What’s On: Art Events and Openings

Browse upcoming art events, exhibitions and gallery openings

  • Gurindji Freedom Banners

    Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House 18 King George Terrace, Parkes, ACT, Australia

    Mumkurla-nginyi-ma parrngalinyparla – from the darkness into the light. The Gurindji freedom banners are a collection of 10 hand-painted banners created in 2000 by the Gurindji to share the community’s version of the historic 1966 Wave Hill walk-off. The walk-off, or Gurindji strike, led by Gurindji man Vincent Lingiari was an important event in Australia’s land rights movement. Many of the 35 Gurindji people involved in the [...]

  • Restoring the Past

    Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Dunn Pl, Hobart, TAS, Australia

    Step into the world of art conservation and discover the intricate process of preserving history. Restoring the Past unveils the meticulous treatments of three remarkable nineteenth-century paintings and their ornate frames, including the portraits of Thomas and Catherine Chapman and a landscape by John Glover. This captivating exhibition offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the techniques and stories that bring Tasmania’s artistic heritage back to life. Whether you're [...]

  • Iconic Loved Unexpected

    Newcastle Art Gallery 1 Laman St, Newcastle, NSW, Australia

    Experience Newcastle Art Gallery’s icons, loved favourites, and unexpected gems in our inaugural exhibition, Iconic Loved Unexpected. Across every space in the expanded Gallery, we celebrate our nationally renowned collection with a curated selection from more than 7,000 works of art by local, national and global artists. This multi-faceted display foregrounds First Nations art and traces the development of Australian art over more than 200 years, as well as [...]

  • Group Exhibition: Affording Truth

    Wangaratta Art Gallery 56 Ovens St, Wangaratta, VIC, Australia

    Affording Truth explores how we perceive and navigate truth in an era of global uncertainty, using the framework of affordances – the qualities of objects or environments that suggest or enable particular actions and interactions. Perceived, false or hidden, affordances are everywhere and key to how humans navigate the world. Featuring works by Alison Alder (NSW), Robert Andrew (QLD), Lorraine Connelly-Northey (NSW), Lauren Dunn (VIC), Honor Freeman (SA), [...]

  • New South Vol. 2: Recent Sculpture & Installation Art

    Hazelhurst Arts Centre 782 Kingsway, Gymea, NSW, Australia

    New South Vol. 2 presents recent examples of sculpture and installation art from across Southern Australasia. Bringing together an intergenerational group of 17 artists, the exhibition offers a snapshot of current sculptural practice and the ideas shaping it today. A key theme of the exhibition is inter-relations, what happens between objects, materials, built environments and viewers. The artworks are presented together in shared space, allowing them to interact, [...]

  • The ArtHITects (Gary Carsley and Ren Jie Teoh): C*Town Conservatory

    Campbelltown Arts Centre 1 Art Gallery Rd, Campbelltown, New South Wales, Australia

    C*Town Conservatory reimagines the history and architecture of the conservatory — once a symbol of aristocratic prestige and colonial exploitation of the natural world — as a contemporary, inclusive space for community, reflection, and creative exchange. Confabulated by The ArtHITects (Gary Carsley and Ren Jie Teoh), this immersive installation transforms the glass-walled foyer of Campbelltown Arts Centre into a fantastical, illusionistic environment reflecting on its 20-year history of commissioning artwork. [...]

  • Kate McKenzie Lewis: Ember

    Bett Gallery Level 1/65 Murray St, Hobart,, TAS, Australia

    Bett Gallery presents Kate McKenzie Lewis’s debut solo exhibition, Ember. This series examines bushfire-affected landscapes, capturing moments between destruction and renewal. The works reflect the dual nature of fire, balancing loss and transformation while celebrating nature’s resilience and ability to recover. Drawing on experience, observation, and research, Lewis weaves memories of smoke-filled skies, glowing horizons, and fire-impacted terrain with broader environmental themes, exploring how we perceive, remember, and [...]

  • Group Exhibition: Stockmen

    8 Hele Gallery 8 Hele Cres, Ciccone, NT, Australia

    It is with a view to capturing the totality of the pastoral influence upon remote Australia that Stockmen brings a range of visual ideas together, from dot painting to visionary landscapes. It is often said that contemporary art charts ideas of the future, while in this exhibition it is possible to envisage the fullness of the lived experience of a quickly receding past. These artists offer a sense of [...]

  • Natalya Hughes: The Interior

    University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery USC Sunshine Coast, 90 Sippy Downs Dr, Sippy Downs, QLD, Australia

    Can we use the talking cure to solve society’s ‘problem’ with women? The Interior invites audiences into an exaggerated consultation room, playfully furnished for psychoanalysis. Natalya Hughes’s immersive installation—combining sculptural seating, richly patterned soft furnishings, and uncanny objets d’art, nestled around a hand-painted mural—generates a stimulating space to unpack our collective and unconscious biases. Interested in the role of women and their historical absence from positions of power, [...]

  • Amanda Bennetts: Fragmented, divided—yet whole

    University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery USC Sunshine Coast, 90 Sippy Downs Dr, Sippy Downs, QLD, Australia

    Fragmented, divided—yet whole brings together recent works by Amanda Bennetts that use time as both material and metric for understanding the body. In Bennetts’ practice, time is not linear but lived. It is stretched, slowed, ruptured, and suspended by the realities of living in a body in flux that refuses normative rhythms and constantly requires new forms of understanding. Across these works, Bennetts moves between different geographies and [...]

  • Jo Darvall: Changing States

    Fox Galleries 63 Wellington Street, Collingwood, VIC, Australia

    “Changing States builds on ideas developed during my 2024 Edith Cowan University and Western Australian Parliament Artist in Residence program, as well as my recent group exhibition Paper Thin, Skin Deep at Mundaring Arts Centre 2026 curated by Annette Peterson. The work explores what it means to inhabit a body—through material, metaphorical, and cultural layers of skin. With over thirty years of experience across Australasia, including a decade working in [...]

  • Group Exhibition: Through the Window

    Canberra Glassworks 11 Wentworth Avenue, Kingston, ACT

    This exhibition brings together the artists of Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands Art Centre, Vanessa Inkamala, Kathy Inkamala, Dellina Inkamala and Raelene Inkamala (Western Arrernte), and Jordan Benson in a dialogue of tradition and innovation. Featuring artists from Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands Art Centre in Mparntwe (Alice Springs, NT), this exhibition celebrates the enduring watercolour legacy of Albert Namatjira alongside new works by Melbourne-based artist Jordan Benson, who [...]

  • Juno Gemes and Robert Adamson on the Hawkesbury River

    Grace Cossington Smith Gallery 1666 Pacific Hwy, Wahroonga, NSW, Australia

    Juno Gemes and Robert Adamson on the Hawkesbury River celebrates the powerful creative partnership of photographer Juno Gemes and poet Robert Adamson, whose intertwined practices reveal a shared artistic, intellectual, and activist life shaped by collaboration and place.

  • Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2026

    The Art Gallery Art Road, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes delight and surprise audiences every year with fresh presentations of contemporary Australian painting and sculpture. At its heart, the Archibald Prize is about storytelling. Who are the people our artists have chosen to paint and what do their portraits reveal to us? In this exhibition, Australian and New Zealand artists use portraiture to share the beauty and complexity of our times. [...]

    $32
  • Little Orange Studio x AGNSW: Pet Palace

    Campbelltown Arts Centre 1 Art Gallery Rd, Campbelltown, New South Wales, Australia

    Presented alongside the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2026 at the Art Gallery of NSW, this salon-style wall features portraits of a different kind, not of people, but of other beings deserving of our affection – beloved pets, spirit guides and creature friends. Created by the artists of Little Orange Studio in Campbelltown, Pet Palace is a celebration of the unbreakable bonds (and knowing looks) between people and animals. For the [...]

  • Wayne Youle: Back in Five

    The Dowse Art Museum 45 Laings Road, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

    Back in Five surveys twenty years of one of Aotearoa’s most bold and distinctive contemporary artists. Wayne Youle’s sculptural practice charts the passage of time not just as a theme but as a material that shapes, stretches, and reframes meaning. With his trademark playfulness and wit and working across a broad range of media, schoolboy pranks meet sharp cultural critique. Youle tackles big ideas—masculinity, fatherhood, colonial legacy, and [...]

  • Ans Westra: Jeetje

    The Dowse Art Museum 45 Laings Road, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

    Jeetje is an invitation to re-examine the work of Ans Westra (1936–2023), one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most significant documentary photographers. Jeetje  is a Dutch expression of surprise — and, in this case, delight. It sets the tone for this selection drawn from Westra’s vast archive of funny, tender, and poignant photographs spanning the 1960s to the 1980s. From poetry readings in graveyards to spirited street protests, from competitive dog shows [...]

  • SIGNIFICANT

    D Lan Galleries 40 Exhibition Street, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Now in its second decade, D Lan Galleries flagship annual exhibition opens simultaneously across all three galleries, offering collectors rare access to historic and museum-quality paintings and sculpture by Australia’s most celebrated First Nations artists. At the foundation of this year’s exhibition is a selection of early Papunya paintings from the seminal 1971–72 period, including works by Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa, Johnny Warangula Tjupurrula and Uta Uta Tjangala. [...]

  • COLLECT 2026

    The Lock-Up 90 Hunter Street, Newcastle, NSW, Australia

    COLLECT returns to The Lock-Up for its ninth year, this time bringing together 126 artists—from early career to established—in a bold, energetic snapshot of Newcastle and the Hunter’s creative ecology. A much-loved annual fundraising exhibition, COLLECT champions the region’s artistic talent while raising vital funds for The Lock-Up’s ongoing program as a not-for-profit, independent contemporary art space. This year, COLLECT includes nationally significant artists such as Michael Bell, Lottie Consalvo, James Drinkwater, Locust Jones, [...]

  • Jasper Knight: collage, prints and works on paper

    Mosman Art Gallery 1 Art Gallery Way, Mosman, NSW, Australia

    Jasper Knight: collage, prints and works on paper celebrates over twenty years of artmaking using paper-based methods of image making. Jasper, who grew up close to Mosman Art Gallery on Sydney’s North Shore, has long documented local landscapes. He came to prominence with his use of found materials and enamel house paint, imbuing his landscapes with industrial aesthetics. Deeper looking at these works reveals an affection and reverence [...]