From Cairns to Darwin to Gold Coast to Melbourne to South Australia, throughout August there are multiple art fairs and festivals throughout the country, as well as online. Here’s our round-up of what to see.
While lockdown restrictions have unfortunately meant Spring1883 will no longer happen IRL at The Hotel Windsor in Melbourne, the boutique fair is partnering with Artsy for an online iteration, playing host to galleries and artists from across Australia and New Zealand. This year’s fair includes newer galleries such as FUTURES, alongside Spring regulars like Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, Daine Singer, LON Gallery, Neon Parc, Sarah Scout, Nicholas Thompson Gallery, STATION, Sutton Gallery, CAVES and This Is No Fantasy—plus many more. Some galleries may also be hosting their own satellite versions of Spring1883 across 4—7 August.
Happening across greater South Australia, this year’s SALA is setting records: 9,167 artists across 600 exhibitions. The 2021 feature artist is Roy Ananda with his exhibition Supreme Library at Adelaide Central Gallery, while other ‘must-see’ shows include Heatwave at West Thebarton Gallery and Tali Puli Motuka Kala – Sand dunes, Rock hills, Cars, and Colour at APY Gallery. View the full program here.
Music, theatre, dance, performance, fashion and art—Darwin Festival is a chance to celebrate the myriad art forms pulsating throughout the city. The opening night centres on the culture of Gurrumul and the people of North East Arnhem, with a live performance by Yolŋu dancers and songmen, as well as the Darwin Symphony Orchestra. Then there’s the epic circus production The Pulse, fashion shows, music awards, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award at the Museum and Gallery of the Northern Territory, and artist Yana Alana’s The Legend of Queen Kong—a queer, comic, sci-fi rock odyssey. See the full line-up of events here.
Taking place from sugar-cane fields and beaches (just to name a few spots), this year’s Pop Up North Queensland (PUNQ) delivers art and performance to the state’s top regions. Drawing on themes as diverse as UFO sightings, natural disasters and the environmental degradation of the Great Barrier Reef, the regional ten-day festival spans Townsville, Magnetic Island, Charters Towers and Hinchinbrook. It includes artists Alison McDonald, Dancenorth Australia, Tony Albert and Gail Mabo—and this is just a few from the full program here.
An after-dark film festival, music in the park, and exhibitions that celebrate the brilliance of Queensland’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts and culture—this is a sample of what’s on offer at Cairns Indigenous Art Fair. With a program brimming with shows, the fair’s signature fashion event returns to the Tanks Arts Centre, plus exhibitions at UMI Arts and Cairns Regional Gallery—amongst many more performances and events.
Beginning in late August, the Sunshine Coast’s Horizon Festival spans multiple art forms, which are centralised in the festival’s The Wonderland Spiegeltent, featuring cabaret, comedy, circus, dance and theatre. There’s also an open-air concert series, dawn ceremonies for connecting to Country, and an exhibition on climate change. Have a look at the full line-up.
Bleach Festival sees a line-up of contemporary art, music and performance, all framed by the Southern Queensland coastline. Spanning sites like beachside esplanades, abandoned buildings and hinterland hideaways, the 11-day festival includes over 90 performances and events, with major visual arts commissions from artists Vernon Ah Kee, Tina Havelock Stevens, Justene Williams, and architect and designer Kevin O’Brien. See the full program for more.
As Melbourne reopens, so does Fed Square’s Anything But Square Winter Program, transforming this CBD spot into a family-centred arts square. Highlights include The Knot, a new large-scale art installation by French artist Cyril Lancelin, as well as an upcoming French Film Festival and Frenchy Weekends, and a Curious Creates performance where mystical creatures come out after dark—and there’s more to check out.
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
Heide Museum of Modern Art’s summer blockbuster exhibition is unveiling the breadth and beauty of Italian modernism through design. With over 170 objects spanning sixty years, Molto Bello explores the cultural impact of this period of creativity and invention.
Julie Mehretu’s first solo exhibition in the southern hemisphere, now showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, attempts to harness the urgency and energy of the Ethiopian-born New Yorker’s multilayered painting practice.
Ahead of his major retrospective at Jan Murphy Gallery, Ben Quilty spoke with fellow painter Georgia Spain about wrestling with mythology, the contradictions of joy and suffering, and a belief in art as an antidote to an increasingly volatile world.
