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.

There is a red chair that once existed in an adoption agency in Seoul between 1983-1991 that was sat on by every adoptee for their 'first photo'. This year, 36 years after the artist’s ‘red chair photo’ was taken, she contacted the agency to enquire about this red chair and if it might still be there. The social worker’s only response––‘The red chair in your picture does not exist’. In the potent slippage of translation, correspondence and negation, this exhibition is a performative affirmation that, ‘yes, it does!’

un/conscious is a large-scale artwork that features a collection of sixteen brightly coloured tactile canvases, creating a kaleidoscopic wall of colour. The textiles featured are recycled offcuts of vintage towels from Re/lax Remade, a sustainably focused, Sydney-based fashion label.

still waters run deep brings together the work of five artists who live or have lived on Wilyakali and Barkindji / Barkandji Country in Far West NSW: Barbara Quayle, Blake Griffiths, Dan Schulz, Tannya Quayle, and Verity Nunan.

Using remnants of the world that her Mum, Aunties, and Nan lived in, Jasmine Miikika Craciun celebrates the love, life and strength they embody. Like the beautiful coloured glass and crockery that has stood the test of time on the sandy flats of Wilcannia long after the humpies have gone, the matriarchs of her lineage do the same.

Prita Tina Yeganeh

My Soil Farsh فرش (Carpet) expresses the profound experience of placemaking through transforming and innovating a cultural object. For Prita Tina Yeganeh, the connection stems from the cultural values and rituals of kinship and community-building deeply embedded in the familial environment that nurtured her sense of belonging as a child.

Magic Cave grew from research Emmaline Zanelli began in early 2023 into the social culture and family dynamics surrounding the mining industry in South Australia, with a focus on youth. Influenced by the young people she met and their interests, Magic Cave is an absurdist fantasy interpretation of life underground

Adele Warner and Gigi Malherbe

Cybermancy brings together Gigi Malherbe’s and Adele Warner’s meditations on the short-comings of the human body. As the suffix “mancy” denotes, artworks cast a speculative gaze to the near contemporary future to examine the integration of technology with the physicality and decay of the body.

Celine Cheung

Affection brings together artworks that explore ideas of obsession and objectification; fantasy and culpability; sentimentality and subjectivity. The suite of works sees to the artist inhabiting different roles as victim and violator, to invoke discussions of power, agency and gender dynamics.

Katrina Garvey and Lisa Kurtz

This project focuses on the ways deaf and hearing bodies can un/intentionally be gatekeepers, intermediaries or couriers in spaces. porous not only references the collaborative experiences between the artists, but also the way the audience connects those experiences.

Ali Tahayori

I will meet you there, came to realization by the contribution of over twenty friends, family members, artists and acquaintances. The project aims to reflect on the notion of "home" from a collective perspective.

Kate Coyne

Kate Coyne's studio practice explores how experience can be embodied and the nature of the relationship between the body/experience and materiality in a socio-political feminist context. Temporality, the progression of past, present and future is inherent, with materials discolouring over time and gravity taking over form and identity in the same way that it does with an ageing, sagging body.

Kate Coyne; Sehej Kaur x Kaylee Rankin; emoeba h♡rtbridge; Bonnie Huang; Keesha Catherine Field

Firstdraft’s pop-up classroom, Class S2, calls for you to tap into your child-like self with the materials, knowledge and memories collected and experienced by who you are today, making objects in experimental and hopeful ways. 

Ali Noble

What ideologies are subverted when curtains assert versatility, sensuality and movement in spaces typically defined by fixedness? Cubbyhouse(Nothing is Certain, said the Curtain) merges the familiarity of Ali Noble’s existing textile-based practise, with the exploration of a new format, video.