“We regret to inform you… that, despite receiving only a few entries of pretty average quality, you still didn’t win the life-changing $250,000 art prize.” Illustrator Oslo Davis looks at the sting of rejection.
Suggested Reading
Book Preview: Speech Patterns by Nadia Hernández and Jon Campbell
As I walk through the suburban streets, I find myself thinking about the publication Speech Patterns: Nadia Hernández & Jon Campbell. It accompanied their two-person exhibition at The Art Gallery of Western Australia in 2022, which explored their shared preoccupations with class, identity and value systems.
Jackson McLaren
Gordon Hookey is effecting change
Waanyi artist Gordon Hookey has been creating artwork for more than three decades. Describing his style as pictograms of a scenario, with images and symbols connecting a sprawling narrative, Hookey’s work, which is now showing at Plimsoll Gallery, is imbued with elements of activism, pop culture and lived experience.
Community, connection and camera obscura with Claire Conroy
Community is the foundation of Claire Conroy’s exhibition at Lismore Regional Gallery. As a new arrival to the area, her art practice ties her to fellow artists, while her medium, camera obscura, allows for a deepening of social connections with her sitters as they commit to the shoot.
Emma-Kate Wilson
Bruce Johnson McLean appointed First Nations curatorial fellow of the 2026 Biennale of Sydney
Bruce Johnson McLean, one of Australia’s leading voices on First Nations art, has been appointed the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain First Nations curatorial fellow for the next Biennale of Sydney. Steve Dow talks with Johnson McLean on his storied history, and what he hopes to achieve in the 2026 Biennale.
Steve Dow
What the bones know
Blak In-Justice, now showing at Heide Museum of Modern Art, challenges the brutal systems that shape Indigenous incarceration in Australia—while charting the healing power of ancestral knowledge in the process.
Maya Hodge
The 25th Biennale of Sydney announces theme and the first 37 artists and collectives
Curated by artistic director Hoor Al Qasimi, the program is centred by the theme of Rememory. Originating from author Toni Morrison, the ideas seek to explore the intersection of memory and history—revisiting, reconstructing and reclaiming histories that have been erased or repressed.