With an embarrassment of riches on offer this summer, we’ve rounded up the major art shows across the country, spanning Louise Bourgeois, Tacita Dean, Emily Kam Kngwarray and the magic of fairy tales—just to name a few.
Vincent Namatjira’s paintbrush is his weapon. With an infectious energy and wry humour, nothing is off limits.
Meaning lies somewhere between humour, absurdity, and mortality in Brent Harris’s paintings and prints. With a recent survey in New Zealand, Harris is now exhibiting with an Australian showing of 40 years of work, titled Surrender & Catch, currently at TarraWarra Museum of Art.
“I want to ignite that childlike sensibility.” Ariel Ruby conjures a sense of wondrous play in her new show at Penny Contemporary.
Three years and $19m later, Sydney’s newly redeveloped, and much beloved, Artspace opens with a new look, and a new focus on artist residencies and studio programs.
Known as a great avant-garde painter, the late John Nixon also created hundreds of prints—which, as those who knew Nixon can attest, exemplify his minimalism, experimentalism, and his interlacing of life and art. John Nixon—Four Decades, Five Hundred Prints is currently on display at Geelong Gallery.
Whether scouting the perfect gift or searching for a summer read, our editors have picked their top art books of 2023—spanning everything from a history of ceramics, women and spiritualism, and First Nations practices.
Since the early 1990s, British artist Tacita Dean has gifted us myriad artworks on the intimacy, unexpectedness, and materiality of film and image making. With a new survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art, we look at Dean’s tracing of history and chance.
From an intriguing exhibition on baroque masters to a show ostensibly all about dogs, here’s our curated list of regional offerings to see throughout the country this summer.
Horror is where the marginalised can see themselves—as a horror-themed exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art reveals.
Sneakers are a cultural phenomenon made up of paradoxes. Some see them as an accessible and inclusive force in fashion that serve as an outlet of self-expression for many; yet to others they are a symbol of out-of-control consumerism. Two Queensland exhibitions are embracing these dualities, though from contrasting angles: Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street at HOTA on the Gold Coast, and Torsion at Brisbane’s Metro Arts.
For Betty Muffler art making and healing are indistinguishable. Evoking Country through the view of the eagle, she’s now showing in the NGV Triennial alongside a host of international names.
A comprehensive new survey at the National Gallery of Australia pays tribute to Emily Kam Kngwarray and the Country she loved.
From crones to witches to grandmothers, the feminine monstrosity offered by fairy tales is an antidote to our current, unsatisfying forms of female transgression—as a new exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art reveals.
Kirtika Kain’s Western Sydney apartment on Dharug Country is crowded with boxes of materials and new canvases. She came back from a residency in Italy in late 2022 and since then she’s been living alongside her work, preparing for her solo exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 and for the Biennale of Sydney next year. The cohabitation has been intense and sometimes messy, but Kain says studio life is teaching her new confidence.
