Grow your collection and nurture the future of contemporary art 🖼️

We are delighted to announce that the Firstdraft Fundraiser is back and will be online from Monday 28 July and in-person from 1 - 3 August!

Naoise Halloran-Mackay explores ideas of shelter and the ways in which we may build, seek, or offer it.

Intricate Rituals traces the uneasy space between boyhood and manhood—where affection becomes obscured by expectation, and kinaesthetic desire is tangled in myth. Through a darkened installation of four sculptural assemblages, the exhibition reframes domestic masculinity as a series of obscure and sacred rituals.

This exhibition considers the function of art in articulating opposition, fostering solidarity and imagining alternative futures.

The series of prideful Tongan flags recontextualizes the Eurocentric standard to fit the Pasifika diaspora’s post-colonial framework. Continuing to unravel ancestral histories through a post-colonial lens as a forgotten Tongan excluded from the culture of the ancestors the work juxtaposes contemporary punk sub- cultural influences from the postmodernist period with ancient ancestral history.

In an era of increasing polarisation, political, cultural, social, and economic, a question arises: why don’t those seeking genuine change engage more with those who think differently? People often voice their beliefs within familiar circles, both online and in person, reinforcing opposition rather than encouraging understanding.

Garden Variety Dykes is a group show inspired by the PDF of the same name; ‘Garden Variety Dykes: Lesbian Traditions in Gardening’ edited by Irene Reti and Valerie Jean Chase in 1994. This exhibition dives into queer ecologies, puts forward questions surrounding the continuation of a queer linage in climate activism and explores sapphic yearning in the garden space.

Nelson Nghe aims to illuminate the often "invisible" nature of gambling harm, especially its impact on loved ones. Through evocative found objects and images, Nghe reimagines hidden domestic moments, exploring the emotional toll that gambling harm inflicts on those indirectly affected.

ALGAEIC INTENT investigates the ways in which Algae thrive in the wreckage of capitalism (it grows in response to the excesses of agriculture and suffocates fish via depletion of oxygen) and how this can operate as a mirror/reflective distortion of our intermingled biological actions and porous relations to matter.

Motherhood and fertility have been extensively represented in creative practice for both their pictorial qualities and in the documentation of lived experiences. These representations continue to play an important role in shaping public perceptions of womanhood, while infertility is underrepresented, silenced or deemed contentious – often framed in terms of lack or failure.

This project reassembles everyday life scenes in a conned space to generate an analog of a nocturnal urban park, reflecting the ongoing colonisation of the late night.

Press against; Soften into explores fat as a material, an identity and a form of embodiment. The exhibition responds to conventions in contemporary art that distinguish between normal and fat bodies.

Some Sort of Notation takes its name from the journals of Alexander Marshack: an archaeologist who, in 1964, published a study on seemingly random, human-made notches on palaeolithic bones. Adamant that the markings were far from meaningless, he proposed they were complex lunar observations— a proto-writing system. “It is clearly neither art nor decoration,” he’d said, “but some sort of notation.”

(maelstrom) presents new works by South Australian artists Nicholas Hanisch and Nicole Clift. The two bodies of work, oil paintings and hand-woven tapestries, are responses to tangible and intangible manifestations of density, respectively. Nicholas Hanisch’s small oil paintings on canvas and bronze present intense tonal studies of sudden force, such as volcanic eruptions, fireworks, black holes, meteor showers and billowing smoke clouds.

This exhibition revisits selected works from Danish Quapoor’s recent good grief series, recontextualising them amongst related works. Quapoor’s trademark illustrative paintings on stretched paper feature alongside wall drawings and sculptures. Collectively, the works allude to diverse concepts including shifting personal identities, familial relationships, corporeality, grief, memorialisation, frustration, allergies, expectations, gender roles and sexuality.

'Working Tiles' is an exhibition featuring works from 14 artists, designers, and makers, all operating within a shared studio environment. ‘Tiles’ gallery and studios are located on Gadigal and Wangal country, Lewisham.

We have partnered with WestWords to deliver our writers program this year.