Central Belonging Art Award is an art prize exhibition that represents the rich diversity of the artistic communities around and within the Central West region. The Award returns for its second year. It showcases established and emerging artists that are local to Cowra Shire and the surrounding areas. Artists from the following local government areas are part of the finalist exhibition: Bathurst, Bland, Blayney, Cabonne, Cowra, Forbes, Hilltops, [...]

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, [...]

‘Some memory cannot be documented. Some memory lives in the body.’ — Dr Natalie Harkin, Archival-Poetics (Vagabond Press, 2019) My Blood Sings Old Songs gathers artists who capture what is not always said—but deeply felt. The works in this exhibition resonate over time, unraveling layers of the body and the quiet weight of being seen, where movement becomes a vessel for remembrance. Hovering between an ending and a beginning, each gesture [...]

Positioning themselves within the frame, these artists craft memories and autobiographical narratives to explore truth, identity, culture, ancestry, and politics. Through deeply personal cultural and familial histories, the works reflect on lived experience while highlighting the ongoing impacts of Australia’s colonial past on First Nations peoples. Featured artists include Hayley Millar Baker, Michael Cook, Jahkarli Felicitas Romanis, Damien Shen, Dr Christian Thompson AO, and Keemon Willams.

MARS presents Chun Yin Rainbow Chan’s inaugural exhibition, Continuum. Continuum brings together a selection of works that reimagine the bridal laments of Hong Kong’s 圍頭/Weitou women, to whom Chan has deep ancestral ties. Through silk paintings, experimental calligraphy and audiovisual works, she translates these culturally endangered songs into contemporary forms that preserve their subversive feminist voices while reflecting on loss, resilience and solidarity.

We all have an instinct to seek guidance and ask questions of the future, especially during periods of uncertainty. Throughout history, people have looked upward, outward, and inward for signs of what lies ahead. A GREAT AND WONDROUS SIGN inhabits that same space of questioning. Searching for answers and holding tension between hope and apprehension, faith and doubt. This is mirrored in materiality, combining the longevity and certainty of [...]

“The worlds are busy and carefully laid out, take a look around,” shares David Booth about the works in his latest exhibition Rearranging the Universe. Extending on his practice of world building, Booth has created a library of stamps which reshape, move and rearrange with each print and reconfiguration. About this new body of work, he shares: “I’ve been building a new practice of play and experimentation in the studio; [...]

Kerry McInnis has been painting and drawing the River for many decades. The focus of her renditions of a waterway, wet or dry, has always been to represent the interconnectedness between the river and the earth that shapes it – to investigate the rhythms of liquid and solid form, to layer in paint the inconstancy of the river in both its power and vulnerability. Moving away from [...]

Barbara Dawson’s work is a contemplation of senescence — ageing seen not as decline, but as a layered experience shaped by growth, memory, and renewal. Using the life cycles of plants as metaphor, she explores the human journey: its fragility, quiet strength, and continual transformation. These works trace the parallel landscapes of inner and outer worlds, finding beauty in both blossoming and fading, in change, endurance, and [...]