice.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s most significant contemporary multi-arts organisations, will present the boundary-pushing program for SOFT CENTRE as part of Australia’s largest festival, Vivid Sydney 2023, taking place on 11 June from 1pm – 11pm with a full precinct takeover. Traversing leftfield club, noise and ambient music, contemporary dance and endurance performances, immersive A/V concerts, cutting-edge digital art and large-scale lightworks, SOFT CENTRE is a multi-sensory festival experience unlike any other.

Following their first outing in 2022, SOFT CENTRE returns with a program presenting an eclectic mix of cutting-edge creators from the local and global underground. Carriageworks will be transformed with daring performance art, pulsing music, and a monumental 22 metre projector screen that will be activated for immersive A/V performances. Renowned for their unique collaborations, SOFT CENTRE will also showcase a suite of newly commissioned cross-disciplinary works.

CUT N POLISH and Carriageworks today announced the names of over 140 artists and collectives from the Greater Sydney region who will participate in the second annual CUT N POLISH: Artist Car Boot Sale on Sunday 7 May 2023. Following the huge success of the inaugural event in 2022, CUT N POLISH returns to Carriageworks’ Blacksmith’s Workshop for a high-energy, one-day car boot sale featuring artists selling their works direct to the public in a dynamic, market-style setting.

From rising stars to award-winning practitioners, CUT N POLISH provides visitors and collectors the opportunity to meet artists, support their practices and purchase works in a ‘cash and carry’ model with all proceeds going directly to artists. Visitors can expect artworks across varying mediums – from ceramics and painting to clothing and jewellery – available at all price points.

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra will boldly interpret the timeless masterpieces of virtuoso composer Antonio Vivaldi for the second concert series of 2023, Gloria & The Four Seasons. Featuring two of the most popular pillars in the Baroque repertoire, the program will highlight Brandenburg’s celebrated Concertmaster Shaun Lee-Chen, as well as the acclaimed Brandenburg Choir. The concerts will take place at Sydney’s City Recital Hall from 28 April – 5 May, Parramatta’s Riverside Theatres on 6 May, and Melbourne Recital Centre from 11 – 14 May.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s most significant contemporary multi-arts organisations, today announced its boundary-pushing program for Australia’s largest festival, Vivid Sydney 2023 from 8 – 16 June. The program features a lineup of international and local music acts, two precinct-wide takeovers by Soft Centre and Astral People, as well as the highly-anticipated return of the Carriageworks Night Market, as part of Vivid Sydney’s brand-new festival pillar, Vivid Food.

Presented by Sydney dance institution House of Mince, South African multi-disciplinary artist Desire Marea will bring their acclaimed experimental sound and live performance to the precinct. Fresh off their US tour and joining the program’s international lineup is Belarusian post-punk band Molchat Doma. American producer and DJ Flying Lotus is set to headline a one-day venue-wide event Astral People Vivid Party with Live.e making her Sydney debut and Night Slugs celebrating 15 years of club culture with Bok Bok and Girl Unit. Ahead of their album release, Melbourne band Floodlights will headline an intimate show and prominent First Nations rapper Kobie Dee (Gomeroi) joins forces with break-out hip-hop star JK-47, with special guests Flewnt and ten-year old son Inkabee celebrating a powerful connection between East and West coast voices.

The highly anticipated SOFT CENTRE festival will return on 11 June for a full precinct takeover. Traversing leftfield club, noise and ambient music, dance and endurance performances, immersive A/V concerts, cutting-edge digital art and large-scale lightworks, SOFT CENTRE is a multi-sensory festival experience unlike any other. Highlights include a collaborative A/V performance between Finnish duo Amnesia Scanner and digital provocateur Freeka Tet; Kenyan producer and DJ Slikback alongside visuals by anonymous video artist Weirdcore; the Sydney debut of BC by Harrison Hall, Sam Mcgilp, Naxs Future with PrairieWWWW, a ground-breaking work combining motion capture, immersive 3D technologies and live performance; a new collaborative work by Marcus Whale and Eugene Choi; Australian producer Nerdie from 1300; and Australian hyperpop singer daine, who is the protégé of British superstar Charli XCX.

Also returning for Vivid Sydney 2023 on 16 June 2023 – as part of the brand-new festival focus Vivid Food – is the hugely popular Carriageworks Night Market, this year curated by Australia’s leading sustainable chef Matt Stone. This one-night-only event will celebrate sustainable food practices, embrace authenticity and focus on using the best produce from across NSW, in line with Vivid Sydney 2023’s theme – Naturally. Showcasing over 50 of Sydney’s leading restaurants, bars and producers, Carriageworks will come alive with the best local hospitality, music, food demonstrations and live entertainment.

South East Centre for Contemporary Art (SECCA) has announced its inaugural exhibition program, ahead of the gallery’s official opening on 29 April 2023.

The program showcases both established and emerging artists from the local region alongside those from wider Australia and the Asia Pacific, with exhibitions exploring an eclectic range of themes from gender and cultural identity, trauma and the ongoing impact of environment disasters. To close the year, SECCA will host the prestigious Archibald Prize exhibition, featuring portraits from 2023 shortlisted artists.

Image: Dean Cross, Gunalgunal (A Contracted Field), installation 2021-22, Sydney and Adelaide, photo: Saul Steed

Working Models, running from 18 March to 15 April 2023, comprises 20 small individual sculptures considering ideas of built architecture and the readymade. The occasion marks Nolan’s eighth solo exhibition in collaboration with Anna Schwartz Gallery, in a relationship spanning 34 years.

Assuming the language of the monument, Nolan’s scaled architectural models are materially comprised of modest and often discarded domestic packaging. Cement, wood, and steel attuned to the construction of suburban homes, factories, and water towers, are replicated with everyday paper, cardboard and wine screw tops – reimagining architectural buildings with domestic placeholders.

Image: ROSE NOLAN, James Turrell Fun Palace, 2023. Acrylic paint, cardboard, found packaging. Courtesy of the Artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Ngununggula, the Southern Highlands’ first regional art gallery, has received funding from the NSW Government’s Regional Events Acceleration Fund for the highly anticipated, second annual Midwinter Festival, to be presented over three days and nights from 23 – 25 June 2023. The 2023 Midwinter Festival will transform the Gallery and its grounds with a program of art, music, food and wine, including a choreographed drone light show developed in partnership with the Fremantle Biennale that honours ancestral stories of the Gundungurra Country upon which Ngununggula is based.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s most significant contemporary multi-arts organisations, today announced the world premiere of new dance work Burrbgaja Yalirra 2 presented from 21 – 29 April by resident company and Australia’s leading Indigenous intercultural dance company Marrugeku. Following the company’s critically acclaimed, international season of Jurrungu Ngan-ga in 2022, Burrbgaja Yalirra 2 features a trilogy of short works that trace histories of migration, relocation, cultural adaption and survival, and draws on the power of ancestral presence to remember the future.

Curated by Marrugeku’s Co-artistic directors Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain, the dance works conceived for Burrbgaja Yalirra 2 are the result of a multi-year program of intensive dance laboratories, which aims to build capacity in the next generation of leading change makers in community and culturally informed contemporary dance.

Heide Museum of Modern Art has today announced the first survey exhibition in Australia of renowned American photographer Catherine Opie. Presented at Heide from 1 April to 9 July 2023, the exhibition Catherine Opie: Binding Ties brings together more than fifty key works traversing the artist’s historic and recent practice.

Since the 1990s, Catherine Opie’s photographs have challenged and illuminated our understanding of notions of personal and political affiliation, the central theme of the exhibition. In 1994 Heide exhibited eighteen of Opie’s portraits in the exhibition Persona Cognita, curated by Juliana Engberg, which represented Opie’s first showing in Australia. Now almost three decades later, Heide will host the first survey of the artist’s work in this part of the world.

Curated by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and delivered in collaboration with the Melbourne Art Foundation, Melbourne Design Fair is Australia’s largest presentation of contemporary and twentieth century collectible design by leading Australian and international practitioners. The four-day event will take place at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) from 18 – 21 May.

The centrepiece of Melbourne Design Week, Melbourne Design Fair features the work of more than 150 designers across 60+ presentations staged by prominent commercial galleries, design agencies, organisations and studios. The event offers visitors the chance to view and purchase one-of-a-kind, limited edition and small batch design production, including furniture, lighting and contemporary jewellery.

The Gold Coast contemporary cultural precinct HOTA, Home of the Arts has unveiled the world premiere exhibition, Pop Masters: Art from the Mugrabi Collection, New York opening 18 February 2023. Drawn entirely from the famed private collection of one of the world’s most prominent art collectors, Jose Mugrabi, the first international blockbuster exhibition to be presented at the new HOTA Gallery celebrates the origins and on-going legacy of Pop Art.

A world first exhibition, Pop Masters: Art from the Mugrabi Collection, New York presents more than 50 works never-before-seen in Australia by 15 legendary and renowned artists including Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Tom Wesselmann, Katherine Bernhardt, Kwesi Botchway, George Condo, Damien Hirst, KAWS, Jeff Koons, Joel Mesler, Richard Prince, Tom Sachs, Julian Schnabel and Mickalene Thomas. Pop Masters: Art from the Mugrabi Collection, New York highlights the intersections in the lives, ideas and practices of this significant group of artists, many of whom either knew each other, collaborated together or have been influenced by the work of another. The exhibition explores six decades of Pop Art including numerous works by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring in conversation with contemporary artists at the forefront of the genre today.

Carriageworks today announced 11 artists who will be the 2023 artists in residence at the Carriageworks Clothing Store building. Established in 2017, the program provides artists working at the forefront of contemporary practice with a subsidised studio space in the heart of North Eveleigh.

The 2023 Carriageworks Resident Artists are: Eddie Abd, Clare Britton, Elizabeth Day, Helen Grace, Karleen Green, Shivanjani Lal, Jazz Money, Jason Phu, Daley Rangi, Salote Tawale and Anne-Marie Te Whiu.

Built in 1913, the Clothing Store is part of the historic Eveleigh Railway Workshops that includes Carriageworks and South Eveleigh. The artist residency program at the Clothing Store has supported more than 30 artists across five years to date. Previous artists in residence have included: Tony Albert, Frances Barrett, Sarah Contos, Dean Cross, Mikala Dwyer, Cherine Fahd, Brian Fuata, Dennis Golding, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Thea Anamara Perkins, Kate Mitchell, JD Reforma and Nell.

These six large paintings have as their starting point the exact scale of the windows in the Sirius Building in Sydney, a subject Callum Morton has been interested in for some time as part of, more broadly, a catalogue of the lost, ignored and hidden.

Anna Schwartz, Founder of Anna Schwartz Gallery, said: “When encountering the latest work of an artist there is often a retrospective shift in the understanding of the entire practice.  The new work, although unpredictable, often has an inevitability once seen.  These new paintings by Callum Morton inspire the realisation of the importance of painting throughout his history, the cover-ups, the screens and billboards. Callum Morton the painter!”

In 2023 Bundanon celebrates its 30th anniversary. Established in 1993, it was gifted to the Australian people by Arthur and Yvonne Boyd, representing one of the most significant acts of philanthropy in the history of the arts in Australia. In recognition of this thirty-year milestone, Bundanon today announced the new exhibition season Fantastic Forms. Curated by Boe-Lin Bastian and Sophie O’Brien, Fantastic Forms opens at the new Art Museum on Saturday 1 April 2023. Colourful, abundant and joyful, it celebrates the ritual of artmaking and its connection to everyday life through ceramics, sculpture and animation.

Honouring the Boyd family legacy, Fantastic Forms brings new commissions by three contemporary Australian artists, Nabilah Nordin, Stephen Benwell and Rubyrose Bancroft, into conversation with Bundanon’s expansive collection of drawings by artist William Merric Boyd (1888 –1959), Arthur Boyd’s father.

Ngununggula, the Southern Highlands’ first regional art gallery, has announced its ambitious program for 2023, and unveiled the gallery’s inaugural outdoor sculpture commission, Scholar Rock Portals, by emerging Australian artist Louise Zhang.

The second annual visual arts program since its opening in September 2021, the dynamic 2023 program features newly commissioned works and major collaborative group exhibitions by leading Australian artists and collectives, including Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands Art Centre, proppaNOW, Tom Polo, Tony Albert, Kate Blackmore, Karen Black, Jude Rae, Nadia Hernandez, and Noel McKenna, alongside the return of the highly anticipated Midwinter Festival. Representing the Southern Highlands region and beyond, the 2023 program reflects Ngununggula’s ongoing commitment to creating engaging ways for the local community to connect with artists and their ideas.

Image: Nadia Hernández, Varios personajes, 2022, oil and synthetic polymer paint, flashe, cotton, rope, ribbon, recycled timber, 150.0 x 190.0 x 180.0 cm, Courtesy of the artist and STATION. Photo: Christo Crocker

A major outdoor public artwork by leading First Nations multidisciplinary artist Brenda L. Croft (Gurindji/Malngin/Mudburra) has been unveiled along the Barangaroo waterfront. The landmark installation, titled Naabami (thou shall/will see): Barangaroo (army of me) presents 60 large-scale photographic portraits of contemporary First Nations women and girls.

Photographed in Canberra and Sydney from 2019 – 2022, some of the participants include women and girls photographed by Croft spanning three decades, and some are first-time subjects. Several generations of families are portrayed; some participants were first photographed as children, now represented as steadfast young women; sisters, aunties, mothers, grandmothers. Cultural affiliations range from the southeast to the northern regions of the continent. Contemporary First Nations sovereign warriors grounded in their First Nations sovereignty. Their steady collective gaze – inward and outward – reflects the steadfast sovereign actions of Cammeraygal warrior woman Barangaroo, more than two centuries after she lived and died on her traditional homelands, now known as Sydney.

This major project commissioned by Lendlease, is presented as part of Sydney Festival 2023, and will be on display until 29 January.

Two major exhibitions by leading Australian artists, The Huxleys and Paul Yore, have opened at Carriageworks as part of Sydney Festival and Sydney WorldPride. The Huxleys’ largest exhibition to date, Bloodlines honours the legacy of legendary queer artists lost to HIV/AIDS whilst Paul Yore’s immersive installation, WORD MADE FLESH, imagines a queer alternative reality.

On display until 5 March, Bloodlines is a heartfelt tribute to LGBTQIA+ artists, including Leigh Bowery, Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring and Sylvester, that continue to inspire the practices of The Huxleys and countless artists working today. Utilising the artists’ skills in costume design, performance and photography, the exhibition features large-scale photographic works and video art.

In partnership with the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Carriageworks presents Paul Yore: WORD MADE FLESH, a major immersive architecturally-scaled installation. Originally commissioned by ACCA, the work comes to Sydney after its premiere in Melbourne last year, and is composed of makeshift structures, mixed media sculpture, found objects, collage and assemblage, paintings, video and pulsating sound and light. Conceived as a cacophonous and kaleidoscopic ‘gesamtkunstwerk,’ WORD MADE FLESH imagines a queer alternative reality, erected from the wasteland of the Anthropocene on display until 26 February.

Woollahra Council has unveiled ‘One Bright Pearl’, a major new work by leading Australian artist Lindy Lee, located in the picturesque Blackburn Gardens at Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf.

Symbolic of the diversity of Woollahra’s community, ‘One Bright Pearl’, a 260kg mirror-polished stainless steel sculpture, measuring 2m in diameter, reflects on new beginnings and modern migration. At night, the work will be internally lit creating different and changing daytime and night-time qualities which embody the cyclical nature of time.

Photography: Steven Siewert

The 9th TarraWarra Biennial, presented from 1 April – 16 July 2023, will feature newly commissioned works by 15 artists/artist groups focused on the interconnectedness of the peoples of Australia, Asia and the Great Ocean.

Curated by Dr Léuli Eshrāghi, the exhibition is titled ua usiusi faʻavaʻasavili, a Samoan proverb which means ‘the canoe obeys the wind’. The proverb is demonstrative of Great Ocean celestial navigation practices, following centuries of European and Asian colonial occupations.

The TarraWarra Biennial is one of the most anticipated contemporary art exhibitions on the Australian art calendar. It was inaugurated in 2006 in order to identify new trends in contemporary Australian art through an experimental curatorial platform. Each Biennial has developed a distinctive curatorial approach, focusing on a particular set of ideas or themes prevalent in contemporary art.

Powerhouse has announced the Australian premiere of Yuki Kihara: Paradise Camp; co-commissioned by Powerhouse and Creative New Zealand, and curated by Natalie King OAM. Paradise Camp garnered international acclaim at the 2022 Aotearoa New Zealand pavilion at the 59th la Biennale di Venezia. Opening 24 March 2023 at Powerhouse Ultimo, the exhibition will feature new works created in response to the museum’s Sāmoan collection.

An interdisciplinary artist of Japanese and Sāmoan descent, Yuki Kihara’s work interrogates and dismantles gender roles, (mis)representation and colonial legacies in the Pacific. She was the first Pasifika, Asian and Fa’afafine (Sāmoa’s ‘third gender’) artist to represent Aotearoa New Zealand at la Biennale di Venezia.

Bundanon’s Season 3 summer program Siteworks: From a deep valley is now open and continues to 12 March 2023. In Dharawal language the word Bundanon means deep valley. With more than a decade-long history at Bundanon, Siteworks presents the work of over 25 artists and 10 scientific researchers drawing on climate research, critical thinking, First Nations knowledge and technologies and creative digital spaces, to create unique cultural experiences embedded within the landscape of the Shoalhaven. Siteworks: From a deep valley sees a major new exhibition in the Art Museum, titled ‘Inside, underground’, alongside an expanded program of outdoor installations, performances, workshops, and digital artworks.

Photo by Zan Wimberley.

Powerhouse today unveiled Zampatti Powerhouse, the major survey exhibition which celebrates the life and legacy of the iconic Australian Carla Zampatti, opening 24 November 2022.

The first internationally exclusive retrospective of Carla Zampatti AC, OMRI (1938–2021) presents the life and work of the inimitable Italian-born designer, beloved as an Australian fashion icon. The breadth of her extraordinary private, professional and public life is rendered in exquisite detail, anchored by Zampatti’s signature designs and brought to life with first person reflections by the designer’s clients, family, staff and friends.

Zampatti Powerhouse encompasses 100 designs from over 50 lenders and over five decades of material, surveying a trailblazing career from the establishment of her business in 1965 to her most recent work.

The 2022 NGV Architecture Commission: Temple of Boom, an evocative reimagining of The Parthenon, has been unveiled in the NGV Garden.

A global architectural icon, The Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens, an Ancient Greek temple, is an apex symbol of Western civilisation, democracy and perfection. Temple of Boom celebrates these interpretations, while simultaneously expanding our understanding of the iconic Parthenon building and the enduring beauty it emanates.

Designed by Melbourne-based architects Adam Newman and Kelvin Tsang and built to a third scale of the original building, this year’s commission invites audiences to consider the effect of time on all architecture as the structure gradually transforms with large-scale artworks and murals painted by local artists in three phases between November 2022 and August 2023.

Powerhouse today announced the Australian premiere of the exhibition, Gucci Garden
Archetypes opening on 17 November 2022. This internationally acclaimed project brings to life
the iconic, maximalist campaigns by virtuosic Gucci Creative Director Alessandro Michele.

Gucci Garden Archetypes first opened in Florence in 2021 to celebrate the 100th anniversary
of Gucci’s founding. The exhibition’s cinematic installations have captivated audiences across
Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul and it is now coming to Australia, exclusively at
the Powerhouse.

Gucci Garden Archetypes captures the spirit of each iconic collection, while reflecting the
philosophy of Michele and his collaborations across music, art, travel and contemporary culture
which resonate throughout Gucci’s campaigns. Design studio Archivio Personale has
transformed Michele’s vision into immersive spaces.

The rīvus journey continues on Google Arts & Culture with the launch of an immersive digital experience of the 23rd Biennale of Sydney.

Following the success of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020) digital exhibition on Google Arts & Culture, the Biennale expands on the platform with access to the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, titled rīvus, at The Cutaway, Barangaroo and Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay Arts Precinct.

With one click, users will experience site specific projects and living works alongside a selection of newly commissioned content, podcasts, exclusive participant interviews, workshops and audio readings from The Glossary of Water, plus 360° tours of the exhibition featuring large-scale immersive installations. Users can get up close with Cave Urban’s Flow–one of the largest bamboo structures ever produced in Australia, navigate Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson’s THE CLOUD IN THE OCEAN featuring a network of glass forms transporting water through a series of pathways, watch an exclusive video of Mike Parr’s live performance of Blind painting of a falling tree, and much more.

PACT Centre for Emerging Artists has today announced Sound Out the Street, a new series of free and accessible street activations presented in Erskineville from 23 December 2022 – 30 April 2023. On the last Friday of every month, musicians, artists and performers will fill the streets and shopfronts of Erskineville at sunset with surprising pop-up performances, live music and dance. The program culminates in a vibrant three-day event presented from 28 – 30 April 2023.

The inaugural Sound Out the Street event will be held on Friday 23 December 2022, celebrating the end of the year with highlight performances and installations by West African dancer and choreographer Lucky Lartey, young Western Sydney dance group Pioneers, and a sound installation by multidisciplinary arts group Famili who descend from Pasifika, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, as well as a live broadcast by Koori Radio, Sydney’s only First Nations radio station.

Bell Shakespeare has today announced further cast members for its upcoming production of Macbeth, showing next year at Sydney Opera House from 25 February – 2 April, Canberra Theatre Centre from 14 – 22 April and Arts Centre Melbourne from 27 April – 14 May 2023.

2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Macbeth in Shakespeare’s First Folio, and Bell Shakespeare celebrates this moment with a new production set in the moody 1920s, post-World War I. Starring Logie Award winning actor Hazem Shammas, known for his work on TVs Safe Harbour and The Twelve, as the murderous Macbeth, alongside Jessica Tovey as Lady Macbeth, they are joined by just announced cast members Julia Billington, Jeremi Campese, James Lugton, Kyle Morrison and Jacob Warner.

Directed by Artistic Director Peter Evans, the production is a terrifying portrayal of moral collapse and an intense and compelling journey into the dark heart of humanity.

The University of Melbourne has announced a retrospective solo exhibition spanning 50 years of Victorian-based artist Peter Tyndall’s work, representing the artist’s most comprehensive exhibition to date.

The exhibition will run from 2 December 2022 to 16 April 2023 and feature over 200 works, drawing from the University’s significant collection alongside pieces on loan from national institutions and private collections, including a number of unseen works. The exhibition will encompass the entire museum and be accompanied by an engaging series of public and educational programs on the artist’s work.

Works from the 1970s to the present day will be shown alongside a selection of previously unseen pieces that underpin his practice. These include major bodies of work such as 130 unstretched canvas paintings from 2018, and works on paper from the 1970s, alongside milestone works such as The Right Angle Giver, his installation in the Arsenale for the 1988 Venice Biennale.

Image credit: Artwork Peter Tyndall, courtesy Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne

Powerhouse has unveiled Unpopular, a major exhibition featuring the never-before-seen archive of music entrepreneur Stephen ‘Pav’ Pavlovic. The exhibition explores the global rise of the alternative music scene that included cornerstone bands such as Nirvana, Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Fugazi and Bikini Kill. Opened on Thursday 27 October, Unpopular features more than 200 objects from Pavlovic’s extensive archive, alongside stories and oral histories from the community of artists he worked with, bringing visitors backstage and behind the scenes of this era of live music.

Bell Shakespeare presents the world premiere of The Lovers, a pop musical written by young Australian writer and composer Laura Murphy reimagining Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a fresh and infectious original score.

On now at Sydney Opera House until 20 November 2022, the production features some of the best voices in Australia’s musical theatre scene, including Natalie Abbott, Blake Appelqvist, Monique Sallé, Brittanie Shipway and Jerrod Smith, alongside 2020 finalist of The Voice Stellar Perry making her musical theatre debut.

Laura Murphy, who is one of Australia’s most exciting playwrights at the forefront of composing new Australian work, has been developing this project for the past 12 years. The Lovers gives audiences a fresh perspective on Shakespeare’s classic tale, exploring the magic and mishaps of romantic love, with original pop songs sung by the cast and accompanied by a live band.

Bega Valley Shire Council has announced the new South East Centre for Contemporary Art (SECCA), a purpose-built contemporary art space, will be unveiled this summer following completion of a major redevelopment and expansion of the 30-year-old site formerly known as Bega Valley Regional Gallery.

Award-winning Melbourne-based architecture practice, Sibling was selected from a public tender to design the $3.5 million renovation, working with Council to elevate the contemporary exhibition facilities and create a new gallery reflecting the rich cultural landscape of the region. Located on the traditional lands of the people of the Yuin Nation in the pristine landscapes of the south east corner of NSW, SECCA is home to the Shirley Hannan National Portrait Award, one of the most pre-eminent awards for portrait in the county and the historic Bega Valley Arts & Crafts Society collection.

The gallery will feature a significantly larger exhibition space, expanded from 180m² to 290m² and will include a state-of-the-art main gallery space for touring exhibitions.

DESIGN Canberra Festival has unveiled five new exhibitions and a collaboration with acclaimed food and entertainment organisation, The Forage, to launch as part of its ninth edition.

Forage Festival will offer a high-quality food and entertainment program, including an array of culinary and musical attractions on Saturday 5 November, showcasing the best of Canberra’s food and music scene.

The five exhibitions will each display unique design talent across an eclectic range of disciplines including architecture, interior design, metalwork and digital media from both local and international creatives: the Robert F!NK National Metal Prize, Home Life, Seeing Seventies Photography Competition, Shadow Lines and Ctrl. ALT. Design.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s most significant contemporary multi-arts organisations, today announced a dynamic program spanning visual arts and live performance to be presented as part of Sydney Festival 2023. The program includes two major exhibitions by leading Australian artists Paul Yore and The Huxleys, a large-scale mural by Arrernte and Kalkadoon artist Thea Anamara Perkins, and an immersive live performance work by innovative percussive arts organisation Speak Percussionpresented in Sydney for the first time.

Image: Paul Yore: WORD MADE FLESH, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Photo credit: Andrew Curtis

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s most significant contemporary multi-arts organisations, today announced the program highlights for PARTY | PROTEST | REMEMBER, a free precinct wide event on 12 November that celebrates the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Black Theatre. Curated by Director of First Nations Programs, Jacob Boehme (Narangga/Kaurna), the program celebrates Blak excellence and spans live music, performance, drag, visual art, film and will be kicked off with a citizen’s assembly led by author and Uluru Statement from the Heart campaigner Thomas Mayor.

Image: Nana Miss Koori for Party | Protest | Remember. Image: Jacquie Manning

Bruce Reynolds has been announced as the winner of the 2022 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, ahead of the opening of the 21st anniversary exhibition at the new 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.

Bruce Reynolds has been awarded the $25,000 award, for his work, “Animal Kraters”, which will be acquired for the Council’s permanent public collection, joining previous winners Tim Silver, Robert Owen, Yvonne Kendall, Rhonda Sharpe and Mikala Dwyer.

Exploring an eclectic mix of themes including loss of identity, decolonisation, the reimagining of ancient stories and artefacts and gender identity, the 2022 finalists’ works will be on display at Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf in an exhibition running from 13 October to 20 November 2022.

Image: 21st Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize at Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf. Credit Jacquie Manning

Anna Schwartz AO, Founder of Anna Schwartz Gallery, said: “Anna Schwartz Gallery is proud to present the latest development in the practice of Daniel von Sturmer: a series of highly refined, indefinable works on the walls of the gallery. This is the 9th solo exhibition of Daniel von Sturmer with the gallery and a great opportunity for audiences to see the fascinating progression in the work of this major artist.”

Daniel von Sturmer has an enduring interest in the devices associated with image-making, particularly in photography and video. These new works use an intentionally invisible trope of photographic vernacular (the graduated background) and render it concrete as a philosophical object. Entities that resist categorisation hold their potential, keeping easy apprehension at bay.

Powerhouse has revealed details of Zampatti Powerhouse, the major survey exhibition which will celebrate the life and legacy of the iconic Australian, Carla Zampatti opening 24 November 2022.

The first internationally exclusive retrospective of Carla Zampatti AC, OMRI will present the life and work of the inimitable Italian-born designer, beloved as an Australian fashion icon. The breadth of her extraordinary private, professional and public life will be rendered in exquisite detail, anchored by Zampatti’s signature designs and brought to life with first person reflections on the designer’s clients, family, staff and friends.

Zampatti Powerhouse will encompass 100 designs from over 50 lenders and over five decades of material, surveying a trailblazing career from the establishment of her business in 1965 to her most recent work. Iconic pieces worn by high-profile Australian women in defining life moments include former Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s jacket worn when she addressed US Congress in 2011; the white jacket worn by Christine Holgate when speaking at the Australia Post Inquiry in April 2021; the red pantsuit worn by Linda Burney for her official parliamentary portrait in 2019; Tina Arena’s jumpsuit, personally fitted for her ARIA Hall of Fame induction in 2015; and Allegra Spender’s blue jacket which belonged to her mother, frequently worn while campaigning for the federal seat of Wentworth. Following a public call-out, the exhibition will also present around 30 loaned garments from Zampatti’s rarely seen early design work from the 60s and 70s, alongside the stories of the Australian women who wore them.

Freedom of Movement: Contemporary Art and Design from the NGV Collection is a new exhibition featuring more than 60 works of contemporary art and design by some of the most recognisable names working today, including Patricia Piccinini, KAWS, nendo, Paola Pivi, Nick Cave, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Shilpa Gupta, Alicja Kwade, Daniel Arsham and Alex Prager.

Offering a dynamic survey of the State collection across contemporary furniture, lighting, painting, film, sculpture and installation, the exhibition provides audiences the chance to engage with remarkable contemporary works in new and surprising contexts, as well as to appreciate the spectacular correlations and interrelationships between art and design.

Crossing cultures, disciplines and traditional divides, Freedom of Movement presents a selection of NGV Collection works bound together by ideas of movement – be that physical, technological or geographical. Presented across four thematic ‘movements’, each anchored by a major work, the exhibition invites audiences to contemplate concepts of movement, change, perception and transformation in contemporary life.

Bundanon has announced its Season 3 program: Siteworks 2022: From a deep valley, opening to the public from 26 November 2022 – 12 March 2023. In Dharawal the word Bundanon means deep valley. With a decade-long history at Bundanon, Siteworks will see the work of over 25 artists and 10 scientific researchers drawing on climate research, critical thinking, First Nations knowledge and technologies and creative digital spaces, throughout a major exhibition and a program of outdoor installations, performances, workshops, and digital artworks.

Siteworks 2022: From a deep valley will present a major new exhibition in the Art Museum, titled ‘Inside, underground’ exploring the concept of interior weather, as well as a curated series of events across four key weekends over summer that position the artist as a kind of weather balloon, capturing ‘weather reports’ from this place and time. A core element of Siteworks 2022: From a deep valley is Bundanon’s participation in the digital project, the World Weather Network, a ground-breaking new global alliance of artists, writers and communities initiated by the UK-based arts organisation, Artangel.

The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, presented by Woollahra Council, has announced 50 emerging and established artists as finalists for the 21st annual Prize. The 2022 finalist works, by artists hailing from every Australian state and territory as well as international finalists from Auckland, New Zealand and Texas, USA will be presented in an exhibition at Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf, opening on 12 October.

Established in 2001, the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize is Australia’s pre-eminent award for small sculpture and is the first national acquisitive prize for an original sculpture of up to 80cm in any dimension.

The 2022 Woollahra Sculpture Prize finalist artists are:
Agus Wijaya, Allan Giddy, Amala Groom, Amelia Lynch, Anastasia Parmson, Antoinette O’Brien, Ara Dolatian, Bianca Hester, Bruce Reynolds, Claudia Terstappen, Edward Waring, Franky Howell, Gaspare Moscone, Gina Ferguson, Guy Fredricks , Jake Preval, Jess Dare, Jessica Murtagh, Kat Shapiro Wood, Kelly Austin, Kenzee Patterson, Kirsteen Pieterse, Lee Harrop, Leonie Rhodes, Lewis Doherty, Louis Grant, Lynda Draper, Mai Nguyen-Long, Mariana Del Castillo, Mark Booth, Michael Cusack, Nabilah Nordin, Nasim Nasr, Nate Ditzler, Nicholas Burridge, Nuha Saad, Peter Burgess, Peter Tilley, Pippin Drysdale, Rebecca Selleck, Ruby Benhar Pattarkadavu, Samantha Hanicar, Sherna Teperson, Shireen Taweel, Simon Fieldhouse, Stephen Ralph, Stephen Benwell, Suzanne Archer, Vipoo Srivilasa and Yanyangkari Butler.

Image: Ara Dolatian, ‘Unearthed’

Walsh Bay Arts Precinct, Australia’s newest cultural precinct, has today announced its first precinct-wide Open Day with a free public program of events to be presented across the architecturally acclaimed Precinct encompassing the historically significant Pier 2/3 and Wharf 4/5. Presented on Saturday 8 October 2022 from 10am to 4pm, the Walsh Bay Arts Precinct Open Day will offer a series of free one-off experiences, workshops and performances hosted by its resident performing arts companies across the entire precinct.

Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, the revitalised heritage Walsh Bay Arts Precinct will open its doors to the
public in a one-day program set to highlight the dynamic cultural offerings and world-class facilities of its resident
companies including the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian Theatre for Young People, Bangarra Dance Theatre,
Bell Shakespeare, Gondwana Choirs, Sydney Dance Company, Sydney Theatre Company and Sydney Philharmonia
Choirs.

Bell Shakespeare has announced its 2023 season, with three new productions touring throughout the country. To mark 2023 as the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio, the company will stage new contemporary retellings of plays from the Folio, Macbeth and Twelfth Night, the latter featuring all new music by Sarah Blasko. The company will also stage a raw and intimate performance of Romeo and Juliet in the company’s new theatre The Neilson Nutshell and at the Fairfax Studio at Arts Centre Melbourne.

Sydney Contemporary, Australasia’s premier art fair, in partnership with MA Financial Group, opens to the public with an expansive program of art, performance, talks, food and drink, featuring the work of more than 450 artists and over 90 galleries. Presented at multi-arts precinct Carriageworks from 8-11 September, this marks the first physical edition of the Fair since 2019 and its strongest to date. Sydney Contemporary is proudly supported by the NSW Government through its tourism and major events agency Destination NSW.

The Fair program for Sydney Contemporary 2022 caters for serious collectors and the art loving public alike, presenting engaging activities alongside the extensive artworks on show, with curated AMPLIFY, Performance Contemporary, Kid Contemporary and Talk Contemporary programs that all run concurrently throughout the Fair. The Fair is also home to restaurants, cafes and bespoke bars making it an all-encompassing art and dining experience. Billed as one of the most celebrated events on Australia’s cultural calendar, Sydney Contemporary has firmly established itself as a must-attend art event and the perfect place to discover and collect modern and contemporary art.

Photography by James Horan; Michael Staniak, FXB_004 (cave C++) 2022, aluminium, canvas, PVC, acrylic and wood, 400 x 250 x 400 cm.

Powerhouse today announced Unpopular, a major exhibition featuring the never-before-seen archive of music entrepreneur Stephen ‘Pav’ Pavlovic. The exhibition explores the global rise of the alternative music scene that included cornerstone bands such as Nirvana, Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Fugazi and Bikini Kill.

Opening to the public on Thursday 27 October, Unpopular features more than 200 objects from Pavlovic’s extensive archive, alongside stories and oral histories from the community of artists he worked with, bringing visitors backstage and behind the scenes of this era of live music.

The University of Melbourne’s Ian Potter Museum of Art has announced Collective Unease; a bold new exhibition examining the legacies of colonisation and imperialism in the University of Melbourne’s collections, running 27 September – 9 December 2022 and then 14 February – 2 June 2023.

Co-curated by Samantha Comte, Senior Curator and Jacqueline Doughty, Head Curator, Art Museums, the exhibition forms part of the Ian Potter Museum of Art’s artistic program, inviting three contemporary artists to respond to and reframe objects from the University collection. Collective Unease is presented inside the Old Quad at the centre of the University’s Parkville campus, with the works in part inspired by the Oxbridge-style architecture of this historic building.

Through these newly-commissioned works, artists Andy Butler, Lisa Hilli and James Nguyen move beyond colonial narratives to a complex, multi-voiced understanding of Australia inflected by experiences of migration and diaspora.  In the face of difficult histories and an uncertain future, these works emphasise themes of self-representation, empowerment and optimism.

Image: Andy Butler, The Agony and the Ecstasy, 2022, video still. Courtesy of the artist.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s most significant contemporary multi-arts organisations, today announced the launch of the First Nations Program, signalling an ambitious sea change for the organisation. Under the leadership of the first Director of First Nations Programs, Jacob Boehme (Narangga/Kaurna), Carriageworks is undergoing a renewal that is embedding First Nations governance and cultural perspectives at the heart of the organisation.

In 2022, Carriageworks presents PARTY | PROTEST | REMEMBER, a dynamic, new multi-arts program that celebrates the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Black Theatre. In 1972 a group of dedicated Aboriginal activists came together on the streets of Redfern to create change. They created Redfern’s first self-determined Aboriginal theatre company alongside the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s most significant contemporary multi-arts organisations, will present Awakening Shadow, a new work by resident company Sydney Chamber Opera. In a first Australian staging, Benjamin Britten’s five Canticles are entwined with a new work by leading Australian composer Luke Styles, performed by a quartet of singers and four musicians in front of a monolithic altar-like screen. The work channels Britten’s crisis of faith through the singing body and will be presented from 30 September – 7 October 2022.

The annual DESIGN Canberra Festival has announced highlights for its ninth edition, unveiling an expansive program featuring more than 200 events that will be presented across the nation’s capital celebrating it as a global city of design, spanning two weeks from 2 until 20 November 2022. Presented by Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre, DESIGN Canberra 2022 explores the theme of Transformation, inviting audiences to speculate on how we might transform our city, our community and our world through design and creative practice.

With a program comprising talks, tours, exhibitions, public art installations, workshops and symposiums, DESIGN Canberra highlights in 2022 include keynote speeches by authors Elizabeth Farrelly and Tony Fry, as well as by artists Blanche Tilden and Tom Moore; an exhibition celebrating contemporary Italian design; open studio access to more than 77 Canberra-based artists and designers; public art installations; architecture talks and tours; hands-on ‘nurture’ making workshops; and a Bauhaus influenced exhibition of light works.

Canberra sculptor Lucy Irvine – whose work transforms the traditional craft practice of weaving into sculptural installations – has been named the 2022 designer-in-residence for DESIGN Canberra 2022, creating a signature work, ‘The Stills’ for the Festival, responding to the theme of Transformation.

Image: Lucy Irvine, The Stills, DESIGN Canberra 2022 signature artwork. Photo Lean Timms.

Fred Williams: The London Drawings is the first exhibition dedicated to Williams’s London period (1952–56). The exhibition explores the range and power of William’s drawings from this formative period through some 160 drawings of extraordinary calligraphic energy. These include superb series of works that Williams made in London’s music halls, at the zoo, on the city streets, and in formal life drawing classes.

Presenting a surprising counterpoint to the artist’s celebrated, abstracted landscape paintings, these drawings reveal Williams’s early aspirations to be a figure painter. This early commitment to drawing and painting the human figure is less well known to the public and reveals Williams’s extraordinary observational skills and ability to capture the world around him.

An evocative reimagining of The Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens, Adam Newman and Kelvin Tsang’s Temple of Boom is the NGV Architecture Commission for 2022, an annual series that invites Australian architects to create a work of site-specific, ephemeral architecture for the NGV Garden.

A global architectural icon, The Parthenon, an Ancient Greek temple, is an apex symbol of Western civilisation, democracy and perfection. The likeness of The Parthenon will be painted with overlapping large-scale artworks by Melbourne-based artists, imbuing the ancient monument with further layers of meaning and drawing inspiration from the vibrant colours and artistic embellishments that defined the original building over two-thousand years ago.

Adam Newman and Kelvin Tsang invite audiences to reflect on the conversations that are enabled when this ancient building is viewed in new and surprising contexts. In particular, the projects ask us to consider the effect of time on all architecture. Temple of Boom reflects the slow yet unstoppable processes of change that transform all cultural, geological and ecological systems. The geological forces that shape the world, layers that accumulate as cities grow over generations, the rise and fall of monuments set against a backdrop of social, political and cultural change.

Using performance, video, sound, installation and collage, Angelica Mesiti provides new vantage points from which to consider a familiar element. Avoiding depictions that are strictly representational, Future Perfect Continuous is an invitation to meditate, to listen closely, and to consider the greater meaning of small gestures. In this exhibition, running from 30 July – 8 October 2022, Mesiti creates a crease in time and in memory, while offering an anchor to a transcendent idea of community.

The Rigg Design Prize 2022 highlights the creativity underpinning the work of eight leading Australian-based agencies. The first major exhibition of advertising and communication design in the NGV’s history will see each agency will develop a suite of campaign assets to celebrate how creativity can shape who we are and the world we live in. The finalists invited by the NGV to compete for the $30,000 Prize are: Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, DDB Group Melbourne, Frost* collective, Gilimbaa, Leo Burnett Australia, TBWA\Melbourne, The Royals and Thinkerbell.

Now in its ninth edition, the triennial Prize is Australia’s highest national accolade for contemporary design bestowed by an Australian public gallery and seeks to profile a different field of design practice every three years. In 2022, the Prize exhibition showcases the capacity of advertising and communication design to influence how we consume, act and behave as a society, while drawing attention to the creative minds behind the campaigns working across graphic design, typography, digital media, film, psychology and creative writing.

Sydney Contemporary, Australasia’s premier art fair, in partnership with MA Financial Group, announced a dynamic program of performance art and music to be presented across Thursday 8 September (Opening Night, presented by Glenfiddich) and Friday 9 September (Friday Night Art Night). Audiences will experience a vibrant new work by Justene Williams commissioned exclusively for the Fair and supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, alongside the Performance Contemporary program with performances by cutting-edge, experimental artists, curated by Jeff Khan (Artistic Director) and Samantha Watson-Wood (Artistic Advisor) of Performance Space.

Senior Pitjantjatjara artist Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin has been announced as the winner of the annual acquisitive Hadley’s Art Prize 2022 – Australia’s richest landscape prize worth $100,000 – for her work titled Antara. Goodwin is the first woman to win the major prize since its inception in 2017.

Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin’s work Antara depicts the ancient storyline of Maku Tjukurpa, or Witchetty Grub story, from Mimili, an Anangu community on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in the north west of South Australia. Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin captures the vast, arid landscape of Antara, a sacred ceremonial site northwest of Mimili community characterised by rounded granite hills, low scrub and sandplains.

Tuppy Ngintja Goodwin said: “I paint the Antara storyline, the Witchetty Grub Tjukurpa. It’s a very old story from a long time ago that I was taught when I moved to Mimili as a young girl. Now I look after it and teach it to the children. The Witchetty Grub story is a big ceremony. There are three deep rock holes where we go and lots of songs associated with this place. I love to sing them when I paint, sharing them with my granddaughters and friends.”

Walsh Bay Arts Precinct, Australia’s newest cultural precinct, has received awards in four categories at the 2022 NSW Architecture Awards, the state’s most celebrated architectural honours presented by the Australian Institute of Architects. Selected by a jury led by former NSW Government Architect Peter Mould, the Precinct received the state’s top award, the NSW Architecture Medallion, for the transformation of Pier 2/3 and Wharf 4/5 undertaken by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects. The Precinct also received the awards for Public Architecture, Greenway Award for Heritage and a commendation for Interior Architecture.

Sydney Contemporary, Australasia’s premier art fair has today announced AMPLIFY – the newly named and highly anticipated Installation Contemporary program.

Designed to exhibit large-scale artworks in a diverse range of media, including moving-image, or more ambitious and conceptually driven projects that extend beyond the traditional booth presentation, AMPLIFY presents an opportunity to view innovative, site-specific, and interactive installations in the environment of Carriageworks.

Curated by Annika Kristensen, Visual Arts Curator at Perth Festival, and Associate Curator at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA),  participating artists include Angela Tiatia who will present Narcissus, a contemporary reimagining of the classical Greek myth, exploring contemporary visual culture’s worship of the self, pictured.

Anna Schwartz Gallery has unveiled Chiharu Shiota: State of Being, an exhibition of new works by the acclaimed Japanese artist presented until 30 July 2022. State of Being is being exhibited concurrently with Shiota’s The Soul Trembles – curated by Mami Kataoka, Director of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo – at QAGOMA. A significant moment in Shiota’s twenty-five-year artistic practice, each of these Australian exhibitions are new touch points in Shiota’s devotion to exploring the tangle of memory and dreams and their transcendence into our waking lives.

State of Being is comprised of work in both two and three dimensions, all realised through the artist’s signature language of threads. A a sculptural human figure in red rests beneath yet connected to an immense web that spans the gallery from wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling. On a more intimate scale, sculptures and works on canvas and paper offer an opportunity to see details of Shiota’s thinking. Reclaimed love letters, diaries and photographs, found by the artist in flea markets, are artefacts of other lives lived in other places.

Heide Museum of Modern Art presents Bruce Munro: From Sunrise Road, the first museum exhibition in Australia of the work of internationally celebrated English/Australian artist Bruce Munro, best known for his interactive, large-scale light installations inspired largely by his interest in shared human experience. Presented from 25 June to 16 October, the exhibition combines spectacular indoor and outdoor experiential artworks with intimate story-pieces, revealing the depth of the artist’s practice and the breadth of his sources, from the personal and philosophical to the literary and spiritual.

Australia’s largest contemporary multi-arts precinct presents a major solo exhibition by acclaimed Australian artist Mel O’Callaghan titled All is Life, which expands on the artist’s continued exploration of the relationship between life and nonlife. Presented free to the public from 23 June to 21 August 2022, the exhibition, which has been curated by Aarna Fitzgerald Hanley, includes an ambitious sculptural installation activated by performances, a new sound work, and a two-channel film capturing the sacred ritual Dhalo, shot by the artist on a recent trip to Ambaulim, Goa in India.

Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with MA Financial Group, has announced their highly anticipated Performance Contemporary and Kid Contemporary programs. The sixth edition of Australasia’s premier art fair and one of the most significant and celebrated art events on the cultural calendar, Sydney Contemporary, will present over 90 leading Australian and New Zealand galleries exhibiting the work of over 450 artists hailing from 35 countries, from 8-11 September 2022 at Carriageworks.

Performance Contemporary, curated by Jeff Khan (Artistic Director) and Samantha Watson-Wood (Artistic Advisor) of Performance Space, presents work by Salote Tawale, WeiZen Ho, Rakini Devi and Alli Sebastian Wolf, four artists reflecting the incredible diversity of practices, artforms and ideas that make up the contemporary performance environment today. Working across video, installation and performance and exploring themes spanning ritual, celebration, environment, and identity, the 2022 Performance Contemporary program artists share a bold use of movement, colour, gesture, and interdisciplinary forms.

Kid Contemporary will occupy a dedicated space at the Fair, with children of all ages are invited to create an artwork inspired by Venezuelan/Australian artist Nadia Hernández’s practice. In “It’s time for sancocho!” children can create their own art mobiles from handcrafted paper cut-outs and stencils.

Image: Alli Sebastian Wolf, ‘Frill Neck Lizard’, performance

Bundanon’s Season 2 program: Parallel Landscapes presents four distinct artistic approaches to the Shoalhaven environment and wider Australian bush. The Season 2 program will be presented to the public from 2 July – 6 November 2022 at the recently opened Bundanon Art Museum.

Encompassing three exhibitions the program explores different ways to view the natural world, ranging from the historical to the contemporary. The exhibitions are Arthur Boyd: Landscape of the Soul; The Hidden by Tim Georgeson and William Barton; and The River and the Sea by Reuben Ernest Brown (Uncle Ben Brown). The exhibitions reflect Bundanon’s central vision, as established by the Boyd family when gifting the property to the public in 1993 – to foster an appreciation for and understanding of landscape and art.

Sydney Fringe Festival, New South Wales’ largest independent arts festival, has announced its largest and longest program to date. Presented from 16 August – 30 September 2022, the Festival will start two weeks earlier than usual to accommodate over 500 events following an unprecedented response to this year’s registration campaign. After two years of cancellations, Sydney Fringe is set to once again highlight the city’s vibrant culture with a diverse program spanning theatre, music, comedy, visual art, film, musical theatre, dance, circus, literature and poetry.

The Biennale of Sydney has announced Cosmin Costinaș and Inti Guerrero as the Artistic Directors of the 24th Biennale of Sydney, which will take place 9 March – 10 June 2024.

Over the past 10 years, Costinaș and Guerrero have co-curated a number of exhibitions together. As co-curators, their exhibitions embrace the multiplicities of people’s viewpoints, reflected in the unique experiences and possibilities that art can provide, inviting people to challenge and be challenged, to learn and celebrate together. For the 24th Biennale of Sydney (2024), Australia’s vibrant communities will be central to their thinking, while seeing the biennale as a place that reaffirms the urgency for international dialogue.

Cosmin Costinaș is currently the curator of the Romanian Pavilion for the 59th Venice Biennale (2022). He was the Executive Director and Curator of Para Site, Hong Kong’s leading contemporary art centre and one of the oldest and most active independent art institutions in Asia. He was recently Artistic Director of Kathmandu Triennale 2022, the fourth edition of Nepal’s premier international platform for global contemporary arts. Costinaș is a Curatorial Adviser at the Aichi Triennale (2022). He was Guest Curator at the Dhaka Art Summit ’18 (2018), Co-curator of the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014), curator of BAK, Utrecht (2008-2011), Co-curator of the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial, Ekaterinburg (2010) and Editor of documenta 12 Magazines, documenta 12, Kassel (2005–2007).

Inti Guerrero is currently tutor of the Curatorial Studies programme at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts-KASK, Ghent. He was the Artistic Director of bap – bellas artes projects, Manila (2018-2022), Curator of the 38th EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial, Limerick (2018), Artistic Director of TEOR/éTica, San Jose (2011-2014) and the Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator at Tate, London (2016-2020). In 2016, Guerrero was the inaugural curator in residence of the International Visiting Curators Program by Artspace and UNSW Art & Design, Sydney. As an independent curator, Guerrero has curated exhibitions across Asia, Europe and Latin America, including ‘Institute for Tropical and Galactical Studies’ in the Yokohama Triennale 2020, ‘A Chronicle of Interventions,’ Tate Modern, London (2014) and ‘A Transatlantic Affair. Josephine Baker and Le Corbusier,’ Museum of Art of Rio-MAR in Rio de Janeiro (2014). He has edited and contributed his writing to numerous books, magazines, and exhibition catalogues and has taught and lectured at different universities, art academies, and institutions across the world.

Contemporary cultural precinct HOTA, Home of the Arts has announced entries are open for the 20th anniversary of the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award, one of Australia’s most significant awards for contemporary photographic practice.

The Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award provides a national platform for emerging and established artists. As the richest prize for photography in Queensland, the $25,000 acquisitive award is open to artists working in the broad medium of contemporary photography. Visitors to the exhibition will also get to choose their favourite artwork with the inclusion for the first time of a $5,000 People’s Choice Award.

Bell Shakespeare will take its production of The Comedy of Errors on a major national tour to 20 cities and regional centres across Australia in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, Northern Territory, Tasmania and Australian Capital Territory from July through October this year. Due to be presented in 2020 but disrupted due to COVID, the company revives this vibrant and hilarious production that at its core is a beautiful and timely story about family reunion.

Directed by longtime Bell Shakespeare collaborator Janine Watson, the play is a comedic and heartfelt romp of swapped identities, misguided love, mistaken imprisonment, and chaotic mishap. Set in the 1970s, a time in history when global tensions were sky high but was juxtaposed with social movements fighting for liberation and change, the production takes place over a 24-hour period in a colourful and hedonistic seaside land that feels as if anything can and will happen. Two sets of twins who have been separated for decades strive to be brought back together, and as the dawn arises, all the threads come untangled, and the truth is revealed.

Anna Schwartz, Founder of Anna Schwartz Gallery, muses that there has been a thread connecting her and the gallery with Chiharu Shiota since they first met at Detached in 2011 in Tasmania at her installation In Silence, incorporating a burnt piano into a black web. In 2017, they again met in Venice when Shiota represented Japan with The Key in the Hand. Anna Schwartz Gallery is honoured to present State of Being: new works and the continuation of the connection. State of Being will exhibit concurrently with Shiota’s The Soul Trembles – curated by Mami Kataoka, Director of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo – at QAGOMA. A significant moment in Shiota’s twenty-five-year artistic practice, each of these Australian exhibitions are new touch points in Shiota’s devotion to exploring the tangle of memory and dreams and their transcendence into our waking lives.

State of Being will present works that span Shiota’s practice. Sculptural works, canvases, and a large-scale installation will envelope the gallery space, creating the absorbing effect that has come to be definitive of Shiota’s practice.

Image: State of Being (Diary), 2022, Metal frame, diary, thread, 50 x 50 x 30 cm

Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with Principal Partner MA Financial Group, unveiled plans for the Fair’s sixth edition. Marking the first physical edition since 2019, the Fair returns with a stellar line-up of 85+ emerging and established galleries from Australia and New Zealand, presented at Carriageworks, Australia’s largest multi-arts centre, from Thursday, 8 – Sunday, 11 September 2022.

Image: Betty Pumani

On Thursday 12 May 2022, the Powerhouse staged Iordanes Spyridon Gogos’ (ISG) highly anticipated runway show for Afterpay Australian Fashion Week (AAFW) 2022. The unique collaboration transformed the Powerhouse’s iconic Boiler Hall for the first AAFW runway show in the museum’s 142-year history.

The Powerhouse workshop team collaborated with ISG to realise the vibrant ‘deconstructed castle’ runway. Artistic direction was led by Benn Hamilton, set design by Max Rixon and spatial design by Tayarch Design Studio, all mainstay ISG collaborators who worked with the Powerhouse team to create more than 15 sculptural works along with painted banners, set pieces and wearable art objects.

The Powerhouse workshop were amongst 60 Australian and international collaborators from the creative industries engaged to realise 33 singular looks for the runway show. ISG’s collaboration with Australian fashion veteran Jenny Kee AO opened and closed the show. The full list of collaborators includes: Albus Lumen, Alexander Enticknap, Alice Knight, Amy Baran Angelica Kilkolly, Angel Robertson, Anna May Kirk, Anna Pogossova, ANTIMATTERMANE, Apollo Michaelides, Aryah Levin, Colourblind florist, Benn Hamilton, Brittany Wyper, CAES, Chanel Bragg, Chase Shiel, Chloe Green, Darren Bischoff, Denis Vukcevic, DIASPORA, Effi Mavratzas, Emily Mavratzas, Felynn Designs, fon99, Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Haus of Dizzy, Jake Liu, Jenny Kee, Jo Morton, Jody Just, Joe Brennan, Jordan Olyslanders, Julia Baldini Shoes, Luca Sheridan, Mary Argyropoulos, Max Rixon, Nathan Angelis, NEPHTHYS, Patrick Church, Pormpuraaw Art, Roshan Ramesh, Ruby Pedder, Sacred Honeys, Scarlet Marshall, Similar Difference, Simone Arnol, SPEED, Stefania Gertis, Stella Sunday, Taya Brooks, thevxlley, Victoria Todorov, Xi Wu Studio, Yan Lok Chu, Yarrabah Arts and Culture, Youkhana.

The Keir Foundation, Dancehouse, and Australia Council for the Arts, with presenting partner Carriageworks, today announced the program and jury for the fifth edition of the Keir Choreographic Award (KCA). The award is a premiere event for the Australian dance scene presenting newly commissioned works by eight independent Australian artists and collectives. For the first time, Carriageworks and Dancehouse will each host all eight works over a two-week season from 23 June – 2 July, featuring two presentations of four works each in a rotating program.

The esteemed jury of international dance leaders tasked with selecting the recipient of the 2022 Keir Choreographic Award and awarding the $50,000 jury prize on Sunday 3 July at Carriageworks include Daniel Riley (Wiradjuri/Australia), Artistic Director of Australian Dance Theatre, Eko Supriyanto (Indonesia), choreographer and independent dance artist, Laurie Uprichard (Ireland), international dance presenter and curator, Lemi Ponifasio (Aotearoa/New Zealand), internationally acclaimed artist and collaborator, and Nanako Nakajima (Japan), dance dramaturg, academic and researcher.

A temporary public artwork by Australian media artist Mike Daly is now on display on Oxford Street until 25 May as part of the City of Sydney’s Art & About series.

‘Tidal’ is a striking light installation presented in a disused shopfront that visualises tidal movement data from 2050 from Sydney and its five coastal sister cities: Nagoya, Guangzhou, Portsmouth, San Francisco and Wellington. Drawing attention to the impacts of the climate crisis, the installation is ultimately a meditation on uncertainty and change. Read an interview with the artist here.

A new solo exhibition by Australian artist Arran Russell, titled SILENT LANGUAGE, will be unveiled on Tuesday 3 May 2022 featuring a series of sculptures, wall assemblages, paintings and works on paper. Presented across the rarely accessed top-floor space of the Verona Penthouse in Paddington, Sydney, the exhibition is free entry and runs until Saturday 7 May 2022.

The inaugural solo exhibition by Arran Russell harnesses a hidden language of shapes which draws upon the artist’s past experience in the design and fashion industries in Australia, Vietnam, China, India, Japan and the United Kingdom. For Russell this meant many years working with the shapes found in garment patterns, often in places where the only shared vocabulary was in the forms laid out between Russell and his collaborators.

In SILENT LANGUAGE, the origins of the cut-out shapes of garment patterns have kept their perplexing, prone characters, floating, nudging, and nestling themselves into new and abstracted compositions. Using movement and gesture Russell delivers previously mass produced materials into a more premium environment. The exhibition presents a series of sculptures formed from clay and wood that will be shown alongside large-scale paintings and works on paper. Many of the works incorporate heavy duty materials such as tar, lead, clay and kaolin, often applied to the surface using only a squeegee and a spatula, with the resulting abstracted forms taking on a gritty and permeable texture.

Ngununggula, the Southern Highlands’ first regional art gallery, will present ambitious new and existing works by leading contemporary artists and brothers Abdul-Rahman Abdullah and Abdul Abdullah in dialogue with four significant video installations by one of their greatest influences, Tracey Moffatt AO. For the exhibition, titled Land Abounds, the Abdullah brothers will each present a new large-scale commissioned artwork responding to the Southern Highlands’ landscape and the complexity of our shared history, as well as existing works never before exhibited in NSW.

Presented free to the public from 28 May – 24 July 2022, the exhibition draws on collective memory and experience, unpacking how the representation and perpetuation of culture, knowledge, and tradition can be transferred through storytelling.

Australian emerging artist Joi Murugavell will unveil her first solo exhibition in seven years in Sydney from 29 April until 2 May 2022. The exhibition, presented by art advisor Sarah Birtles, will be held at Peach Black Gallery in Chippendale.  Titled Finding Mikey, the exhibition features 13 new works by the artist, including five ‘double-mattress-sized’ paintings, five collaged ‘toy paintings’ and a large-scale installation work that capture the spontaneity and humour of life.

Sarah Birtles, who represents the artist in Australia, says Murugavell has gained a strong following in Asia in recent years, exhibiting at major art fairs including ART021 Shanghai, KIAF Korea and Art Taiwan and presenting work with galleries in Taiwan, Korea and China.

Collage features strongly across the vibrant series of paintings by Murugavell whose works weave together stories collected from personal experiences ranging from phrases and symbols, to song lyrics, cartoons and childhood toys, which collectively invite deep contemplation and examination. The installation, featuring two figures; Mikey and Marisol Escobar, is inspired by Marisol’s Dinner Date, 1963, and extends the narrative of the paintings into three dimensional space.

DESASTRES by Marco Fusinato has made its debut in the Australia Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale.  Curated by Alexie Glass-Kantor, DESASTRES will be live for the entirety of La Biennale Arte 2022. The work is an invitation for audiences to come together within a high-intensity concentration of energy.

In the installation for DESASTRES, Fusinato uses equipment associated with spectacle as a form of sculpture. The work is unique each day it is initiated and, as it unfolds, it will radically transform the physical experience of each audience member. Fusinato says: “My idea of activating the audience is to remind them that they are alive. That they have a pulse”.

The large-scale, immersive artwork sees Fusinato improvising slabs of noise, saturated feedback and discordant intensities with an electric guitar, triggering a deluge of disparate and disconnected images onto a freestanding floor-to-ceiling LED wall. The pavilion is simultaneously a de facto studio and a space for research where Fusinato can test cause and effect in real time.

The images are sourced via a stream of words that have been put into an open search across multiple online platforms. There is no theme as such, rather the immersion of sound and image is open for the audience to interpret and make sense of. The intent is to create some kind of hallucination, elation in disorientation and exhaustion from confusion.

A new temporary public artwork has been unveiled in Sydney’s Potts Point, as part of the City of Sydney’s Art & About program. Titled ‘Here Lies Your Story’, the work is a text-based mural by Fenella Kernebone installed on the exterior of the Potts Point Hotel that captures the idiosyncratic spirit of one of Sydney’s most diverse, idiosyncratic communities.

On the wall, it stands about 4.5 metres high and 3metres wide, extending a further 2 metres along the ground below. Both sections feature a range of vignettes collated from residents and visitors to the area. Kernebone, best known as a curator and broadcaster, drew on her experience as an interviewer to assemble these stories together. Read an interview with the artist here.

Carriageworks will present a major solo exhibition by acclaimed Australian artist Mel O’Callaghan titled All is Life, which expands on the artist’s continued exploration of the relationship between life and nonlife. Presented free to the public from 23 June to 21 August 2022, the exhibition, which has been curated by Aarna Fitzgerald Hanley, will include an ambitious sculptural installation activated by performances, a new sound work, and a two-channel film capturing the sacred ritual Dhalo, shot by the artist on a recent trip to Ambaulim, Goa in India.

Walsh Bay Arts Precinct, Australia’s newest cultural precinct, has opened to the public following the completion of major redevelopment works on the historically significant Pier 2/3 located on the Sydney Harbour foreshore. A premier arts and culture hub, the Precinct is home to nine of the nation’s foremost performing arts companies presenting a vibrant program of musical concerts, theatre performances and public events throughout 2022.

Carriageworks announced today the names of 95 Australian artists from the Greater Sydney region who will participate in CUT N POLISH: Artist Car Boot Sale on Sunday 1 May 2022. Presented in Carriageworks’ Blacksmith’s Workshop, CUT N POLISH is a one-day art car boot sale featuring 62 artist stalls  selling their works directly to the public in a casual, market-style setting.

Established by artists for artists, the project provides the opportunity for visual artists to sell new works, pieces from their back catalogue, collaborations, and artist side projects, direct to the public in a ‘cash and carry’ market model with all sale proceeds going directly and in full to the artists.

Selected by a panel comprising of Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Aarna Fitzgerald Hanley and Katherine Stone from Carriageworks and leading contemporary artists and project initiators Consuelo Cavaniglia, Jonny Niesche and Brendan Van Hek, the 95 participants represent an exciting selection of cross-generational and culturally diverse artists from recently graduated students to award-winning practitioners.

Heide Museum of Modern Art will present Bruce Munro: From Sunrise Road, the first museum exhibition in Australia of the work of internationally celebrated English/Australian artist Bruce Munro, best known for his interactive, large-scale light installations inspired largely by his interest in shared human experience.

Presented from 25 June to 16 October, the exhibition combines spectacular indoor and outdoor experiential artworks with intimate story-pieces, revealing the depth of the artist’s practice and the breadth of his sources, from the personal and philosophical to the literary and spiritual.

Situated across Heide’s main galleries and sculpture park, the exhibition will present more than twenty key indoor works and an immersive outdoor light installation designed specifically for the site that will activate Heide’s iconic parklands at night.

Bonhams Australia will present one hundred significant and deeply personal works from Gene and Brian Sherman’s contemporary art collection in the forthcoming auction SHERMAN | 100. Taking place on Wednesday 11 May 2022, the auction is a veritable roll call of national and international contemporary artists from the last thirty years.

Gene Sherman is one of Australia’s most respected philanthropists and art collectors, who, together with her beloved husband Brian, has passionately and astutely collected some 900 pieces from significant Australian, Asian and international artists.

The SHERMAN | 100 sale is a carefully curated selection of mostly intimate works that cluster around the often-monumental pieces remaining in the Family Foundation and, via past and ongoing donations, held in significant public collections.

Image: Ah Xian, China China (Bust 13), 1999, porcelain with copper-red glaze

A major new public artwork inspired by the natural movement of water has been unveiled in Sydney’s CBD by one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Ripples and Droplets, a mural by Maria Fernanda Cardoso, spans the length of one wall of a 36-storey residential tower in the centre of Sydney. Standing 11 storeys high and covering 335 square metres, the mural is believed to be the largest public artwork by an Australian artist in the Sydney CBD.

The artist was commissioned by United Development Sydney for the newly completed Castle Residences development at 116 Bathurst Street. The project was designed by Candalepas Associates and realised by Hutchinson Builders.  Maria Fernanda Cardoso worked closely with the architect, Angelo Candalepas, since the inception of the project in 2014, and developed the work with public art curator Amanda Sharrad.

Maria Fernanda Cardosos’s design—concentric circles and spirals like ripples on a pond, also the silky thread of a spider web—reflects the broad direction of her creative career. The artist is fascinated by the natural geometry of the world, and this work has allowed her to magnify the sort of details that remain hidden from sight.

Image: Ripples and Droplets, by Maria Fernanda Cardoso, at Castlereagh Residencies, 116 Bathurst Street Sydney. Photo: Jillian Nalty

The Powerhouse has today unveiled a new large-scale public installation as part of the Powerhouse Architecture Commission series. Now in its third year, the Commission provides emerging Australian architects with an opportunity to design and build innovative projects responding to the museum site and community. The 2022 commission, Cadeau is a moveable, modular installation designed by Newcastle-based studio Curious Practice, founded by University of Newcastle graduates Warren Haasnoot and Greg Lee. Cadeau was created in collaboration with design and engineering firm Arup and Australian Sustainable Hardwoods (ASH).

“Cadeau takes domestic architectural elements and plays with their scale; exaggerating and fusing components to create a new, shared narrative between site, installation and those who visit it. This process of distortion produces an ensemble of habitable, ready-made ‘furniture’ used to define the central courtyard gathering and meeting place. The collection of individual pieces creates a verandah space that visitors are encouraged to explore and engage with. The installation also has the ability to adapt and change for specific events or future site conditions” – Curious Practice founders Warren Haasnoot and Greg Lee.

Image: Cadeau by Curious Practice. Photo by Zan Wimberley

Powerhouse has today launched 100 Climate Conversations. 100 conversations with 100 of the nation’s leading climate innovators delivered over 100 weeks will connect audiences with the innovation and action that is being taken in Australia to address the climate crisis. Upon its completion, the project will become part of the museum’s collection, providing an important archive of this pivotal moment in history. New episodes of a 100 Climate Conversations podcast, produced in collaboration with audio partner Spotify, will be released weekly.

What if we told you that there is hope buried beneath the never-ending news cycle of the climate-change catastrophe? From regional farmers sequestering soil carbon, Traditional Owners managing Country through cultural burning, architects building carbon-neutral homes to entrepreneurs leading the world’s most ambitious renewable energy projects, each conversation presents an inspired narrative of invention, community and resilience. Recorded in a former coal-burner, 100 Climate Conversations looks away from an architectural artefact towards the innovations of the present and to the people committed to preserving the world as we know it.

Live conversations, hosted by some of Australia’s most respected journalists, will be recorded in a custom-built recording studio within the Powerhouse at 10am each Friday until December 2023, with free registration open to the public. The exhibition, which will be the museum’s first to be certified carbon-neutral, was designed by Elizabeth Gadsby and Hugh O’Connor, with AV Content Creative Direction by Mike Daly. Curated by Catherine Polcz, the program takes inspiration from real world climate solutions and connects audiences with leading climate innovators. Recordings of all 100 conversations will be incorporated into the exhibition as it continuously evolves over two years.

Image: Zan Wimberley

Bundanon’s new world-class Art Museum and Bridge for Creative Learning will officially be opened on Saturday 19 March, following a soft launch on in January 2022. Since opening to the public, Bundanon has welcomed over 4,500 visitors through the new Art Museum.

The build has been supported by a $22.5 million investment from the Australian Government, $10.3 million from the NSW Government and philanthropic support. The $34 million project will drive visitation and cultural tourism to the Shoalhaven region.

The Biennale of Sydney and Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain will present a site-specific version of The Great Animal Orchestra will be projected on the sails of the Sydney Opera House over three nights from 9 – 11 March, marking the countdown to the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, titled rīvus, opening to the public on 12 March 2022.

The Great Animal Orchestra is a mesmerising audio-visual experience of animal sounds recorded in natural habitats around the world – many of which are now extinct – by American pioneer soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause, in collaboration with London-based collective United Visual Artists. Created at the initiative of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, the environmentally focused immersive installation will make its Australian premiere at the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, presented at the Stargazer Lawn, Barangaroo for the duration of the three-month exhibition from 12 March to 13 June 2022.

Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay Arts Precinct will officially open its doors to the public in March, following the completion of major construction works. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, the revitalised heritage precinct features world-class cultural facilities and is the new home to some of the nation’s leading performing arts companies.

Spanning Wharf 4/5 and Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay Arts Precinct is home to nine resident companies: Australian Chamber Orchestra; Australian Theatre for Young People; Bangarra Dance Theatre; Bell Shakespeare; Gondwana Choirs; Sydney Dance Company; Sydney Philharmonia Choirs; Sydney Theatre Company; and The Song Company. It is also a key venue of the 23rd Biennale of Sydney in 2022.

Heide Museum of Modern Art has unveiled two exhibitions: a major thematic retrospective of renowned Australian modernist Sidney Nolan and a new moving image work by Dean Cross in response to Nolan titled Sometimes I Miss The Applause.

Dean Cross’s work features the artist himself, and by association First Nations perspectives into the mythologies that Nolan set out to re-examine. The exhibitions were originally due to coincide with the museum’s 40th anniversary in late 2021.

Heide Senior Curator Melissa Keys said, “This new commission continues his personal fascination with Sidney Nolan’s artistic practice, legacy and life. Sometimes I Miss The Applause explores Heide simultaneously as a site of Australian modernity and millennia of First Nations cultural practice and continuing history. The work confronts and explores the legacy of modernism, shifting perspective from dominant cultural and social histories, offering audiences a timely and fresh celebration, critique and rebalancing take on Nolan’s contribution as a pivotal figure in visual culture and national identity.”

To mark its official opening weekend on 5 March, Bundanon will present First Peoples-led festival, IMPULSE, and will include a program of live music, workshops, talks and artist activations.

The IMPULSE Festival is a community celebration of the stories of this unique place, old and new. On stage, see Miiesha, Nooky, Kee’ahn, Djinama Yilaga Choir, Kyarna Rose & Matty Walker, The Drifting Doolagahls and Ngaran Ngaran Dancers. Workshops and talks will be presented by Nooky, Uncle Steve Russell, Aunty Julie Freeman and Clive Freeman and Gadhungal Murring. The Festival’s Creative Producers are Uncle Richard Scott-Moore and Candice Scott-Moore, with support from Maddison Wellington and Rebecca Moore.

Culture Vault has released a new series of NFTs by Romance Was Born, The Injury and Pan & The Dream. The new works represent Culture Vault’s expansion into the fashion realm after its first foray into both art and music earlier this year, with food, dance and generative art projects on the near horizon.

Fashion industry luminaries Romance Was Born have joined forces with master creative Ribal Hosn on an inaugural NFT collection entitled A Certain Romance. Acclaimed fashion label Injury has collaborated with Real Parent to join forces to create Extended Dreams Vol 1. NY-based print magazine Pan and the Dream is an annual print publication that presents images and words that show how art, beauty and dress can combine to provide new vistas at a moment in history when utopias seem more necessary than ever.

Image: ‘A Certain Romance’ by Romance Was Born X Ribal Hosn

A new independent touring organisation, Music in the Regions has been established to connect classical musicians with regional audiences hungry for rich cultural experiences. Its first program, announced today, spans hundreds of kilometres and features a delightfully wide range of venues across the state.  From a railway precinct in Temora to a courthouse in Gunning, the stage is set for a series of inspiring performances across NSW as Music in the Regions unveils its inaugural program of events.

Musicians and audiences will come together in a variety of settings, from the Gunning Courthouse and Temora railway to the National Theatre in Braidwood and the Southern Cross Cinema in Young. And in a model that will be repeated in future programs across NSW, the musicians involved in 2022 will return to these same communities every year for the next three years. This will help strengthen relationships with audiences, extend opportunities for local artists and open the door for other musicians by establishing new touring routes throughout the state.

This first series of performances will be led by Acacia Quartet, one of Australia’s most dynamic, versatile musical ensembles. The quartet will also take part in workshops and professional development sessions to stimulate regional creativity and leave a legacy that endures for years to come.

Currently ensemble in residence at the Orange Regional Conservatorium, Acacia Quartet will present a program that combines work by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Alexander Borodin along with the sought-after young Australian composer Alice Chance.

Culture Vault – a new curated platform and creative agency that presents and sells high-quality NFTs and helps artists and cultural brands navigate the blockchain – officially launches its web3 platform today, featuring an initial instalment of interactive works by eight international and Australian artists. The Culture Vault platform (Culturevault.com) is purpose-built to bridge the gap between the traditional art world and the crypto-community consists of a curated platform and creative agency, offering a one-stop-shop for both first-time NFT-buyers and seasoned digital art collectors to acquire a curated selection of premium NFTs by some of the world’s leading artists.

The inaugural artist works released today are by Reko Rennie, Shantell Martin, Serwah Attafua, Stephen Ormandy, The Richard Bernstein Fallen Fruit, Fearless Prophet and The Huxleys.   In the coming month exclusive new works will be added to Culture Vault by Romance Was Born, The Injury, Adam Briggs, Bianca Beers, Mona Chalabi, Dan Hong, Thea Anamara Perkins, Sebastian Leon, Dylan Mooney and more. These NFTs will be released in advance of Culture Vault’s inaugural physical-meets-digital exhibition The Future is Phygital, being presented at Sydney’s Verona Studios in Paddington from 18 March until 20 March 2022.

The Biennale of Sydney announced that it will present over 330 artworks by 89 participants and 400 events as part of the 2022 edition, open to the public from 12 March to 13 June 2022.

The 23rd Biennale of Sydney, titled rīvus, meaning ‘stream’ in Latin, will feature new work and commissions responding to water ecology and relationships with the natural world. Audiences will experience large-scale immersive installations, site specific projects and living works by international participants including Kiki Smith, Marguerite Humeau, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, John Gerrard, Jumana Emil Abboud and Ackroyd & Harvey alongside Australian participants such as Badger Bates, Clare Milledge, Julie Gough and D Harding. The list of participants extends beyond the realm of the visual arts and includes bodies of water and their custodians around the world including Australia, Bangladesh and Ecuador.

Image: John Gerrard, Leaf Work (Derrigimlagh), 2020. Installation view for Galway International Arts Festival. Commissioned by Galway International Arts Festival for Galway 2020, European Capital of Culture. Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery. Copyright © John Gerrard. Photograph: Ross Kavanagh

The Biennale of Sydney and Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain announced the Australian premiere of The Great Animal Orchestra.

The environmentally focused work by American pioneer soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause and London-based collective United Visual Artists will be presented free of charge at the Stargazer Lawn, Barangaroo for the duration of the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, titled rīvus, from 12 March to 13 June 2022. Bookings are now open for timed ticketed entry to the immersive artwork.

A collision of culture and nature, The Great Animal Orchestra will take visitors out of city life and into tropical grasslands, savannas and Arctic tundra for an ‘otherworldly encounter’ with a soundscape of 15,000 animal species recorded over the last 50 years. After working with musicians like The Doors and creating effects for film scores including Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Bernie Krause turned his back on studio work and headed outdoors to focus on field recording.

Krause’s unparalleled research is a rare insight into the unseen world of animals. It reveals the beauty and the intricacy of animal vocalisations, which are now in danger of being silenced by human activity. Through his recording, Krause implores us to start listening before hush descends on the ‘great animal orchestra’. The immersive soundscape comes to life with visualisations, created by United Visual Artists, of each animal’s contributions to the ‘orchestra’ in vulnerable habitats in Africa, North America, the Pacific Ocean and the Amazonas (Amazon River).

Culture Vault – a new curated platform and creative agency that presents and sells high-quality NFTs and helps artists and cultural brands navigate the blockchain – will launch its web3 platform on 3 February 2022 followed by a physical-meets-digital (phygital) exhibition called ‘The Future is Phygital’ presented at Sydney’s Verona Studios in March.

Culture Vault bridges the gap between the traditional art world and the crypto-community. It consists of a curated platform and creative agency, offering a one stop shop for both first-time NFT-buyers and seasoned digital art collectors to acquire a curated selection of premium NFTs from some of the world’s leading artists. Culture Vault’s creative agency works with cultural brands and institutions to create, mint, sell and display their NFTs on chain – helping them to drive revenue, and foster community engagement and connection in new ways.

The platform will include NFTs by artists and creatives  including Reko Rennie, Shantell Martin, Adam Briggs, Romance Was Born, Serwah Attafua, Bianca Beers, Stephen Ormandy, Mona Chalabi, Dan Hong, The Richard Bernstein Estate, Thea Anamara Perkins, Sebastian Leon, Fallen Fruit, Dylan Mooney, and The Huxleys.

Carriageworks announced their first confirmed projects within a strong 2022 program to be presented across the Redfern-based multi-arts precinct, spanning dance, music, theatre and visual arts with a focus on First Nations and female-led programming. The program, with further highlights to be announced in the coming months, includes new solo exhibitions by Karla Dickens, Mel O’Callaghan, Thea Anamara Perkins; a world premiere performance by interdisciplinary artist Kaz Therese and a focused program celebrating the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the National Black Theatre and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

During the first half of 2022, a significant program of repair, maintenance, and upgrade of the unique heritage Carriageworks building will be undertaken by Create Infrastructure and Public Works NSW. Works will improve technology and sustainability of lighting systems, provisions for events, the replacement of theatre floors and general upgrade work to the fabric of the building, improving the Carriageworks experience for artists and audiences alike. These important improvements to the site will see Carriageworks closed to the public from February through until 29 April 2022, with the exception of Carriageworks Farmers Markets which will continue to operate every Saturday.

Bundanon will open the doors publicly to its new Art Museum and Bridge for Creative Learning from Saturday 29 January 2022, with an official ceremony and festival of events being held on Saturday 5 March 2022, including live music and performance. Bundanon will deliver three exhibition seasons annually, with a dramatically expanded range of on-site events including tailored learning and artistic residency programs.

Embedded within the landscape, the new 500m2 Bundanon Art Museum, designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects will present a year-round program of exhibitions of modern, contemporary, and First Nations art, as well as new commissions. It includes a state-of-the-art storage facility that will house and protect Bundanon’s extensive $46.5 million collection of some 4,000 items.

Anna Schwartz Gallery will open on 2nd February 2022 with a group exhibition structured as a series of large-scale solo video installations that will evolve over time until 7 May 2022. The exhibition will feature the work of leading video artists including Alberta Whittle, Cyprien Gaillard, Sarah Morris, Haris Epaminonda, Yael Bartana, James Nguyen & Victoria Pham and Hiwa K.

Peripheral Vision will inaugurate video works in Australia that, collectively, provide a contemporary view of the world from a variety of perspectives. Curated by Lewis Gilbert, creative director at A Vibe Called Tech, and Tania Doropoulos, the selection of works was influenced by the last occasions they were physically able to view art together, and their subsequent and ongoing digital/virtual exchange and dialogue since borders closed. An exchange that was able to be maintained through video, which has become a primary medium for us to engage new work and its ideas.

Image caption: Alberta Whittle, HOLDING THE LINE (June 2020), 2020, 2K and HD video, mobile phone footage 13 minutes.

Courtesy the artist & Copperfield

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra will collaborate with Circa Contemporary Circus for the vibrant Italian Baroque with Circa, featuring a special guest performance by Italian baritone Renato Dolcini. A tour through the music of four Italian cities and their multi-layered pasts, the concert series will open at City Recital Hall on 19 – 27 January 2022.

The concerts mark the Brandenburg’s fourth collaboration with internationally acclaimed contemporary circus company Circa. Daring new choreography from circus visionary Yaron Lifschitz combines musicians and acrobats in a vibrant performance of a pasticcio by Paul Dyer with music by Vivaldi, Falconieri, Caccini and Corelli.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s largest multi-arts precincts, has today unveiled a new large-scale wall assemblage titled Return to Sender by acclaimed Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens. Installed in the Carriageworks public space and presented free to the public until 30 January 2022, the installation reworks found postcards picturing First Nations people from the turn of last century with contemporary representations of First Nations Australians.

In a show of pride and defiance, these racist postcards are stamped for return to their sender. Dickens rescales the postcards and inserts two defiant contemporary portraits of First Australians into the scene. Printed on industrial tarpaulin, these collaged images are framed with domestic detritus, from rusted corrugated iron to unhoused front fences and decapitated letter boxes, sealing the installation with a 200-kilogram prison door.

The Powerhouse today announced that, for the first time in the museum’s 141 year history, it will stage a runway show as part of Afterpay Australian Fashion Week (AAFW) 2022 in collaboration with acclaimed Australian fashion label Iordanes Spyridon Gogos. As one of the official offsite iconic Sydney show locations, the show on Thursday 12 May 2022 will be staged inside the epic Powerhouse Ultimo workshop. The show aligns with Powerhouse Ultimo’s vision to be Australia’s leading centre for fashion.

For the AAFW 2022 runway presentation, ISG will expand their collaborative approach, directly engaging with the museum’s narrative and multidisciplinary collection. The label will join forces with more than 50 individuals and institutions working across a range of disciplines, extending beyond fashion pioneers to include architects, musicians, florists, students and more.

The Powerhouse has unveiled its major summer exhibition, Five Hundred Arhats of Changnyeongsa Temple.

The arhats are ancient stone figures discovered in 2001-02 among the ruins of the Changnyeongsa Temple in South Korea’s Gangwon-do Province, believed to have been built during Goryeo dynasty (918-1392) and destroyed in mid Joseon dynasty (1392-1879). The stone statues depict ‘arhats’ – ‘nahan’ in Korean – known in Buddhism as one who has attained enlightenment. The arhats represent five hundred disciples of the Buddha who gathered to compile his words into scriptures after the Buddha entered nirvana. Although they have attained enlightenment, they defer entering nirvana themselves and remain in their human state in order to teach and save sentient beings.

The stone arhats have been carefully restored by Chuncheon National Museum of Korea and were first presented at the Museum in 2018, followed by National Museum of Korea in 2019, becoming Korea’s most popular exhibition that year.

The multi-faceted exhibition presents 50 stone arhats and one Buddha in an immersive environment designed by Korean artist Kim Seung Young, and marks the first time the arhats have been seen outside Korea.

Heide Museum of Modern Art is delighted to have opened the much-anticipated Healing Garden within their museum grounds, on Tuesday 23 November 2021. Inspired by Heide founder Sunday Reed’s profound love for her garden and designed by leading landscape architecture studio Openwork, the Healing Garden draws on the curative properties of plants and the ever-growing body of knowledge that positions gardens as a powerful tool for connecting communities, reducing social isolation and providing positive, life-affirming experiences.

The garden has been designed to facilitate healing and restoration for vulnerable communities and will be a vital space for the broader community as we navigate the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Circular in design, the garden draws on the concept of proxemics, which considers the intuitive spatial distances between people in personal and public spaces.

Australia’s newest art museum, Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) officially opens its doors to the public on Saturday 20 November 2021 with nine free exhibitions, four new artwork commissions, and presenting more than 200 artists in a celebration of the area’s rich and diverse culture, people and landscape. Designed by acclaimed Australian architecture firm Denton Corker Marshall and spanning five floors, the new $50 million art museum houses over 4,000 artworks, with over 200 artists represented and 160 Indigenous and First Nations artworks on display, including its nationally recognised ceramics collection and the nation’s most significant collection of South-East Australian Aboriginal art.

Acting as a community and arts and cultural hub for the Greater Shepparton region, the new SAM building houses the Shepparton Art Museum; Shepparton Visitors’ Information Centre; Kaiela Arts, Shepparton’s Aboriginal community arts centre; an outdoor amphitheatre and Art Hill; and cafe and 150-person event space and terrace, all within a 5,300m2 cubic building. Situated in regional Victoria around two hours’ drive north from Melbourne, SAM is located on the lands of the Yorta Yorta peoples, on the shore of Victoria Park Lake, Shepparton.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s largest multi-arts precincts today announced a dynamic, First Nations-led program to be presented as part of Sydney Festival 2022. The program includes a new large-scale wall assemblage by acclaimed Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens installed in the Carriageworks public space (6-30 January 2022) and the world premiere of a contemporary dance performance by resident company and Australia’s leading Indigenous intercultural dance company Marrugeku (27-29 January 2022). Other headline highlights include major new installations by leading Australian artists Dean Cross and Cherine Fahd.

Northern Beaches Council has today unveiled the inaugural exhibition of the Environmental Art and Design Prize. The exhibition of the 226 finalist works is presented across three arts venues on the Northern Beaches at Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Curl Curl Creative Space, and Mona Vale Pop Up Gallery, from 12 November until 12 December 2021, alongside a public program of talks with finalist artists.
Prize winners will be announced on Thursday 25 November by a judging panel comprised of internationally renowned Australian artist Euan Macleod; artist, designer, and curator Liane Rossler; and CEO and Artistic Director of the Australian Design Centre, Lisa Cahill. The Prize is an inclusive and diverse exhibition that celebrates the vibrancy of the arts and design community within and beyond the Northern Beaches.

Explore Sydney Contemporary, the digital edition of Australasia’s premier art fair, Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with MA Financial Group, has launched featuring approximately 1,700 artworks on a custom dynamic digital platform.

The ten day online fair runs until 21 November and showcases 80+ galleries presenting over 500 artists as well as a program including a series of First Nations artist video portraits, and a keynote panel discussion titled After Shocks: Art, Disruption and Provocation. New works will be released to the platform midway, on 17 November. Artists presenting work on the platform include Dr Christian Thompson AO, whose work titled ‘Double Happiness’, 2021, is pictured here, courtesy the artist and Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin.

A major new public artwork inspired by the natural movement of water will be installed in Sydney’s CBD this summer by one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Ripples and Droplets, a mural by Maria Fernanda Cardoso, spans the length of one wall of a 36-storey residential tower in the centre of Sydney. Standing 11 stories high and covering 335 square metres, the mural is believed to be the largest public artwork by an Australian artist in the Sydney CBD.
Commissioned by United Development Sydney as part of the Castle Residences mixed development at 116 Bathurst Street by Candalepas Associates, which is scheduled for completion by Hutchinson Builders in early 2022.  Maria Fernanda Cardoso has worked closely with the architect, Angelo Candalepas, since the inception of the project in 2014, and developed the work with public art curator Amanda Sharrad. While the brief has evolved over time, the result is consistent with many of the themes that have guided her practice for decades.

Sydney’s newest public art gallery, Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf, opens its doors to the public for the first time on Thursday 4 November 2021. The historical 122-year-old building, owned by Woollahra Council, is one of the few surviving mid-19th century harbour foreshore grand mansions and has been transformed into a new gallery, showcasing a year-round program of contemporary art led by Gallery Coordinator Sebastian Goldspink. Overlooking Sydney Harbour in Double Bay and spanning two levels, the Gallery will act as a community hub at the heart of a new cultural precinct, including the 1863 Council Chambers, the picturesque Blackburn Gardens, Murray Rose Pool and Redleaf Beach.

The Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf launches its artistic program with the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize’s 20th anniversary exhibition. To mark the unveiling, Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize has today announced Rhonda Sharpe and her work Desert Woman with Mustache, Cooloman and Pretty Clothes as the winner of the main acquisitive award, increased this year to $25,000. Sydney-artist Mechelle Bounpraseuth was awarded the Special Commendation, the 2021 Mayor’s Award has been awarded to Kate Coyne and second time finalist Michael Harrell has been Highly Commended.

The Powerhouse has announced an extraordinary $30 million investment in the future of Powerhouse Parramatta by The Walker Family Foundation and Western Sydney University.

In one of the largest donations ever to an Australian cultural institution, The Walker Family Foundation has committed $20 million to the Lang Walker Family Academy and associated programs, a commitment that will fund access to world-class immersive STEM education experiences at the museum for over 10,000 high school students from Western Sydney and regional NSW every year – including overnight stays at the museum for many of these students. The Lang Walker Family Academy programs will commence in 2022 in Western Sydney with in-school STEM education programming being planned for schools in the Blacktown, Campbelltown, Liverpool, Bankstown, Penrith and Parramatta LGAs.

“There are hundreds of thousands of Western Sydney and regional students who don’t receive the same exposure to arts and education programs that young people in other areas do. The Lang Walker Family Academy will deliver experiences for these young people that will not only spark their creativity but pave the way to genuine STEM careers in the future,” said Powerhouse Chief Executive Lisa Havilah.

Australasia’s premier art fair, Sydney Contemporary presents Explore Sydney Contemporary, in partnership with MA Financial Group, a digital edition of the Fair taking place from 11-21 November 2021. Providing crucial support for the arts community, the Fair will host 80+ galleries presenting over 400 artists and approximately 1,700 artworks on a custom dynamic digital platform, with a commissioned artist animation and a new series of First Nations artist video portraits.

Visitors to the site will be greeted by a specially commissioned animation by internationally acclaimed Melbourne-based artist David Booth, who will also present work with Blackartprojects (Melbourne) and Hugo Michell Gallery (Adelaide). Booth’s practice shifts between studio-based works, site specific installations, commissioned murals and commercial design. His work has been exhibited and acquired by several leading institutions, including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Parliament House Art Collection.

UNTOLD is a new series of First Nations artist video portraits created for Explore Sydney Contemporary that brings to life the language, Country and stories of First Nations artists represented in the online fair. Giving a window into the artists’ practice, culture and ideas as they share their work in their own voice, the series is presented in collaboration with Agency Projects, and funded by Copyright Agency. Featuring artists represented by galleries in the fair including Djerrkngu Yunupingu, Robert Fielding, Jenna Lee, Regina Pilawuk Wilson, amongst others, UNTOLD will provide new insights and inspire audiences.

Image: Polly Borland, Untitled (purple, red, blackand orange), 2018, lenticular print, 76 x50.5 x 3.5 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf

Carriageworks, Australia’s largest and most significant contemporary multi-arts precinct, will reopen to the public on Wednesday 3 November 2021, with award-winning Kamilaroi/ Gamilaraay artist Dennis Golding’s exhibition The Future is Here. Later in the month, visitors will be offered free access to visual art exhibitions by leading Australian artists, with the unveiling of a major site-specific work by celebrated Worimi artist Dean Cross, a new video installation by acclaimed photographer and video artist Cherine Fahd commissioned and presented in partnership with Performance Space, and the return of the SOUTHEAST Aboriginal Arts Markets online. Carriageworks will also welcome back Sydney Dance Company’s New Breed, supported by The Balnaves Foundation, which showcases bold new work by emerging choreographers.

Image: Artist Dennis Golding at Carriageworks. Image: Zan Wimberley. Courtesy Carriageworks.

Ngununggula, the Southern Highlands’ first regional art gallery, will open to the public on 12 October 2021, following a delay due to the COVID-19 lockdown in NSW. The Gallery will open with two inaugural exhibitions by celebrated Australian artists Tamara Dean and Megan Cope. Meaning “belonging” in the traditional language of the Gundungurra First Nation People, Ngununggula is located in what was the old dairy at Retford Park, which has received a heritage-sensitive redesign undertaken by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and constructed by Richard Crookes Constructions, surrounded by a landscaped garden created by Jane Irwin.

Featuring four gallery spaces spanning the 712m2 footprint of the building, including an Entry Pavilion and an education space, Ngununggula will feature a program that represents the region and beyond through significant exhibitions, artist-led projects, live events, workshops, artist talks and public programs. Creating engaging ways for the local community to connect with artists and their ideas will be at the core of Ngununggula’s philosophy.

Image: Zan Wimberley

The Powerhouse will present Five Hundred Arhats of Changnyeongsa Temple, as its major summer exhibition, opening 2 December 2021. The arhats are ancient stone figures discovered in 2001-02 among the ruins of the Changnyeongsa Temple in South Korea’s Gangwon-do Province, believed to have been built during Goryeo dynasty (918-1392) and destroyed in mid Joseon dynasty (1392-1879). The stone statues depict ‘arhats’ – ‘nahan’ in Korean – known in Buddhism as one who has attained enlightenment. The arhats represent five hundred disciples of the Buddha who gathered to compile his words into scriptures after the Buddha entered nirvana. Although they have attained enlightenment, they defer entering nirvana themselves and remain in their human state in order to teach and save sentient beings.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s largest multi-arts precincts, has announced the appointment of Narangga and Kaurna man Jacob Boehme as Director, First Nations Programs.

Carriageworks CEO Blair French said: “We are delighted to welcome Jacob as our Director, First Nations Programs, a new role within Carriageworks that is focused on leading the development of First Nations artistic and cultural strategies. Jacob brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to this role, which he will draw upon to develop and deliver programs of First Nations work across multiple artforms as well as fostering professional and community relationships.”

A graduate of NAISDA and of the Victorian College of the Arts and an alumni of the British Council and Australia Council ACCELERATE Indigenous Leaders Program, Jacob has more than 20 years’ experience as a performer, choreographer, writer, producer and artistic director, as well as a long history of teaching in different contexts, and is currently within the cultural leadership program at NIDA. He was the founding Creative Director of Yirramboi Festival, City of Melbourne 2016-2019 and is currently artistic director for the Wild Dog project through Country Arts SA and Art Gallery of South Australia premiering at the upcoming Tarnanthi Festival. Jacob’s solo work Blood on the Dance Floor received the 2017 Green Room Award Best Independent Production and he was recipient of the 2018 Australia Council for the Arts Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Fellowship.

Jacob Boehme said: “I am honored to be joining the team at Carriageworks as Director, First Nations Programs. As the arts and cultural sector; its artists and organisations navigate this time of transition and change, it is as much an exciting opportunity as it is challenging to reimagine what our futures might look like. I look forward to working alongside my communities, Elders and colleagues to develop and deliver a new era of First Nations arts and cultural programs at Carriageworks.”

Sydney’s newest public art gallery, Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf will open to the public on Thursday 4 November 2021, housed within the architecturally reworked 122-year-old St Brigid’s building overlooking Sydney Harbour in Double Bay. The gallery’s revised opening date follows the NSW Government’s announcement that museums and galleries will be permitted to reopen after the state passes the 70 per cent double vaccination target, and will comply with public health requirements.

Launching with an inaugural exhibition featuring the finalists of the 20th Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf will be the heart of a new cultural precinct, including the Council Chambers built in 1863, the picturesque Blackburn Gardens, Murray Rose Pool, Redleaf Beach and kiosk, presenting a year-round program of contemporary art exhibitions, artist residencies and public programs.

The winner of the 20th Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize will be announced on Wednesday 3 November 2021, at a Covid-safe unveiling of the new gallery and virtual presentation. From Thursday 4 November, the Prize’s finalist exhibition will feature 52 works – each measuring up to 80cm in any dimension – by artists from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom alongside the Council’s collection of 19 previous winning works from the Prize.

Image: St Brigid’s building pre-renovation, James Horan, 2019

A new landmark cultural destination, Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) designed by internationally renowned architects Denton Corker Marshall will open to the public on 20 November 2021. The design was unanimously selected from an architectural competition in 2017 and endorsed by Greater Shepparton City Council.

Designed to act as a ‘live’ building where every surface presents an opportunity for display, event or installation, the new art museum is characterised by simplicity and clarity of materials and form and includes an art museum housing over 4,000 artworks, four main gallery spaces including a dedicated Kids Space and Workshops; Visitors’ Information Centre; Kaiela Arts Aboriginal community arts centre; an outdoor amphitheatre and Art Hill; and cafe and 150-person event space and terrace, all within an 5,300m2 cubic building.

Australasia’s premier art fair, Sydney Contemporary, has announced it will present a digital edition of 2021 Fair from 11 – 21 November due to the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the Covid-19 restrictions. Providing crucial support for the arts community, Explore Sydney Contemporary will feature 1,800 artworks by more than 450 artists hailing from countries including Australia, China, England, France, Ghana, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa and Thailand, alongside a digital public program to be announced in the coming weeks.

Sydney Contemporary Founder Tim Etchells said: “When rescheduling the physical Fair to the November 2021 dates, we genuinely believed that we could run the Fair as we had always planned but regrettably, as the covid pandemic continues to impact Australia, the Sydney Contemporary team believes that a digital delivery is the safest way for us to support artists and the broader arts community at this time.”

Image: Tomislav Nikolic “To explain how it feels”, 2021 at Fox Jensen Gallery.

Sydney Design Week 2021, presented by the Powerhouse Museum, goes digital with a two-day Design Summit on the 16–17 September 2021. A program of panel discussions and talks will centre on the theme Hyperconnectivity, exploring the ties that bind us today. Curated by writer, editor and Creative Director Stephen Todd, the program connects local and international designers and global design centres including Lindsey Adelman, Ronan Bouroullec, Design Museum London, David Flack, Yasmine Ghoniem, Adam Markovitz, Jennifer McMaster, M+ Museum featuring Tina Pang and Gary Chang, Marc Newson, Ivana Taylor and Jonathan Zawada.

The Sydney Fringe has announced The Essence of Fringe, a digital program that will be presented from 10 September – 1 October 2021 to support and create new opportunities for artists in the wake of the cancellation of the 2021 Festival. The program will feature nine highlight music and theatre events from the planned 2021 physical program, three Australian premieres by award-winning American performance artist Brian Feldman and two works by acclaimed Australian artist Jon Bennett, alongside a masterclass program of seminars and workshops focused on artist career development.

For more detail and to buy tickets visit the Sydney Fringe website HERE.

Image: Symphonie Fantastique by Little Eggs. Courtesy Sydney Fringe.

Head On Photo Festival, Australia’s leading annual photography event, today announced five exhibitions that will headline the 2021 Festival, featuring the work of renowned international and Australian photographers presented across multiple outdoor venues from 19 – 28 November.

After a successful digital edition in 2020, the Festival returns this year with a physical footprint that will once again enliven Sydney’s Eastern suburbs with a program of more than 50 international and local photographic exhibitions for industry professionals, art lovers and the general public. Venue highlights include Paddington Reservoir Gardens and the popular Bondi Beach Promenade installation that will line the beachfront with 20 exhibitions by international and Australian photographers exploring stories, places and cultures from around the world.

The 12th edition of the Festival will present a diverse program of photographic exhibitions with highlights including the Australian premiere of a new exhibition by internationally acclaimed photographer Roger Ballen and American photographer Neil Kramer’s comedy series about COVID-19 life in Queens, Australian photographer Bridgette Gower’s study of bugs as revellers in a back garden dance floor, and the Australian premiere of international collective The Everyday Project’s group exhibition highlighting the vital stories of women migrants around the world.

IMAGE: Nichole Sobecki, The Everyday Projects, Courtesy of Head On Photo Festival.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s largest contemporary multi-arts centres, will present the world premiere of Invocation Trilogy, a major new video work by award-winning Polish Australian artist and filmmaker Kuba Dorabialski reflecting on language, politics and cultural memory; online for free from 18 August – 10 October 2021.

Conceived through the lens of his biographical ties to Eastern Europe and filmed and performed in Dorabialski’s own fictional Slavic language—designed to be partly intelligible to most Slavic language speakers—Invocation Trilogy investigates what it means to explore memories, real and distorted, as a migrant who now lives in Australia. Through its uneasy mix of brooding earnestness and absurdist comedy, Dorabialski poses the grand and preposterous question: What is this thing we call Eastern Europe?

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra will perform with German Baroque violinist Jonas Zschenderlein in an exclusive digital concert which will premiere on Brandenburg One on 28 August.

Jonas Zschenderlein was due to perform with Australian Brandenburg Orchestra in Melbourne and Sydney last month, for their third concert series Bach’s Universe. The concerts would have marked Zschenderlein’s Australian debut and his first live concert season in over a year. However, the current lockdowns and restrictions in place due to COVID-19 meant the physical concerts were no longer able to take place and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra pivoted to filming a cinematic concert film for their innovative digital streaming platform Brandenburg One. Shot in an empty City Recital Hall in July, Bach’s Universe will see the young German Baroque violinist perform alongside the Brandenburg musicians in a new production directed by Sydney-based director and writer Stef Smith.

A celebration of JS Bach, the program features an impassioned performance by Zschenderlein of Bach’s Violin Concerto in E major in his Australian debut alongside intimate instrumental works and immersive orchestral offerings. Bach’s Universe includes Bach’s timeless Air from the Orchestral Suite No. 3 and Prelude in E minor, BWV 855 from the first book of The Well Tempered Clavier.

Photo: Keith Saunders

Ngununggula, the Southern Highlands’ first regional art gallery, has announced its inaugural exhibition program. Meaning “belonging” in the traditional language of the Gundungurra First Nation People, Ngununggula will open to the public on 25 September in what was the old dairy at Retford Park. Featuring a heritage-sensitive gallery design undertaken by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and constructed by Richard Crookes Constructions. Ngununggula will be surrounded by a landscaped garden created by Jane Irwin and a new café, Hearth in partnership with Moonacres Kitchen.

Under the leadership of Director Megan Monte, the new Gallery will capture the cultural vibrancy of the region through a dynamic curatorial program and community-minded approach. With a focus on visual arts and education, the program will represent the region and beyond through significant exhibitions, artist-led projects, live events, workshops, artist talks and public programs. Creating engaging ways for the local community to connect with artists and their ideas will be at the core of Ngununggula’s philosophy.

The opening exhibition will feature new work by Tamara Dean alongside a major new commissioned installation by Megan Cope.

Image: The Old Dairy, Retford Park, Photo Ashley Mackevicius

Australia’s first permanent regional multimedia arts pavilion, the Multi-Arts Pavilion mima – dubbed MAP mima – is set to open to the public with 10 new commissions by Australian artists including Hiromi Tango, whose work is pictured on the exterior of the pavilion. Each new commission explores the unique history, culture and landscape of the region, and celebrates Lake Macquarie as a cultural hub for contemporary art and performance. Designed as a flexible, high-tech multi-arts platform, the MAP mima will host a year-round dedicated program of cultural events including national and international contemporary art installations, digital art screenings, live performances and music. Situated an hour’s drive north from Sydney on the shore of Lake Macquarie in Speers Point Park, the architectural pavilion compliments the award-winning Museum of Art and Culture Lake Macquarie and forms part of the Lake Arts Precinct.

The inaugural edition of the Northern Beaches Council’s Environmental Art and Design Prize has selected 228 finalist works which will be presented in an exhibition across three arts venues on the Northern Beaches. Selected from 826 entries, the finalists will be reviewed to determine winning works by the judging panel comprised of internationally renowned artist Euan Macleod; artist, designer and curator Liane Rossler; and CEO and Artistic Director of the Australian Design Centre, Lisa Cahill.

The Prize celebrates contemporary arts practices that are socially engaged, environmentally aware and seek to enrich and contribute to positive change through creative practice. The finalist works have been selected across the categories of Wearable Design, Functional Design, Digital, Works on Paper and Photography, Ceramics and Small Sculpture, Painting, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, and a separate youth category for creatives aged 7 – 18 years old.

Images: Julie Bartholomew, Climate Scrolls, Porcelain with small crystal glass sections, 6 objects each 10cm diameter.

A major exhibition charting studio ceramic practice in Australia over the last 50 years will open at the Powerhouse Museum on 20 August 2021.

Bringing together works from 168 Australian artists, Clay Dynasty will celebrate Australian studio ceramics, as shaped by three generations of makers. The exhibition will present more than 450 works from the Powerhouse collection and will feature 70 new commissions and acquisitions from Australian artists.

Surveying over 50 years of practice, Clay Dynasty will feature works by pioneer potters who profoundly changed the course of Australian studio ceramics in the 1960s. Led by the English potter Bernard Leach’s interest in pre-industrial ceramic traditions of Europe and East Asia, they made uniquely Australian objects by using local materials and responding to the Australian environment.

Alongside the functional tradition, Clay Dynasty will explore the quest for artistic expression. Objects from the 1970s will illustrate the impact of American Funk art movement and popular culture in Australia, while works from the 1980s will reveal how Australian artists explored the vessel tradition through postmodern forms, colours and patterns.

Image: Marea Gazzard, ‘Delos: Naxos’ and ‘Delos: Paros’, stoneware with semi-matt glaze, Paddington, New South Wales, 1972

The Chairman of Bundanon Trust’s Board of Directors, Jennifer Bott AO, announced today the appointment of Rachel Kent as the new CEO of Bundanon Trust after a six-month international search and recruitment process. Rachel will commence on 6 September 2021. She will work with current CEO, Deborah Ely AM, on a full handover in the period leading up to this date. Deborah Ely announced her decision to step down from the role in December 2020.

Rachel Kent is an experienced arts leader, art historian, and head curator with extensive experience working with international museums and cultural institutions as well as extended family connections in the Shoalhaven region. She is currently Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia where she leads the curatorial team, delivering its artistic vision and programs. Rachel is an outstanding advocate for contemporary and First Nations art and for the MCA, nationally and internationally, as well as being highly effective at building philanthropic and government support for the arts.

Rachel Kent Photo credit: Anna Kucera

Canberra-based artist and educator Lucy Irvine has today been announced as the designer-in-residence for the 2021 DESIGN Canberra Festival. Irvine has been commissioned to create a new sculptural installation inspired by this year’s festival theme of transformation to be exhibited during the annual three-week event, presented across the nation’s capital from 8 until 28 November 2021, celebrating Canberra as a global city of design and a living design laboratory.

Now in its eighth year, DESIGN Canberra showcases the city’s thriving design community and in 2021 presents a diverse program of events, exhibitions, talks, tours, activations, markets, collaborations, artists’ studios, and open homes.

Irvine’s commissioned signature artwork, titled ‘The Stills‘, will be presented in a Craft ACT exhibition for the duration of the festival. Irvine will also create a large-scale, site-specific temporary installation at The Cutting next to Lake Burley Griffin, as well as taking part in a workshop, and presenting an artist’s talk about her exhibition.

Image: 2021 DESIGN Canberra signature artwork, The Stills, created by Lucy Irvine. Photo by Lean Timms

Three contemporary experimental art organisations, Liquid Architecture, West Space and Bus Projects are collaborating for a new creative project titled disorganising, that will be based at the recently launched contemporary arts precinct, Collingwood Yards.

Arising from the ongoing context of COVID-19 and a lack of government funding, disorganising was founded as a collaborative project to share knowledge and forge new ways forward for art organisations that would have otherwise been lost.

Disorganising brings together artists in the surrounding neighbourhood to explore new ways of organising and commission new works which will be presented to the public over three days from 29 – 31 July 2021 across the site of Collingwood Yards, in the form of workshops, exhibitions, performance, lectures, readings, music and more.

Anna Schwartz Gallery has announced it will present a monumental new floor work by significant Australian artist Rose Nolan from 11 September – 16 October 2021.

Known for her distinctive reduced palette of red and white, and use of utilitarian materials, Nolan’s latest installation comprises a large carpet and mirrored panels that will occupy the Gallery for the duration of her month-long exhibition. The new solo exhibition, titled Parlour Games, continues Nolan’s exploration of the possibilities of painting, shifting her work from the wall to the floor to inhabit a new space.

Nolan’s practice is known for its investigation of the formal and linguistic qualities of words, directly using language to transform the architectural spaces they inhabit. A recent example is the towering public art work ‘Screen Works – ENOUGH-NOW/EVEN/MORE-SO’, for the Munro Site, Queen Victoria Market Renewal, City of Melbourne, with Six Degrees Architects. Proposed as verbal-visual puzzles, Nolan uses text as material object, derived from the everyday where words are chosen for their visual presence, formal qualities and linguistic content. By making language concrete in this way meaning is allowed to be approached differently. This same approach is applied to the new installation in Parlour Games.

Image: Rose Nolan, Big Words – to keep going breathing helps (circle work), 2017, synthetic polymer paint, hessian, velcro, steel, 425 x 598.6 x 515.5 cm, Photo: Felicity Jenkins, © Rose Nolan. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery.

A striking new commission by City of Sydney’s Art & About by multi-disciplinary artist Ian Strange, sees a derelict terrace house in Sydney’s Surry Hills appear skewered with dozens of customised LED rods. Titled INTERSECTIONS and on view for two weeks until Sunday 4 July, Strange’s artistic intervention of a derelict, heritage Victorian terrace can be viewed on foot or via the light rail on the corner of Marlborough and Devonshire Streets in Surry Hills.

The house is skewered with dozens of customised LED rods, the light beams seemingly piercing the roof and façade, penetrating the interiors with bright white light, as if volts from an unseen superpower are attempting to jolt the building back to life. For INTERSECTIONS, Strange uses light to draw our attention to the Victorian architecture of the Marlborough Street terrace, while emphasising its dilapidated condition and the potential loss of built heritage.

Image: Ian Strange, INTERSECTIONS

A major new cultural exchange between Australia and the United Kingdom (UK) has been announced today, celebrating the diverse and innovative artist communities and cultural sectors of each nation. A collaboration between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, under the patronage of Her Majesty the Queen, the UK/Australia Season is a unique artistic programme of more than 200 live and digital events, marking the largest ever cultural exchange between the two nations. Launching in both countries in September 2021, The Season will strengthen and build cultural connections and will include a diverse programme spanning theatre, film, visual arts, dance, design, architecture, music, literature, higher education and a public engagement programme.

Artists, thought leaders and academics from the UK and Australia will collaborate together to create work, centred on the theme Who Are We Now?. The Season will reflect on our history, explore our current relationship, and imagine our future together.

Image: Ed Myhill, National Dance Company Wales

UTS Gallery and Art Collection have commissioned a major new digital work by Barkindji artist Kent Morris to be presented on the 2021 Broadway Screen. Morris will present his new video work Barkindji Blue Sky – Ancestral Connections on the 12-metre digital screen, which will be unveiled to the public on Tuesday 3 August 2021 as part of Vivid Sydney 2021 and playing exclusively until Monday 16 August 2021. The work will then become part of the permanent rotation for the Broadway Screen.

The commission launch will be marked on Tuesday 3 August with an in-conversation between Barkindji artist Kent Morris, Clothilde Bullen, Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collections and Exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Nici Cumpston, Artistic Director Tarnanthi and Curator Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at Art Gallery of South Australia. The discussion will be moderated by respected ABC journalist Daniel Browning.

Image credit: Kent Morris, Barkindji Blue Sky – Ancestral Connections, 2021

Coinciding with the artist’s 85th year, HOTA, Home of the Arts presents Lyrical Landscapes: The Art of William Robinson, the second major exhibition at HOTA Gallery from 31 July to 3 October 2021. Celebrating one of Australia’s foremost living artists and greatest landscape painters, this exhibition will see Robinson’s entire Creation Series, produced over 16 years, presented together for the first time.

Robinson’s Creation Series is widely considered his master works, the series highlights the artist’s spiritual connection to the natural world and through their symphonic composition, his love of classical music. Curated by former Governor-General and close friend of the artist Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO, Lyrical Landscapes: The Art of William Robinson will feature these monumental multi-panelled other epic landscapes, including HOTA’s own The Rainforest.

Image: William Robinson, The rainforest 1990 (detail), oil on canvas, 188.0 x 492.5 cm, Collection, HOTA Gallery. Acquired through funds from Gold Coast’s business and art-loving community 1991 © Image courtesy the artist and Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane.

The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, presented by Woollahra Council since 2001, has announced 54 emerging and established artists as finalists for the 20th annual Prize and exhibition. The finalist works, by artists from Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Italy, will be presented for the first time in the Woollahra Council’s new purpose-built gallery – the Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf – as its inaugural exhibition, opening to the public on Thursday 19 August 2021.

The 54 finalist artist sculptures – each measuring up to 80cm in any dimension – were selected from a record 844 entries by a judging panel comprised of Director Curatorial and Digital, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Dr Lara Strongman, Art Historian, Curator and Industrial Archaeologist Joanna Capon OAM and celebrated artist and fashion designer Jenny Kee AO.

The exhibition will be presented, free to the public, in the new Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf, located on the former Double Bay Library site at 548 New South Head Road. The Gallery’s vision is to be the cultural heart of Woollahra and support creative talent to flourish. A collaborative space for all to connect with and be enriched by the arts, the Gallery will focus on contemporary art through a yearly exhibition calendar of a range of diverse shows by different artists.

For the full list of finalists see HERE.

Image: Jess Taylor, Nothing EverythingThe heart of all things!

DESIGN Canberra’s annual photography competition has announced its theme for 2021, encouraging professional and amateur photographers to take photos which take a closer look at Canberra’s iconic design and architecture from the 1970s.

The 2021 photo competition invites individuals to submit digital photographs that celebrate the visionary and experimental design that emerged from the nation’s capital in the 1970s. The theme of ‘Design in the 70s’ may capture iconic architecture by Taglietti, Seidler, Boyd, Andrews and Pegrum; Canberra’s co-living medium density experiments;  public art by Bert Flugelman and Margel Hinder; or the refinement of the Y plan in Canberra’s town planning.

The top 100 photos will be printed and exhibited in a signature DESIGN Canberra exhibition at Canberra Contemporary Art Space from 8-28 November 2021.

Bell Shakespeare will revive their popular 2020 production of Hamlet for their third season of 2021. The production, which received rave reviews before closing only one-and-a-half weeks after opening due to the COVID-19 lockdown in Sydney, will see the return of Harriet Gordon-Anderson as Hamlet, opening at the Sydney Opera House (7 August – 4 September), before travelling for the first time to Arts Centre Melbourne (9 – 19 September) and Canberra Theatre Centre (24 September – 2 October).

Directed by Bell Shakespeare Artistic Director Peter Evans, Shakespeare’s seminal revenge tragedy is reimagined for contemporary audiences, transporting them to a wintery Denmark in the 1960s. Inside the glamorous court, a family is torn apart by murder and betrayal. Outside, a country is threatened by Norway. And at the centre of this struggle is a young man’s grief for a murdered father.

Image: Bell Shakespeare’s Hamlet, 2020. Photo: Brett Boardman

The Powerhouse Museum has has announced a transformed investment of $480-$500m by NSW Government into one of Australia’s most revered and loved museums, Powerhouse Ultimo. The renewal will see Powerhouse Ultimo focus on design and fashion, presenting exhibitions that feature the museum’s significant collections, international exclusive exhibitions and programs that support the design and fashion industries. The expansion will deliver renewed and expanded exhibition and public space, connecting the Powerhouse Museum to the City by re-orienting the Museum to the Goods Line and connecting to adjacent precincts.

Powerhouse Chief Executive Lisa Havilah said: “The renewal of our institution will deliver two world-class museums – with a design and fashion focus at Powerhouse Ultimo and our flagship museum focused on science and technology museum, Powerhouse Parramatta.“This visionary investment will see the expansion of our exhibition spaces as well as renewal of our historic exhibition spaces. We will create a vibrant public square beside the Goods Line, and creative industries workspaces that will become home for Australian designers.”

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra will perform with young German Baroque violinist Jonas Zschenderlein for their next concert series Bach’s Universe, taking place at Melbourne Recital Centre (15 – 18 July) and Sydney’s City Recital Hall (21 – 30 July). In this concert celebrating JS Bach, audiences will have the chance to see one of the few international musicians touring in Australia in 2021 as Zschenderlein performs his first live concert season in over a year.

Following the live concerts, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra will also present a digital première of the concert on 28 August on its new digital concert platform Brandenburg One.

Image: Jonas Zschenderlein. Photo by Kazutoshi Hirano.

Carriageworks has announced a major new solo exhibition of work by Clothing Store resident artist Dean Cross to be presented from 5 November 2021 – 30 January 2022. Icarus, my Son is a semi-autobiographical exhibition, presented by Carriageworks in partnership with Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, that takes inspiration from the ancient Greek tragedy of Icarus and Daedalus and examines themes universal to the experience of those in rural and remote communities who seek to expand their horizons. Featuring new video, sculptural and installation works by Cross, Icarus, my Son investigates ideas of home, ambition, cataclysm and loss.

Image: Zan Wimberly

Carriageworks has announced the world premiere of a new dance work by resident company Marrugeku that will be presented from 4 – 7 August 2021. Jurrungu Ngan-ga – meaning Straight Talk in Yawuru- reflects on the disproportion of Indigenous Australians in custody and first-hand descriptions of life inside Australia’s immigration detention centres.

The multimedia theatre production is inspired by perspectives on incarceration shared by Yawuru leader and Senator for Western Australia Patrick Dodson, one of six commissioners and the only non-lawyer who sat on the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. It draws on themes from the acclaimed autobiographical novel No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (2018) by Kurdish-Iranian journalist and filmmaker Behrouz Boochani. The novel, translated by Iranian Australian philosopher and activist Omid Tofighian from thousands of WhatsApp messages written by Boochani on a smuggled phone, is an account of Boochani’s perilous journey to Christmas Island and his subsequent incarceration in an Australian government immigration detention facility on Manus Island.

Image: Bhenji Ra, Emmanuel James Brown, Miranda Wheen, Zachary Lopez, Chandler Connell, Feras Shaheen, Issa el Assaad, Luke Currie-Richardson & Ses Bero in Jurrungu Ngan-ga, Marrugeku. 2021 Photo by Abby Murray.

Anna Schwartz Gallery will present an exhibition featuring new works by celebrated Australian artist and musician Marco Fusinato from 7 August – 16 October 2021.

Marco Fusinato, who has been selected to represent Australia at next year’s 59th Venice Biennale, will unveil his latest series of works for the exhibition titled Experimental Hell. The exhibition will feature large-scale silk screen works on raw aluminium, a newly recorded album, and a noise performance, to bring the three primary areas of Fusinato’s practice into a single project.

Image: Marco Fusinato, Aetheric Plexus (Broken X), 2013
36,000 watts white light, 105db white noise. 40 cm × 500cm box truss, Par can 56 lights, couplers, Lanbox LCM,DMX controller,  dimmer racks, DMX mp3 player, line array PA, sensor, extension leads, shot bags.
Dimensions variable. Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
© Marco Fusinato.
Courtesy the artist and Anna SchwartzGallery.

The Northern Beaches Council has announced it will present Arts in August, a month-long showcase of the creativity of the Northern Beaches region from 6 – 22 August 2021. Comprised of the inaugural Environmental Art and Design Prize presented across three arts venues, and two Creative Open weekends, Arts in August will feature open studios, a diverse range of cultural events, artist-led tours and live performances.

As part of the Festival, the two Creative Open weekends presented on 14 – 15 August and 21 – 22 August will see local designers, makers, musicians and creative businesses open their doors to visitors to experience the abundance of creativity of the Northern Beaches communities. The weekends will act as an arts trail to see the artists and businesses in situ, learn about their industry and witness firsthand their skills and the creation of their work.

Image: Colin Fraser in studio. Photograph by Karen Watson.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s largest multi-arts precincts, has announced a culturally diverse, contemporary music program and a collaboration with margarita maestros Cantina OK!, that will enliven the precinct as part of Vivid Sydney 2021, from 19 until 28 August.

This is the seventh year of Carriageworks’ highly successful involvement with Vivid Sydney, the annual creative festival that transforms Sydney’s CBD into a playground of creativity, innovation and technology. 2021 offers music audiences a wholistic, layered program with a return to dedicated performance venues, Bay 17 and 20, and a focus on design and lighting led by House of Vnholy and Sam Whiteside.

Spanning two distinct themes of Australian hip hop artists and rock / punk bands across multiple performance spaces, the line-up for Vivid Sydney at Carriageworks includes: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Amyl & The Sniffers, Tropical Fuck Storm, Jesswar, Barkaa, Akosia and Open Frame.

Image: Akosia. Courtesy the artist.

The Powerhouse has announced the details of Robert Rosen: Glitterati, the largest survey of the work of one of Australia’s foremost fashion and social pages photographers, opening on 6 August 2021.

Glitterati will present over 300 photographs and will include images from Rosen’s early career in London and Paris capturing the fashion shows of iconic designers like Yves Saint Laurent, Claude Montana and Zandra Rhodes. In Australia, Rosen brought a new perspective to the fashion pages with his backstage photos at Australian Fashion Week and documented celebrities, politicians and entertainers at parties, openings, launches and events from the exclusive Cointreau Ball to the ARIA Awards. Glitterati will also include over 50 never-before-seen polaroids from Rosen’s personal archive, dating from 1980-2000, with images of icons including Yoko Ono, David Bowie and Bette Midler.

Image: Paul and Linda McCartney, Abbey Road Studios, 1982. Robert Rosen

Sydney Fringe Festival, New South Wales’ largest independent arts festival, has announced the hubs and new initiatives that will be activated from 1 – 30 September 2021, including the inaugural Young Henry’s Made In Sydney Hub and City Tatts Musical Theatre and Cabaret Hub. After a successful digital season in 2020, the Festival returns this year with a physical footprint that will once again enliven Sydney’s CBD and highlight the city’s vibrant culture, with a diverse program of performance, exhibitions and events spanning music, theatre, comedy, visual art, film, dance, circus, literature and poetry.

The 2021 Festival will present two new initiatives continuing Sydney Fringe’s work supporting local communities including Art In Isolation, showcasing new works developed as part of the Sydney Fringe’s 2020-2021 residency program, and a new series of AUSLan interpreted and relaxed performances at Eternity Playhouse every Monday of September.

The full program for the 2021 Sydney Fringe Festival will be announced in July. Please visit The Sydney Fringe website for further details and updates. https://www.sydneyfringe.com/

Image: Apocalypse Now, 2019. Image Rob Studdent

Sydney Contemporary has announced a strong line-up of more than 85 Australian and New Zealand galleries that will participate in the sixth edition of Australasia’s largest and most diverse art fair. Presented at multi-arts precinct Carriageworks from Thursday 9th until Sunday 12th September 2021, Sydney Contemporary will be the first major art fair presented in Australia since 2019 and will feature works by more than 400 artists hailing from countries including Australia, China, England, France, Ghana, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa and Thailand.

The past five editions of Sydney Contemporary have attracted more than 112,000 visitors and recorded more than AU$80million in art sales, with 2021 set to continue to build on those figures.

See the full list HERE.

Image: Dale Frank, From Gilgandra, it was his family tradition, for as long as he can remember, for the last 32 years, tall 205cm Colin would spend all the Easter and Christmas holidays being a naturist, sharing a double bed with his mum and dad on a house boat hired from the Tweed Heads Holiday Park, 2020

Contemporary cultural precinct HOTA, Home of the Arts opens the major new $60.5 million HOTA Gallery on Australia’s Gold Coast on Saturday 8 May 2021. Spanning six levels and including over 2,000m2 of AAA rated, international standard exhibition space and a dedicated Children’s Gallery, HOTA Gallery is the largest public gallery outside a capital city in Australia.

Celebrating artists from across Australia and the world, HOTA Gallery presents world premiere international exhibitions, Australian exclusives and new commissions, and is home to the $32 million City Collection, consisting of more than 4,400 artworks.

Image caption: Back wall: Nicola Moss Local Air 2021; Kirsty Bruce Wonderwall 2021; Aaron Chapman The Towers Project 2021; Back right: Michael Candy, Steal the Sunshine 2021; Front: Ali Bezer I Can Hear Water 2021; SOLID GOLD: Artists from Paradise, HOTA Gallery. Photo by Paul Harris Photography.

Sydney Contemporary, Australasia’s largest and most diverse art fair, has announced a headline partnership with leading ASX-listed financial services firm Moelis Australia, ahead of the fair’s sixth edition. Sydney Contemporary 2021, will be held at Carriageworks from Thursday 9 September until Sunday 12 September.

Sydney Contemporary Founder, Tim Etchells said: “Over the last eight years Sydney Contemporary has been firmly established as the most influential fair in the region and one that is critical to growth of the local art market. We anticipate 2021 will be our strongest year yet. We are excited that Moelis Australia has chosen to become our Principal Partner as an important element of its corporate rebranding to MA Financial Group. Together we share our values of integrity and excellence, along with a passion for contemporary art.”

Sydney Contemporary 2021 returns with a refreshed identity and expects to build upon the success of its previous five editions, which have collectively attracted more than 112,000 collectors, curators and art enthusiasts, whilst recording more than AU$80 million in art sales.

Image: Amrita Hepi performance, Jacquie Manning

Sydney Fringe has announced the initial program for their new pop-up venue Fringe HQ Newtown featuring eight new works – including 3 world premieres, 3 Sydney premieres and 2 modern Australian classics – by a wide range of acclaimed and emerging Australian artists. Taking over the historic ballroom at 5 Eliza Street, the venue will be activated from April-December 2021, and will play a vital role in the Covid recovery for the independent arts sector.

The Sydney Fringe has long been championing the need for more affordable, accessible and importantly non-curated performance space in Sydney. The project Fringe HQ was created in 2018 as a way for the organisation, best known as the presenters of the largest independent arts festival in NSW The Sydney Fringe Festival, to work with their Government and provide sector partners to activate underutilised space for performance.

Presented in partnership with the 5 Eliza Trustees, the venue opens at a time when the sector fears losing many of its dedicated independent performance venues due to the impacts endured from the Covid 19 pandemic.

See details for the program HERE.

Image: Trainlord, Global Fringe 2020.

Today, the first 59 participants in the 23rd Biennale of Sydney (2022) were announced. The title of this major international contemporary art event, which will be open to the public from 12 March to 13 June 2022, is rīvus, meaning ‘stream’ in Latin.

Situated along the waterways of the Gadigal and Burramattagal people, the Biennale of Sydney in 2022 will be articulated through a series of conceptual wetlands and imagined ecosystems populated by artworks, public programs, experiments, research and activisms, following the currents of meandering tributaries that expand into a delta of interrelated ideas.

Those invited to take part in the Biennale will be known as ‘participants’ rather than ‘artists’, reflecting their diverse talents, skills, practices and modes of being that extend beyond the realm of the visual arts. The participants announced today live across six continents and 33 countries such as Cameroon, Cuba, Venezuela, Slovenia, Taiwan, Tonga and the Netherlands.

See the full list and further detail at the Biennale of Sydney website HERE.

Image: Ackroyd & Harvey, The Tree Ceremony, 2015 installed at ArtCOP21 in 2015. Courtesy the artists.

Australian experimental curatorial platform Prototype has announced an additional three artists for Prototype 2021, the platform’s new three-month season featuring 12 new short works – including 11 world premieres – by 13 international and Australian artists, filmmakers and collectives. The new artist works include a series of Instagram filters by digital artist Jess Herrington and short-form documentaries dealing with environmental issues by Robert McDougall and Rachel O’Reilly.

Continuing Prototype’s work redefining the presentation of video art outside the traditional gallery space, this program will see a new short film or moving image released weekly, every Wednesday, from 28 April until 14 July 2021.  Works will be published online and issued direct to Prototype subscribers via a free e-newsletter.

Image: Still from “Rare Earth by Robert McDougall.

Anna Schwartz Gallery will present an exhibition featuring new work and a four-stage installation by leading Australian artist Mike Parr from 1 May – 31 July 2021.

Parr will transform the Gallery throughout the three-month exhibition over a series of four blind performances, creating new installation work. These performances follow on from Towards an Amazonian Black Square, 2019 which was included in Mike Parr’s solo exhibition The Eternal Opening at Carriageworks and Towards a Black Square, 2019, presented by Detached Cultural Organisation in association with Dark Mofo.

In addition to the blind performances, the exhibition will include video, painting, photography and sculpture. The static works will articulate the separate stages of the exhibition.

Image: Mike Parr, Towards an Amazonian Black Square, 2019, performance, Carriageworks, Sydney. Cinematographer: Gotaro Uematsu.Co-performer: Glenn Thompson. Photo: Mark Pokorny. © Mike Parr. Courtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery

A major survey of contemporary Australian art, The National 2021: New Australian Art, opened today across three of Sydney’s leading cultural institutions, the Art Gallery of New South  Wales (AGNSW), Carriageworks and Museum of Contemporary  Art Australia (MCA), presenting 39 new commissioned projects by established, mid-career, emerging artists and artist collectives from across the nation.

The third iteration in a series of biennial surveys, originally launched in 2017, The  National 2021 showcases the varied and vital work being made by Australian artists,  in urban and regional centres, as well as remote communities, by artists of different generations and cultural backgrounds. With three distinct exhibitions developed by four curators, the 2021 iteration presents new and recent works which embody themes of collaboration and intergenerational learning, and planetary responsibility.

Image: Zan Wimberley

Heide Museum of Modern Art has opened the first career survey of Ukrainian-Australian artist Stanislava Pinchuk from 20 March to 20 June 2021. Presented in Heide Modern, Stanislava Pinchuk: Terra Data will bring together for the first time more than 40 key works from Pinchuk’s practice plotting the changing topographies of war and conflict zones to explore how the landscape holds a memory of past political events.

Born and raised in Ukraine, and now based between Naarm (Melbourne) and Sarajevo (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Stanislava Pinchuk is one of Australia’s most exciting contemporary artists. Beginning with recording the Ukrainian Civil War, in her home country, she has since made large bodies of architectural survey work centred around the Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear exclusion zones, and the Calais ‘Jungle’ Migrant Camp in France.

Image: Clytie Meredith

Contemporary cultural precinct HOTA, Home of the Arts has today unveiled a major new outdoor artwork by Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran at the entrance of the new HOTA Gallery. The $60.5 million HOTA Gallery will open on the Gold Coast on 8 May and will be Australia’s largest public gallery outside a capital city.

Commissioned by Melbourne Art Foundation (MAF) and HOTA, Sri-Lankan born, Sydney based artist Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran has created a monumental six-metre high sculpture presented at the lower ground entrance to the Gallery. Predominantly composed of bronze, Nithiyendran has combined a range of materials including concrete, neon and fibreglass to create a multi-coloured avatar reflecting the vibrancy of the HOTA Gallery building. Holding a smiling neon companion and standing on a geometric plinth, this is Nithiyendran’s largest sculpture to date and the artist’s first ambitious work in the public domain. This significant artwork will welcome visitors inside the Gallery with outstretched arms and expressive and commanding tones.

Pictured: Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran with his sculpture Double-sided avatar with blue figure, 2021. Photo by Alex Chomicz.

The first survey in Melbourne for twenty years of eminent Australian artist Robert Owen will be presented by Heide Museum of Modern Art from 6 March to 23 May 2021. Blue Over Time will explore Owen’s 60-year career, encompassing his work from the 1960s and 1970s living in Greece and London, as well as featuring new and more recent paintings and sculptural installations.

Situated in Heide’s main galleries, the exhibition will present over thirty key works including a new iteration of the large- scale wall work Afterglow, made especially for the Heide space.

Grounded in geometry and abstraction, Owen’s striking works are inspired by his wide-ranging interests—encompassing philosophy and psychology, science and mathematics, music and literature—and reflect his life-long curiosity about the world. Underpinning his practice is a poetic and intuitive exploration of the expressive potential of light, colour and space. Through key works and a rich archival display, the exhibition Blue Over Time presents major themes, such as the intersection of art and science in Owen’s work, and his long engagement with colour as a tool to express the inexpressible.

Image: Clytie Meredith

Articulate will participate in First Sight, a first of its kind trailblazing mentorship program specifically designed to develop and promote the careers of emerging First Nations photographers.

Developed by Head On Foundation’s artistic director Moshe Rosenzveig OAM in con-sultation with First Nations photographer Michael Jalaru Torres, the program will bring together Indigenous emerging photographers from all around the country, culminating in a final exhibition as part of Head On Photo Festival 2021 in November. Six participants will be selected to exhibit at the Festival Hub and the work of all participants in the program will also be shown in an onscreen slideshow presentation as part of the Festival.

This collaborative mentorship includes a series of invaluable online sessions with industry-leading speakers and mentors to help take the participants’ photography to the next level.

Image caption: Michael Jalaru Torres, ‘Wirriya (happy)’, 2019. Artist shows with Cooee Art Gallery.

The Sydney Fringe has announced a new partnership with 5 Eliza Ltd to enable the launch of their pop-up venue FRINGE HQ Newtown. Taking over the historic ballroom at 5 Eliza Street, the venue will be activated from April-December 2021, and will play a vital role in the Covid recovery for the independent arts sector.

The Sydney Fringe has long been championing the need for more affordable, accessible and importantly non-curated performance space in Sydney. The project Fringe HQ was created in 2018 as a way for the organisation, best known as the presenters of the largest independent arts festival in NSW The Sydney Fringe Festival, to work with their Government and provide sector partners to activate underutilised space for performance.

The venue opens at a time when the sector fears losing many of its dedicated independent performance venues due to the impacts endured from the Covid 19 pandemic. This new venue and partnership provides the Sydney Fringe with the opportunity to further their research into viable business models for venue management for the independent sector, building on the valuable work published in 2018 An Anthology of Space: Activating unused and underutilised space for the creative industries and performing arts sectors of NSW.

The Fringe HQ Newtown public program will be announced in the coming weeks.

Image Courtesy Sydney Fringe

Australian experimental curatorial platform Prototype has announced a new three-month season Prototype 2021 featuring nine new short works – including eight world premieres – by 10 international and Australian artists, filmmakers and collectives. Continuing Prototype’s work redefining the presentation of video art outside the traditional gallery space, this program releases a new short film or moving image weekly, every Wednesday, from 28 April until 23 June 2021.  Works will be published online and issued direct to Prototype subscribers via a free e-newsletter.

Alongside the core digital presentation, a number of in-person screenings of the newly released works will be presented at Melbourne’s ACMI during the three-month season, including the Prototype 2021 launch event on Tuesday 27 April 2021. This ticketed event features a panel discussion with curator Lauren Carroll Harris and acclaimed Australian filmmaker Samantha Lang, alongside an exclusive in-person premiere screening of Lang’s work Brown Lake and works from Prototype’s archive by UK-based Sam Smith and acclaimed Canberra documentary-maker Robert Nugent.

Image: Pilar Mata Dupont, La Maruja 2021, video still. Courtesy of the artist and Prototype.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s largest multi-arts precincts, has today unveiled NO SHOW, a three-week presentation of projects by 11 artist-led initiatives from across NSW. Presented with the support of the NSW Government through Create NSW, NO SHOW features the work of more than 50 largely early-career  Australian artists and writers. NO SHOW will take over the Carriageworks Public Space and Bay 19 from 12 February until 7 March 2021 with a constantly evolving display of art installations, screenings, performances and writer residencies.
Developed by Carriageworks curator Aarna Hanley and presented free to the public, NO SHOW highlights the activities of artist-run spaces, cooperatives, digital platforms, online publications and studios in NSW, each presenting an independent program across the three weeks. Based locally, regionally and online, the invited organisations are ANKLES, Boomalli, Firstdraft, KNULP, Our Neon Foe, newly established Pari in Western Sydney, Prototype, digital publications Running Dog and Runway Journal, Studio A, and new regional initiative WAYOUT Artspace.

Image:Left to Right: Mehmet Mevlütoğlu, ‘Area Drip 2 (Safety BB)’, 2021 and Feras Shaheen, ‘Cross Cultures’, 2020 for Pari. Installation view ‘No Show’, 2021, Carriageworks. Photo credit Zan Wimberley

UTS Gallery will present a survey exhibition of work by celebrated artist Hayley Millar Baker titled There we were all in one place from 13 April – 14 June 2021. The exhibition includes 35 works spanning five photographic series produced between 2016 until 2019 that are being presented together for the first time. Almost exclusively in black and white, the photographs use historical reappropriation and citation, together with intricate digital editing and archival research, to consider human experiences of time, memory and place.

Image credit: Hayley Millar Baker, Untitled 8 (I’m the Captain Now), 2016, 20 x 20 cm, inkjet on cotton rag. Courtesy the artist and Vivien Anderson Gallery.

The Powerhouse Museum’s 2021 exhibition program will be presented in the Museum at Ultimo under the direction of Chief Executive Lisa Havilah.

The program includes 12 new exhibitions celebrating the Museum’s world-class collection of more than 500,000 objects, as well as international collaborations, Australian exclusives, new commissions and never before seen objects.

Image: Bayram Ali, Snowy Mountains, Hydro-Electric Scheme, Powerhouse Collection

DESIGN Canberra has announced the theme of ‘Transformation’ for its eighth annual festival to be presented from 8 – 28 November 2021. The Festival is now calling out for leading architecture, design and craft initiatives to participate in the three-week Festival that celebrates Canberra as a global city of design and a living design laboratory. Past Festivals have included work by acclaimed international designers such as Kengo Kuma, pictured with his work at the Festival in 2019.

See HERE for more detail and to apply.

Photo by Andrew Sikorski

Anna Schwartz Gallery will present an exhibition of new works by acclaimed Australian artist Shaun Gladwell from 6 February – 24 April 2021.

Shaun Gladwell’s exhibition Homo Suburbiensis gives equal weight to, and balances, the artist’s practice of painting and moving image. Through formal and conceptual links, most obviously through the image as sequenced in both painted and cinematic form, a dialogue is established between a single channel moving image work, and a series of paintings.

Image: Shaun Gladwell, Homo Suburbiensis, 2020, (still) High Definition video (4K), colour, sound, 13 minutes 5 seconds, Cinematographer: Skye Davies. © Shaun Gladwell. Courtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery

Gold Coast Cultural Precinct HOTA, Home of the Arts has announced its inaugural exhibition program that will be presented in the new $60.5 million HOTA Gallery, opening to the public on 10 April 2021. Spanning six levels, HOTA Gallery is the largest public gallery outside a capital city in Australia and will present a dynamic program of world premiere international exhibitions, Australian exclusives, and new commissions, celebrating artists from across Australia and the world.

Information on 2021 exhibition program can be found at www.hota.com.au, with further details and programming to be announced in 2021.

The Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) has announced its 2021 season, an ambitious hybrid of live and digital concerts responding to 2020 and welcoming a new musical era. The bold season features seven live concert programs, opening in New South Wales in February and touring nationally from May 2021, alongside eight 50-minute concert films premiering on a new streaming platform from February 2021.

Image: Stephen Ward

The Powerhouse Museum has announced a program of free exhibition tours, music performances, DJ sets, film screenings and a Campari bar for the Culture Up Late program, running throughout Summer 2021.

As part of the recently announced ‘Culture Up Late’ initiative by City of Sydney and NSW Government, the Powerhouse will remain open until 9pm every Thursday evening from 21 January – 25 March 2021, with a special ‘after-hours’ Museum experience, including late admission to the exhibitions and live performances across the Ultimo site.
Independent broadcaster FBi Radio will bring their innovative programming out of the studio and into the Museum with an evening of new local music, digital projections and performances on 28 January.

The full program more information on Culture Up Late can be viewed HERE

Tickets are free and will be available in January 2021.

Curatorial+Co. will present an exhibition of new works by Melbourne- based multimedia artist Daniel O’Toole from 10 – 20 February 2021. For Deliquescent Light, O’Toole will immerse audiences in a field of colour and sound, with 13 paintings, three video works and a custom created soundtrack informed by synaesthesia to enhance the exhibition and the way the audience experiences colour. One hundred limited edition transparent vinyl records of the soundtrack will be on display and available as part of the exhibition, with a hand painted canvas square unique to each record.

The Fivex Art Prize: Billboard Art Reimagined, Australia’s first award dedicated to digital billboard art, has announced Melbourne-based artists Catherine Clover and Daniel Kotsimbos as joint winners of the inaugural $30,000 Prize. The winners were announced by Melbourne’s Lord Mayor Sally Capp at a launch event for the Prize’s outdoor exhibition displaying all six finalist works on two prominent billboards opposite Flinders St Railway Station until 31 January 2021.

 
The 2020 Fivex Art Prize attracted over 520 entries from photographers, graphic designers, street artists, illustrators and architects from across Australia, each for two large-scale LED QMS Media billboards – a horizontal corner ‘wrap’ and a vertical ‘podium’ – prominently located at the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth Streets in Melbourne’s CBD. The winning and finalist works will be on view at intervals throughout the day, interspersed with, and surrounded by, commercial advertising content, surprising city-goers to re-engage and experience their built environment differently.

Heide Museum of Modern Art is delighted to announce full program details for the inaugural Heide Summer Festival which will activate the museum’s much-loved sculpture park with an outdoor event series designed to support local performing artists, youth bands and cultural festivals impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria the nine-week program, presented from mid-January to March 2021, will feature free and ticketed curated programs of music, dance, and storytelling from the Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Songlines Music Aboriginal Corporation and Australia’s premier queer arts and cultural organisation Midsumma.

Artspace has welcomed the NSW Government’s commitment of over $5 million that will see The Gunnery in Woolloomooloo – Artspace’s home since 1993 – transformed into a state-of-the-art facility with expanded exhibition spaces, increased artist-in-residence studios and a greater connection to the local neighbourhood and Sydney Harbour Foreshore.

This significant investment in The Gunnery will ensure the legacy of the landmark building as the destination for visual arts in NSW and highlights the important role of the arts in fuelling NSW’s cultural and economic recovery following the impact of COVID-19.

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra has announced its 2021 NSW Season, a diverse program of six live concert series, with a further Melbourne season to be announced in January. Celebrating the best of Baroque, the season will present Australian debut performances from international guest artists, an exciting theatrical collaboration with CIRCA Contemporary Circus and Australian premiere arrangements. Alongside the live concert season, for the very first time, each mainstage concert in the 2021 season will be filmed and released as a broadcast quality production on the innovative new digital platform Brandenburg One, bringing the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra to audiences across Australia on demand.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s largest contemporary multi-arts centres, will again be a major hub for Sydney Festival in 2021, presenting five world premieres including a new video installation by award-winning Australian artist Tina Havelock Stevens titled THANK YOU FOR HOLDING and launching 6 January. During the three-week festival running from 6 until26 January 2021, Carriageworks will present world premieres by ResidentCompanies Force Majeure, Sydney Chamber Opera as well as the seventh edition of Yellamundie Festival by Mooghalin Performing Arts.

Presented free to the public from 6 until 24 January, THANK YOU FOR HOLDING byHavelock Stevens, is a single-channel video work responding to the relentless tides of anxiety produced by the uncertain present. The work sees the artist perform a staunch drumming set from a raised platform which is drawn from pillar to post inside the ground floor of The Clothing Store building at Carriageworks by her co-performer, Ivey Wawn.

Curated by CarriageworksDirector of Programs Daniel Mudie Cunningham and created in August 2020, the improvised, ritualistic and urgent drumming score holds the space but cannot hold time. The two performers – masked but not blind, their vision 20/20– take pause in the holus-bolus of the suspended present.

For more detail and to purchase tickets please visit: carriageworks.com.au

Anna Schwartz Gallery will unveil a new first-floor gallery space, Gallery 02, on 18 November to be launched with an exhibition of new works by celebrated Australian artist Stephen Bram. The new gallery space underwent a transformative renovation overseen by the gallery’s original architect Denton Corker Marshall, that reflects the ground floor architecture and creates a cohesive space.

The exhibition of Stephen Bram works will be presented from 18 November until 19 December 2020 in Gallery 02, alongside the recently reopened John Nixon exhibition Groups + Pairs 2016 – 2020 in Gallery 01.  Groups + Pairs 2016 – 2020 represents the final exhibition the seminal artist produced in his lifetime. John Nixon passed away earlier this year.

Image: Stephen Bram, Untitled, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 210 x 390 cm, Photo: Photographer, © Stephen Bram. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery

Bell Shakespeare has announced their 2021 season, which will mark the company’s return to the stage and live performance for the first time since the COVID-19 lockdown in March. As Australia’s national touring theatre company and now in its 31st year, Bell Shakespeare will travel across the country with a program including an evening with company Founding Artistic Director John Bell, a remounting of this year’s popular Hamlet production that closed just 1.5 weeks after opening due to lockdown, and a staging of the popular classic A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Carriageworks, Australia’s largest contemporary multi-arts centre, will present its fourth annual edition of the SOUTHEAST Aboriginal Arts Market over four days from 5pm 26 until 29 November 2020. Curated by respected Arrernte and Kalkadoon curator, writer, advisor and presenter Hetti Perkins and leading Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones, SOUTHEAST celebrates the creative diversity of south-east Australian Aboriginal art. This year, due to COVID-19 restrictions on large gatherings and border closures, in place of a physical market Carriageworks will present an online retail platform bringing together 26 independent Aboriginal artists and collectives from the south-east including regional and coastal New South Wales, ACT, southern Victoria, the Murray–Darling basin catchment and Tasmania.

IMAGE CAPTION: Artwork by Penny Evans, SOUTHEAST Aboriginal Arts Market 2019. Image Jacquie Manning.

The Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, presented by Woollahra Council, has announced 56 emerging and established artists as finalists for the 20th annual Prize and exhibition. The 2020 finalist works, by artists from Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Italy, will be presented for the first time in the Woollahra Council’s new purpose-built gallery space, as its inaugural exhibition opening in early 2021.

The 56 finalist artist sculptures – each measuring up to 80cm in any dimension – were selected from a record 844 entries by a judging panel comprised of Director Curatorial and Digital, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Dr Lara Strongman, Art Historian/Curator and Industrial Archaeologist Joanna Capon OAM and celebrated artist and fashion designer Jenny Kee AO.

For more information and work details see: https://sculptureprize.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/

Image: Samantha Mackie, A Reliable Source – Set in Stone #1

Australasia’s international art fair, Sydney Contemporary launches its new digital initiative Sydney Contemporary presents 2020, showcasing more than 450 new artworks by over 380 leading Australian and international artists. Running until 31 October 2020, the month-long project, designed to support the arts community, takes visitors on a distinctly different, artist-led journey of discovery where the user is encouraged to create a pathway to find the perfect artwork for them, from hundreds of newly created works.

Sydney Contemporary also announced it will present two new artist commissions, supported by Copyright Agency Cultural Fund and created in response to the events of 2020, as part of Sydney Contemporary presents 2020. The commissioned artists are New York based artists duo Jess Johnson and Simon Ward and​, ​in partnership with Performance Space, Sydney-based Koori artist SJ Norman together with New York-based Cherokee writer Joseph M Pierce.

Image: Jess Johnson and Simon Ward, Fleshold Crossing 360

DESIGN Canberra has announced details for the 2020 program that will take over the nation’s capital from 9-29 November. The festival celebrates Canberra as a global city of design and a living design laboratory, and this year’s centrepiece is a major site-specific installation by Australian multidisciplinary artist Hannah Quinlivan. Returning for its seventh year, the fast-growing annual three-week festival will present more than 200 events including exhibitions; talks by industry leaders such as acclaimed architect Michael Dysart, leading social commentator and business analyst Bernard Salt and internationally renowned glassmaker Kirstie Rea; tours and unique access to architectural gems including the iconic Shine Dome, a film festival, workshops and the popular program of artist open studios.

For more detail about the 2020 DESIGN Canberra program please see the festival website: https://designcanberrafestival.com.au/

Image: Artist Hannah Quinlivan. Courtesy the artist and DESIGN Canberra.

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra will present its special event live concert season Ayres & Graces at City Recital Hall from 27-31 October 2020.  The season of five socially-distanced concerts marks the Orchestra’s first live performances in over six months.

Celebrating chamber music from the English and French Baroque, Ayres & Graces will be directed by Principal Baroque Flute/Recorder Melissa Farrow who leads an ensemble of Brandenburg musicians performing on an eclectic combination of period instruments. This special event marks the Orchestra’s celebratory return to live performance, City Recital Hall will be transformed into a world of colour and sound, with the Brandenburg musicians for the very first time performing before a stage-wide LED screen illuminated with images from both sides of the English Channel. The stunning imagery curated by Australian designer Silvana Azzi Heras will blend with a musical offering of pastoral folk songs, heavenly trio sonatas and intimate chamber music alongside stately works of grander scale.