This year has seen a flurry of new activity in Australia’s art scene, with a number of new gallery spaces opening up across the country. Here are four more new or relaunched spaces you need to check out, from a new Sydney location to an online platform aiming to revolutionise the art market.
AARTE Network
An online gallery and retail space describing itself as “the future of buying and selling art”, AARTE Network is a zero-percent commission gallery turning the art market on its head by enabling artists to sell directly to the consumer via a subscription service. The site, which launched in April, is founded by Jack Freeman of FREEMAN Gallery and financial executive advisor Michael Fletcher, who were motivated by witnessing “a massive gap in the market for young emerging artists that until now were undiscovered…At AARTE Network we encourage and promote investing in new raw, un-taped up-incoming talent, creating a new economy within the global art sales arena.”
Ames Yavuz, second Sydney gallery
Yavuz Gallery was founded by Can Yavuz in Singapore in 2010 before opening up a space in Sydney in 2019, becoming the first commercial art gallery from Asia to establish a permanent space in Australia. Earlier this year Yavuz Gallery was renamed Ames Yavuz to incorporate Glen Ames—Yavuz’s partner in both life and business. Now, Ames Yavuz has opened a second Sydney location at 114 Commonwealth Street in Surry Hills. Spanning 300 square metres and featuring three-metre-high ceilings, the former petrol station now exists as an exhibition space for the contemporary commercial gallery—which represents the likes of Vincent Namatjira and Patricia Piccinini, among many others. The inaugural exhibition, MEMORY/MYTH, features film and video installations from Thania Petersen, Stanislava Pinchuk, Richard Bell, Brook Andrew and Joy Gregory.
Hughes, Sydney
Sydney gallerist, collector and art historian Evan Hughes, son of the late legendary art dealer Ray Hughes, has announced a collaboration with Olsen Gallery that includes a new gallery space opening in Darlinghurst, Sydney. A Hughes family-related gallery has existed in various iterations throughout the years—first in 1969 with Ray at the helm as Gallery One Eleven in Brisbane, then as The Hughes Gallery in Sydney, and now simply as Hughes, an Olsen Gallery-associated space offering up an array of Australian and international art.
Mary Cherry, Melbourne
Opened in 2021, Mary Cherry is a contemporary art space in Collingwood, Melbourne that consistently produces a dynamic program of emerging and established artists. Their last show was in October 2023, but they have relaunched for 2024 with a group exhibition called Love, Labour, Lost featuring Eliza Hutchison, Ruth O’Leary, Madeline Simm, Aylsa McHugh and Kristina Tsoulis-Raey. They have a number of solo exhibitions to come for 2024 and the start of 2025.
Suggested Reading
65,000 Years brings truth telling to art history
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.
Jane O'Sullivan
Oslo Davis reimagines art terms
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.
Oslo Davis
The major exhibitions open in each capital city this summer
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.
Art Guide Australia
From here to infinity with Yayoi Kusama
Ahead of the National Gallery of Victoria’s major retrospective on singular Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, we invited four artists to respond to the influence of Kusama on their own practice—and meditate on what her work means to them.
Art Guide Australia
Ben Quilty on painting paradoxes
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.
Georgia Spain
The immersive storytelling of Leah King-Smith
rhythm wRites, a new exhibition at QUT Art Museum, spans 30 years of Bigambul artist Leah King-Smith’s manifold art practice, covering painting, photography, sound and animation.