VAULT’s Must-See Guide to Sydney Contemporary 2026
Sydney Contemporary celebrates its 10th edition this September, bringing together more than 100 exhibitors and 500 artists from Australia, New Zealand, Asia and around the world at Carriageworks. Since launching in 2013, the fair has welcomed more than 100,000 visitors and generated more than $154 million in art sales, establishing itself as one of the most significant events on the Australasian art calendar. Alongside its gallery presentations, Sydney Contemporary’s program encompasses large-scale installations, live performances, talks, tours and workshops, creating a meeting point for artists, collectors, curators and audiences.
For its landmark tenth edition, the fair presents a broad survey of contemporary practice, from significant First Nations artists and historically important works to experimental painting, photography, sculpture, textiles and works on paper. VAULT’s Editor-in-Chief Alison Kubler highlights the standout presentations that cannot be missed.
Image credit: Sydney Contemporary 2025. Courtesy of Sydney Contemporary.
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
Booth B05
Sydney
Jenny Watson, Mia Boe
Generational and deeply personal, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery’s presentation pairs Jenny Watson with Mia Boe. Watson revisits significant works from her history alongside new paintings, while Boe debuts a new body of work shaped by personal experience and broader colonial narratives. Dream-like imagery and questions of selfhood connect the two practices, while their distinct visual languages reveal very different approaches to memory and identity.
Image credit: Mia Boe, School night, 2026. Courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
A Secondary Eye
Booth D04
Sydney
Ken Thaiday Snr. and a comprehensive collection of Aurukun sculpture
A Secondary Eye presents FAR NORTH, bringing together historical sculpture from the First Nations community of Aurukun with works by renowned Torres Strait Islander artist Ken Thaiday Snr. Produced before, during and after the landmark 1996 Wik Decision, the Aurukun carvings hold ancestral stories, customary law and cultural histories within their forms. Accompanying the sculptures is previously unseen archival footage recorded in Aurukun in 1997, offering an intimate glimpse into the community and the Elders involved in the period surrounding the Wik Decision.
Image credit: KEN THAIDAY SNR, Dhari,1990, plywood, feathers, paint, and PVC plastic, 150 x 110 x 35cm (irregular.)
Curatorial+Co.
Booth E02
Sydney
André de Vanny, Lynn Savery, Dr Saffron Newey, Eugenie Kawabata
For Sydney Contemporary, Curatorial+Co. brings together four Australian artists who approach landscape as a space of transformation and imagination. André de Vanny’s richly worked surfaces bear traces of staining, folding, sanding and environmental exposure, while Eugenie Kawabata turns industrial textile waste into organic forms inspired by Tasmania’s Takayna Rainforest. Saffron Newey looks to digital archives and online culture to reconsider our relationship with place, while Lynn Savery reimagines the Romantic landscape through psychologically charged figurative painting.
Image credit: Saffron Newey, Diana and the nostalgic horse, 2026, oil on linen, 58 x 45cm. Courtesy of the artist and Curatorial+Co.
Onespace
Booth WP06
Brisbane
Teho Ropeyarn, Brian Robinson
Two significant First Nations printmakers from Cairns form the focus of Onespace’s presentation. Brian Robinson’s Abundance of Country draws on his recent public sculpture Floriate, translating Queensland’s seven watersheds into flowering plants, ancestral mythology and Torres Strait marine life. While, Teho Ropeyarn’s works carry the seasonal rhythms of Cape York, reflecting on wet, dry and burnt landscapes alongside the enduring connections between Country, family and cultural memory.
Image credit: Teho Ropeyarn, Cape York Peninsula Development Road State I, 2025. Photo: Louis Lim. Courtesy of Onespace
STATION
Booth B14
Melbourne | Sydney
Laith McGregor, Dane Lovett
What happens when the familiar is slowed down and closely observed? STATION brings together Laith McGregor and Dane Lovett, whose practices transform everyday subjects through meticulous attention to material and perception. McGregor’s graphite drawings find subtle shifts of light and texture in ordinary objects, while Lovett magnifies and distorts flora and foliage until representation begins to dissolve into abstraction.
Image credit: Dane Lovett, Delta Steam Dream, 2025, oil and acrylic on linen. Courtesy of STATION
FOX JENSEN & FOX JENSEN McCRORY
Booth A01
Sydney | Auckland
Jan Albers, Aida Tomescu, Gideon Rubin, Callum Innes, Mark Francis, Cindy Leong, Ian Davenport, Niyaz Najafov
Colour, form and sensibility provide the connective tissue for Fox Jensen & Fox Jensen McCrory’s international presentation. Major British painters Ian Davenport, Callum Innes and Mark Francis appear alongside Jan Albers, Gideon Rubin, Aida Tomescu and Niyaz Najafov. Moving between abstraction and figuration, the selection brings together works of restraint, intensity and extraordinary material presence, including Najafov’s raw and hallucinatory paintings, presented in Australia for the first time.
Image credit: Jan Albers, stRawbeRRyfields, 2024. Courtesy of FOX JENSEN & FOX JENSEN McCRORY.
PARKER Contemporary
Booth WP04
Brisbane
Chris Hagen, Matthew Newkirk, Melissa J Harvey, Alethea Richter, Ross Woodrow, Matthew Hurdle
Paper refuses to remain flat in PARKER Contemporary’s presentation for Sydney Contemporary’s 10th edition. Across six artists, printmaking becomes sculptural and tactile, with carving, layering, pulping, spraying, casting and impression leaving evidence of pressure, touch and time. Unique works sit alongside selected editions, proposing paper and print not as secondary forms, but as materially rich and experimental modes of contemporary artmaking.
Image credit: Matthew Hurdle, Untitled, 2026, hand-made paper made from pulped hessian mounted on board, 21x29cm. Courtesy of PARKER Contemporary
Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert
Booth B06
Sydney
Rhoda Ting & Mikkel Bojesen, Angela Valamanesh, Donna Marcus, Jacky Redgate, Sally Smart, Yusuké Takemura, Olive Gill-Hille, Rive Roshan, Marion Borgelt, Tammy Kanat, Edward Waring
A wide-ranging survey of contemporary Australian practice unfolds across Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert’s booth, moving between painting, textiles, photography, marble, glass and ceramics. At its centre is Angela Valamanesh’s Morticia’s Eggs, a major ceramic commission created specifically for the fair. Around it, new works by Jacky Redgate, Yusuké Takemura, Donna Marcus, Sally Smart, Rhoda Ting & Mikkel Bojesen and others demonstrate the breadth of the gallery’s programme.
Image credit: Sally Smart, Wall flower GRID, 2024, synthetic polymer paint and ink on fabric and paper with collage elements, 76 x 56cm. Courtesy of Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert
The Commercial
Booth B07
Sydney
Lillian O’Neil, Stephen Ralph, Augusta Vinall-Richardson, Mitch Cairns
The Commercial brings together four artists whose practices share an appetite for material experimentation. Stephen Ralph’s hand-carved hardwood busts form a striking focal point, alongside Lillian O’Neil’s large-scale analogue collages and new paintings and sculptures by Mitch Cairns and Augusta Vinall-Richardson. Together, the works move between figuration, abstraction and object-making, foregrounding the physical processes embedded in contemporary art.
Image credit: Stephen Ralph, Messenger I, 2025, basalt. Courtesy of the artist and The Commercial
PAULNACHE
Booth A06
Gisborne
Glen Hayward
Glen Hayward turns the language of surveillance into something strangely handmade in Better Paul Saul. Carved and painted wooden security cameras and signs, based on photographs taken across London, Austria, Switzerland, Sydney and New York, are positioned just above eye level. Instead of watching us, Hayward’s cameras appear to return our gaze, transforming the simple act of looking in public into the subject of the work.
Image credit: Glen Hayward, Whitehall place (duct tape repaired cord), 2026, rimu, paint. Courtesy of PAULNACHE.
LON Gallery
Booth D06
Melbourne
Adrienne Gaha, Stephen Benwell, Kate Ellis
Classicism takes on stranger and more contemporary forms at LON Gallery, where Adrienne Gaha, Stephen Benwell and Kate Ellis work across sculpture, ceramics and painting. Gaha fragments and reconfigures art-historical imagery, Benwell’s intimate glazed sculptures echo Greco-Roman statuary and 18th-century figurines, and Ellis creates unsettling hybrid forms from materials including beeswax and poodle fur. Across the three practices, familiar histories become sites for ambiguity, humour and transformation.
Image credit: Kate Ellis,‘Untitled, Poodle/Human’, 2018, beeswax, damar resin, silk thread, velvet cushion, birch wood, (part of an ongoing series, 2004-2018).
Nanda\Hobbs
Booth A07
Sydney
Anton Forde, Selma Coulthard, Lottie Consalvo, Nicholas Blowers, Jonathan Dalton, Rodger Swainston
Nanda\Hobbs brings together Anton Forde, Selma Coulthard, Lottie Consalvo, Nicholas Blowers, Jonathan Dalton and Rodger Swainston in a presentation reflecting the breadth of the gallery’s contemporary programme. Across painting and related practices, the artists offer distinct approaches to material, image and lived experience.
Image credit: Jonathan Dalton, The Eyes of Painters and Goldfinches, 2026, Oil on linen, 55 x 60cm. Courtesy Nanda\Hobbs
Void_Melbourne
Booth D08
Melbourne
Alex Walker, Nick Devlin, Justin Trendall
Light, gesture and cultural memory converge at Void_Melbourne, where Alex Walker, Nick Devlin and Justin Trendall work across photography, painting, screen printing and textiles. Walker’s handmade colour darkroom prints make light itself the subject and agent of photographic creation. Devlin builds near-vibrational surfaces from countless gestural marks, while Trendall traces relationships between history, identity and networks of influence through screen printing and textiles.
Image credit: Alex Walker, Portal 01, 2026, unique colour darkroom print with polished brass frame, 141 × 90 cm. Courtesy of the artist & Void_Melbourne.
Gallerysmith
Booth C09
Melbourne
Ema Shin, Valerie Sparks, Kate Ballis, Neville French, Eva Fernandez
At Gallerysmith, historical visual languages are pulled into the present through a tactile mix of textiles, embroidery, ceramics and photography. Ema Shin’s intricately constructed textile hearts sit alongside Neville French’s porcelain vessels, while Kate Ballis draws on the ornamental language of 18th-century Jasperware. Eva Fernandez combines postcard-sized photographs with hand embroidery and red beading, and Valerie Sparks brings the geological world into view through striking CT scans of natural forms.
Image credit: Ema Shin, Hearts of Absent Women 21, 2025. Courtesy of Gallerysmith
CASSANDRA BIRD
Booth B13
Sydney | Paris
Grace Lillian Lee, Danie Mellor, George Cooley
CASSANDRA BIRD brings Grace Lillian Lee, Danie Mellor and George Cooley together in a presentation concerned with culture, identity and belonging. The three artists offer distinct perspectives on contemporary experience, connecting personal and cultural histories across Australian and international contexts.
Image credit: Grace Lillian Lee, Belonging 3,2022. Courtesy of Cassandra Bird.
D Lan Galleries
Booth B15
Melbourne | Sydney | New York
Cliff Reid, Gunybi Ganambarr, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford
D Lan Galleries returns to Sydney Contemporary with a presentation centred on some of Australia’s most significant First Nations artists. The work of late Ngaanyatjarra artist Cliff Reid forms a particular focus, with figurative paintings and rare compositions drawn from men’s ceremonial designs. Alongside these are works by Yolŋu artists Gunybi Ganambarr and Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, following their inclusion in the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ Yolŋu Power, as well as a rare group of works by late Gija artist and lawman Paddy Nyunkuny Bedford.
Image credit: Tiger Palpatja, Piltati, 2010. Courtesy of D LAN
Gallery LNL
Booth D03
Sydney
Kevin Connor, Kim Syyoung, Koo Bohnchang, Gary Deirmendjian, Sassy Park
Gallery LNL presents Lament, a meditation on loss, memory and the things that cannot be neatly resolved. Working predominantly in black, Kevin Connor, Kim Syyoung, Koo Bohnchang, Gary Deirmendjian and Sassy Park approach lament through different histories and sensibilities. The presentation considers art as a space in which memory can remain unsettled, and where what has been lost need not be surrendered.
Image credit: Gary Deirmendjian, shedding - left eye, 2026. Courtesy of Gallery LNL
Head On Photo Festival
Booth PS12
Sydney
Geoffrey Goddard, Harald Helle, Kristin Schnell, Jodie James, Kelly Conlin, Robyn MacRae, Thomas Hartstang
Selected from thousands of global submissions to the Head On Photo Festival, this presentation offers a snapshot of emerging and early-career photographic practice. Works from the Exposure and Landscape Awards range from experimental and alternative processes to new ways of seeing physical and cultural environments. Together, the selection reflects photography’s continuing capacity to challenge how the world is framed, inhabited and understood.
Image credit: Thomas Hartstand, Bouquet of flowers - riverscape, wide, 2025. Courtesy Head On Photo Festival
Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin
Booth C11
Sydney | Berlin
Gaypalani Wanambi, Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Betty Chimney, Petrina Hicks, Julz Beresford, Carly Le Cerf, Scott Perkins, Mai Nguyễn-Long, Troy Emery, Sid Pattni, Tim Maguire, Tamara Dean, Murray Fredericks, Stephanie Tabram, Djirrirra Wunuŋmurra
For its most ambitious art fair presentation to date, Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin brings together more than 15 artists across painting, photography, sculpture and installation. The presentation moves from the powerful First Nations practices of Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Gaypalani Wanambi and Betty Chimney to new photography by Petrina Hicks and previously unseen work by Murray Fredericks. Landscape, abstraction and sculpture unfold through works by Carly Le Cerf, Julz Beresford, Mai Nguyễn-Long and Troy Emery, with a further constellation of artists including Tim Maguire, Tamara Dean, Stephanie Tabram, Sid Pattni, Scott Perkins and Djirrirra Wunuŋmurra.
Image credit: Murray Fredericks, Blaze #22, Kangaroo Lake, Great Darling Anabranch, 2023. Courtesy Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin
Sydney Contemporary 2026
Carriageworks, 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh NSW
3 – 6 September 2026
sydneycontemporary.com.au
