Arts fairs and festivals abound in 2023
From Spring1883 to Sydney Contemporary to Darwin Festival, we’ve rounded up an array of festivals and fairs across the rest of 2023—happening in almost every state and territory.
From Spring1883 to Sydney Contemporary to Darwin Festival, we’ve rounded up an array of festivals and fairs across the rest of 2023—happening in almost every state and territory.
Featuring Aboriginal artists Judy Watson and Yhonnie Scarce, Looking Glass brings together beautiful objects with a sting in the tail.
Interviews with artists offer invaluable insights—but exhibiting these is another story. Curator Julie Ewington talks through creating a show at the State Library of Queensland Gallery centred on recorded dialogues with artists from Anne Wallace to Vernon Ah Kee to Fiona Foley.
Since the 1990s, American photographer Catherine Opie has been internationally renowned for capturing friends and family, queer domestic life, and defining political moments. Entwining identity and sexuality, kinship and community, Opie’s first Australian survey is at Heide Museum of Modern Art.
The Jewish Museum of Australia is exploring the lesser-known areas of Marc Chagall’s prolific and varied career: his printmaking, poetry, publishing, and public art, while also asking contemporary artist Yvette Coppersmith to respond with her own works.
In Sam Michelle’s exhibition Play at Martin Browne Contemporary, oil paintings of flora, textiles and vessels become metaphors for childhood creativity—a spirit that adulthood often risks losing.
Kaspar Schmidt Mumm’s practice spans painting, costume and performance,and he uses local waste and rented equipment to create installations that can be made from scratch at each new location. Having been awarded the 2023 Porter Street Commission, his large-scale participatory sculpture ROCKAMORA is now being shown at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental.
Pierre Bonnard is known for his vivid landscapes and interior settings, and this winter the National Gallery of Victoria will host his work within the scenography of renowned Iranian-French architect and designer, India Mahdavi.
Perhaps it’s related to contemporary life, but the spiritual in art feels central at this moment. Now, as part of RISING Festival, the spiritual practices and connections of First Nations artists are taking over a historic Melbourne site.
Victoria’s flagship festival of music, food, art and culture is back, starting 7 June. With 185 events, here’s our recommendations of what to see—from Cate Blanchett as a tiger in a supermarket to First Nations artists connection to the spirit world.
Rembrandt is arguably one of the most influential and revered artists in history. Now, the NGV is putting on the most comprehensive exhibition of his vast oeuvre in more than 25 years.
Jonathan Jones’s National Gallery of Australia exhibition takes cue from a 32,000-year-old grindstone used for Aboriginal breadmaking. In an extremely thoughtful conversation with Timmah Ball, Jones talks about how this long precedes Western food production—but questions if people understand what this truly means.
Positioned on the edge of Sydney Harbour/Warrane, Ancient Feelings, a sculpture by British artist Thomas J Price, launches the Neil Balnaves Tallawoladah Lawn Commission, a three-year series of public artworks presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.
Georgie Mattingley’s exhibition Project Pine Gap explores the intelligence site Pine Gap, co-owned by the Australian Federal Government and the United States, questioning art’s capabilities and function within such institutions.
Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards 2025 finalist Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello has spent decades crafting an art practice that weaves together memory, heritage and form.
Marking the Newcastle Art Galleries reopening with a large-scale commission for the windows on Derby Street, Maggie Hensel-Brown’s new commission is on display from 26 September.
Spring1883, Melbourne’s interactive and immersive fair returns, celebrating the collision of contemporary art installed amongst 18th century decor of The Hotel Windsor.
An exhibition of newly commissioned works at the National Art School gallery in Sydney brings to light the historic and ongoing ties between Indigenous and Asian-Australian communities.
