Melbourne Art Fair is back, presenting solo shows and works from 59 leading galleries and Indigenous-owned art centres from across the country. With so much to look at, we asked curator and writer Kelly Gellatly to tell us her ‘top 10 things to see’ at this year’s fair—for collectors and art lovers alike.
Vivid and exuberant, Kaylene Whiskey’s paintings are like nothing else. In her distinct style, Whiskey brings together celebrities and consumer culture with her Aboriginal heritage—and she has a major new video commission showing for this year’s Melbourne Art Fair.
The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art has earned its rightful place in Australia’s cultural calendar for the ambitious scope of its artistic programming, highlighting the diversity and range of artistic practices across the Asia Pacific region. This 10th triennial, ATP10, features 150 artists and collectives from 30 countries.
From climate change to geography to cattle farming, Gathering Geographies at Sydney’s Darren Knight Gallery speculates on how the earth, via weather, time and resources, shapes human movement and creativity.
The bark paintings and larrakitj (hollow logs) in Naminapu Maymuru-White’s solo at Sullivan+Strumpf poignantly speak not only of Country, but an astral parallel: the Milky Way.
Creating layers of artificial and natural dyes, Jahnne Pasco-White’s quietly mesmerising canvases speak to an entwined relationship between painting, bodies, materials and the world, with work currently showing at Town Hall Gallery and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery.
From her portrait of journalist and Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani to photographs of whistleblowers, Hoda Afshar gives us 21st-century images that speak to trauma, justice and humanity.
Black, white and red dominate the art of Jenna Lee, an artist who is a Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and Karrajarri Saltwater woman with mixed Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Anglo-Australian ancestry. The artist reflects on five of her recent artworks, with exhibitions at Melbourne Art Fair, Pride Gallery and Koorie Heritage Trust.
In the past ten days Australia has lost two important artworld figures. Both were senior artists working in Adelaide but with a reach extending far beyond the city or the nation.
The inaugural show in the new custom-designed space for Science Gallery Melbourne, MENTAL: Head Inside, is a young person-led take on mental health featuring more than 20 interdisciplinary projects from around the globe.
Based in Toronto, Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore is showing her first Australian solo exhibition, creating acts of Indigenous resistance through art, language and bodies.
UK artist James Capper is bringing his insect-like, walking hydraulic sculptures to Hobart’s Mona, heralding an art practice of engineering, design and biology—all for a more sustainable future.
