What’s On: Art Events and Openings

Browse upcoming art events, exhibitions and gallery openings

All Day

Close Encounters – Birds of the Blue Mountains

NPWS BLUE MOUNTAINS HERITAGE CENTRE End Govetts Leap Rd, Blackheath

A photographic exhibition of birdlife found in the Blue Mountains of NSW. Showing great detail these images capture the unique characteristics of birds that make the Blue Mountains their home.

Free
Ongoing

Gurindji Freedom Banners

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

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 [...]

Wayne Youle: Back in Five

The Dowse Art Museum 45 Laings Road, Lower Hutt

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

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 [...]

Jessie French: Material Conditions: Systems Beneath Surfaces

Warrnambool Art Gallery 26 Liebig St, Warrnambool

Jessie French’s exhibition, Material Conditions: Systems Beneath Surfaces, examines the industrial systems embedded within the materials that shape our inhabited spaces and their resultant environmental and ethical consequences. Established systems, optimised for efficiency, low cost, and standardisation, dictate how physical resources are produced, circulated, and utilised in our daily environments. Many of these materials rely on chemical additives including binders, stabilisers and coatings to enable their rapid manufacturing. [...]

Gurindji Freedom Banners

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

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 [...]

I Like the Wobbly Bits

Ellipsis Gallery 41 Crown St, Woolloomooloo

Opening: Thurs 3 Sept, 6:00pm What do you get when you take a group of creatives and transport them to desert regions? Lots of delicious “wobbly bits“. That’s how recently deceased art world icon David Hockney is said to have described his relationship with the land and with drawing. But beneath the levity sits something larger. Art in the land transforms physical geography into a living, spiritual [...]

Free