Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2026 i Art Guide Australia

PLAY! Blue Mountains City Art Gallery Until 15 February Bursting with tactile, playful works that call out for touch and engagement, PLAY! at Blue Mountains City Art Gallery invites audiences to set aside the usual etiquette of gallery viewing. Encouraging curiosity and hands-on exploration, the exhibition—curated by Hayley Zena Poynton—dissolves traditional institutional boundaries, transforming the gallery into a space for intergenerational connection, creativity and shared discovery. As Poynton explains, PLAY! emerges from a deep awareness that “there’s such a clear need from the public for frivolity, for joyousness, for a feeling of interconnectedness. When you look at the political and war-torn landscape globally, these microcosms of community—created even just for an afternoon—feel incredibly powerful.” Anchoring the exhibition is an interactive playable sculpture by Sanné Mestrom. Known for creating playful, socially…

Paola Pivi: I don’t like it, I love it Art Gallery of Western Australia Until 26 April On viewing Paola Pivi’s major solo exhibition I don’t like it, I love it, it’s hard to believe all the works on display come from a single artist. Internationally renowned for her exuberant practice—from vibrant feathered polar bears and giant inflatables, to fantastical photographs depicting surreal scenes such as zebras cavorting on snow-covered mountains—Pivi’s work spans a scope and breadth that keeps audiences constantly expecting the unexpected. Beloved by many in the contemporary art world, Pivi has developed a cult following for her work, and this expansive exhibition marks one of the Italian-born artist’s most ambitious projects in her almost 30-year career. It features three major new commissions created especially for the Art…

Rosalind Lemoh: Masked Memory Canberra Contemporary Until 24 January 2026 (Holiday closure 14 December 2025—12 January) During a residency at Bundanon in 2025, Sierra Leone-born Australian artist Rosalind Lemoh had a fortuitous meeting with fellow Artist in Residence, the African-American writer, Jeffery Renard Allen. The exchange of ideas that followed was a continuation of Lemoh’s longstanding engagement with the work of African-American artists and writers, to interpret her own experience of African identity and diaspora in Australia, where the discourse is less prevalent. Lemoh explains: “Jeff and I spoke a lot about the in-between space where language might fail you. What happens when an experience sits outside the language of a dominant culture?” In Masked Memory at Canberra Contemporary, Lemoh uses the language of sculpture and photography to convey an…

For the Wiradjuri-Scottish artist April Phillips, technology is not a shortcut but a material to be shaped. In her practice, light, sound and projection are built slowly, layer by layer, until they take on the tactility of craft—in a method she calls “digital handmade”. “It’s done on a computer, but it is so handmade in the realm of digital,” says Phillips. “Everything is created with a lot of care and love.” Living and working on Yuin Country on the south coast of New South Wales, Phillips’ practice is rooted in futurism and media arts, spanning moving image, printmaking, illustration, augmented reality (AR) and photogrammetry (3D photo scans). She continually expands the limits of the digital realm, exploring how virtual worlds can open new ways of seeing and feeling. Her new…

In 1985, the late Australian ecofeminist Val Plumwood was paddling in a borrowed canoe across a tributary in Kakadu in the Northern Territory, seeking a proposed walking track in these wilds she had fought to secure as a national park. Pulling her canoe over for a “hasty, sodden lunch” in water rising due to flooding, she sensed she was being watched. Torrential rain started up as she pulled back into the main current when a floating stick developed the eyes of a crocodile, repeatedly slamming into her wooden vessel. To avoid capsizing, Plumwood jumped into the branches of a paperbark, but the crocodile leapt too, dragging her down into a triple death roll. Surviving the incident, Plumwood wrote in her 1996 essay, Being Prey, about “having this philosophical revelation in…

Artisan www.artisan.org.au 45 King Street, Bowen Hills, QLD 4006 [Map 15] 07 3215 0800 Wed to Fri 10am–5pm, Sat 10am–4pm. Artspace Mackay www.artspacemackay.com.au Civic Precinct, corner Gordon and Macalister Streets, Yuwi Country, Mackay, QLD 4740 [Map 14] 07 4961 9722 Tue to Fri 10am–5pm, Sat & Sun 10am–3pm. Free admission. See our website for latest information. 24 January—2 April Natural Oddity Tom Moore 20 January—2 April Habitat Colleen Heathwood James 20 January—2 April Printbank Mackay: Coastal Imprints Caboolture Regional Art Gallery www.moretonbay.qld.gov.au/caboolture-gallery Kabi Kabi Country, The Caboolture Hub, 4 Hasking Street, Caboolture, QLD 4510 [Map 13] 07 5433 2800 Tue to Sat 10am–4pm. See our website for latest information. 20 September 2025—14 March Yield Kaya Barry, Megan Cope, Fernando do Campo, Joe Furlonger, Libby Harward, Shivanjani Lal, Jason Murphy, Sean…

Araluen Arts Centre, Mparntwe www.araluenartscentre.nt.gov.au 61 Larapinta Drive, Mparntwe/Alice Springs, NT 0870 08 8951 1122 Tue to Sat 10am–4pm, Sun 10am–2pm. 3 July—2026 Deviate Araluen Collection | Albert Namatjira Gallery This exhibition primarily draws from the Araluen Art Collection and considers artists who push the boundaries – depart from an established course – to challenge traditional art-making techniques and enable new outcomes to emerge. The artists captivate us with their diverse processes that lead to artworks that are innovative and original, feature bold colour or mark-making, integrate new materials, or themes. 15 November 2025—8 February Greenbush Goes Outback Greenbush’s story is one of transformation, using limited resources the work highlights the power of art as a rehabilitative force. Proving that creativity can emerge from the most unlikely materials and circumstances.…

Suzon Fuks: e-Galaxy NorthSite, Cairns 16 February—18 April (exhibiting concurrently at Stanley Street Gallery, Sydney/Gadigal Country 7—26 March) e-Galaxy reimagines electronic waste as a new macro-environment. Artist/activist Suzon Fuks explores the component materials of our electronic devices, noting that the core minerals at their centre were formed by the Earth millions of years ago, and that these and other materials used impact the environment through their sheer volume and built-in obsolescence. Yet she also celebrates the human achievement that produces these devices. Throughout her career, which began in Brussels as a performer, Fuks has also practiced as a visual and digital artist. With e-Galaxy, her versatility is evident. She told Art Guide, “What is the most important for me in art is what we want to say. Then, we choose…

Young | youth in Australian photography: 1980s to now Museum of Australian Photography Until 22 February The experience of youth is individual as it is universal. Senior curator Angela Connor, speaking about building the Museum of Australian Photography’s latest show, Young | youth in Australian photography: 1980s to now, says, “The exhibition came about from thinking about my own youth in the 1990s.” But it was Naomi Hobson’s The good sister ‘Ms. Daley, the kindergarten teacher has a flash black bike, it’s them olden-style one. Every time I drop Erica off at kindy, I always check it out.’ Kayla (2019), that was the seed for the project. It is the joyful confidence and personal style of the young people in Hobson’s photograph that captures the freedom of youth, a time,…

Yield Caboolture Regional Art Gallery Until 14 March In this exhibition, the term Yield invokes agricultural histories, stimulated by the research of Dr Joseph Bancroft, a medical doctor who brought his family to Brisbane in 1864. While he practised medicine, he also explored issues impacting stock and agriculture, and invented a process of drying and canning beef at his Deception Bay property. Yield curator Hannah Williamson cast the artistic net wide to encompass local and national agricultural histories through the work of 12 artists. The exhibition has already attracted strong local audiences: “It offers an opportunity to stop and think about the legacy of agriculture, its impacts, and our reliance on food production. And I think it prompts the realisation that outcomes would have been so different had the colonisers…

& Gallery Australia www.andgalleryaustralia.net Bunurong Country 21 Morce Ave, Sorrento, VIC 3943 [Map 1] 0417 324 795 Open daily 10am–5pm. 3 January—26 January The Realist Stewart MacFarlane Triptych Cameron Hayes Transition Tammy Honey 31 January—26 February LATITUDES Ken Johnson Artists of the Mornington Peninsula The Locals The Distance Between Isabelle Devos Alcaston Gallery www.alcastongallery.com.au 84 William Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000 [Map 2] 03 8849 9668 Thu 12noon–6pm or by appointment. Art Gallery of Ballarat www.artgalleryofballarat.com.au 40 Lydiard Street North, Wathaurong Country, Ballarat, VIC 3350 [Map 1] 03 5320 5858 The Art Gallery of Ballarat is closed for refurbishments. Off-site programming continues at Backspace Gallery and on the Art Screen in Alfred Deakin Place. Art Screen Alfred Deakin Place Ballarat: 24 November 2025—30 January TEXT/SCREEN/TEXT Henrik Haukeland Swedish-born Henrik Haukeland is…

Adelaide Contemporary Experimental www.ace.gallery Kaurna Yarta, Lion Arts Centre, North Terrace (West End), Adelaide, SA 5000 [Map 18] 08 8211 7505 Tue to Sat 11am–4pm. 21 February—4 April Kumarangk Temeika Campbell, Zemiah Campbell, Carly Tarkari Dodd, Tiarnie Edwards, Debra Rankine, Elizabeth Rankine, Sonya Rankine, Bessie Rigney, Stephanie Russell, Sandra Saunders, Betty Sumner, Margi Sumner and Ellen Trevorrow. Adelaide Town Hall Gallery www.adelaidetownhall.com.au 128 King William Street, Adelaide, SA 5000 08 8203 7590 Mon to Fri 9am–5pm. See our website for latest information. 1 July 2025—2 February Purkarari: Slow Down Purkarari: Slow down is an exhibition of major new works by Zaachariaha Fielding alongside collaborative paintings created with Senior artists working out of the APY Studio in Adelaide. Rooted in the Pitjantjatjara word Purkarari, meaning a deep calm through work, Fielding…

Hobart Current: Here City of Hobart and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) Until 26 April Curated by Travis Tiddy and Denise Robinson, Hobart Current: Here is the third offering of the biennale by the City of Hobart and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) that inserts itself within the colonial architecture of Nipaluna/Hobart and the surrounding streetscape. With a shared philosophy and curating practice that emphasises creating an empowered environment for artists within the art ecosystem, the curators asked artists, what does here mean for you? The concept came together after Tiddy and Robinson mused on this platform that gives ‘rise’ to the artists’ practice. In these highly visible, significant Tasmanian locations—Hobart’s CBD and TMAG—the exhibition embodies a shared experience, for the artists and for the 50,000…

Ode: Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson Tweed Regional Gallery Until 8 March Ode: Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson at the Tweed Regional Gallery unites the practices of two painters whose lives are seemingly entwined, their oeuvres hovering at the boundaries of still life and landscapes. Like Margaret Olley, Sally Anderson was born in Lismore, NSW, on Bundjalung Country, and both spent time in Paris exploring the galleries and house museums. During Anderson’s 2025 residency at the gallery’s Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio, she found inspiration for her new paintings in the reconstruction of Olley’s home. This led Anderson to consider how composition and ‘arranging’ are embedded within their respective practices. “I think a lot about arranging—how we arrange thoughts, time, memories, households, feelings, gardens, furniture, objects, colour—and how rearranging…

Krack Print Studios was established in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta over a decade ago by Prihatmoko Moki, Rudi Hermawan, Malcolm Le Smith and Sukma Smita. The term “print studio” is hardly a wholistic representation of Krack. I asked Malcolm if Krack could be related to the Indonesian word kampung—a term I recently became acquainted with through Tito Ambyo’s writing. He reflected, “I’m not sure if kampung is the right word, but maybe it is. In Indonesia it means neighbourhood. Various writers have described the Javanese collaborative process in different ways.” Malcolm relates Krack’s remit to the broader term ekosistem—a word often used by Southeast Asian curators when describing culture as a living thing that needs nurturing. This word encompasses Indonesian notions of lumbung (community space), gotong royong (labour exchange)…

Annandale Galleries www.annandalegalleries.com.au Gadigal Country, 110 Trafalgar Street, Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038 [Map 7] 02 9552 1699 Wed to Sat 11am–4pm. See our website for latest information. Artbank Sydney www.artbank.gov.au 222 Young Street, Waterloo, NSW 2017 [Map 9] 02 9697 6000 Tue to Fri 12–4pm, or by appointment for all leasing requirements. Window Gallery: 14 November 2025—31 January Tower Dog Red Rattler Curated by Thom Roberts and Studio A Artbank is proud to host Thom Roberts and the Studio A team to curate the Artbank Sydney Window. Thom Roberts works out of Studio A, an organisation in Sydney that supports and creates professional pathways for artists with intellectual disabilities. A multi-disciplinary artist, his practice spans painting, drawing, installation, performance and photography. Thom is called the “arranger” at Studio A and…