Concrete Playground

Saturday, 18th July - Saturday, 22nd August
@ Australian Centre for Photography

The current shows at the ACP present the diversity of contemporary photographic practice. In Francesca Rosa’s Interior Disaster we see still-life compositions that provide documentation of a decomposing household. Familiar things like mattress quilting, linoleum and dated kitchen tiles make a delicate contrast to the devastating effects of Cyclone Larry.Gallery...

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Saturday, 4th July - Saturday, 1st August
@ Artspace

In Kathryn Gray’s 3-screened video work Contingency Plan we witness soundless interviews. Despite this absence, and thanks to the subtitles, you can understand fully the voice of the interviewee. They come across as determined and calculating, and standing amongst the screens, you feel as if you’re taking part in the...

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Friday, 17th July - Friday, 31st July
@ Japan Foundation Gallery

The artists represented in New Friends, Art and Adventure love clay and know how to use it. They understand that ‘ceramic’ doesn’t only mean vases and bowls, while paying homage and their respects to these classic forms. The exhibition showcases diversity: from organic pod sculptures to a rendered brick wall,...

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Saturday, 1st August - Friday, 9th October
@ Parramatta Artists Studios

Bringing together ten Australian artists who are in touch with their own shortcomings, this exhibition re-examines notions of success and failure through a bit of image, a bit of text and a lot of irony. Anastasia Klose channels The Nanny in her Film for my Nanna, while Emma White cleverly...

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Friday, 5th June - Sunday, 23rd August
@ Museum of Contemporary Art

Portrait of a Distant Land brings together six bodies of photographer Ricky Maynard’s work, varying in style and subject. His most recent photo series, and his first ever series are displayed together in the first room and there is a nice counterpoint as we see Maynard’s development in style and...

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Saturday, 27th June - Sunday, 23rd August
@ Museum of Contemporary Art

The video and film works of Jess MacNeil, Shaun Gladwell and Daniel von Sturmer all share something in common: confusion. And the more you watch, like repeating a word over and over until it loses meaning, the more alien the images feel. It’s a tenuous and delicate feeling, and MacNeil’s...

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Friday, 24th July - Saturday, 15th August
@ Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

You’ll laugh and you’ll cry at Tracey Moffatt’s filmic collage, Mother. It is a predictable, somewhat maudlin homage to the mother figure, and makes for a very satisfying 20 minutes of celluloid absorption. Emerging from the dark focus room at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (with inward vows to call your own...

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Thursday, 16th July - Saturday, 15th August
@ Stills Gallery

Anne Ferran has been photographing the same patch of grass for over 10 years. It’s a paddock on the outskirts of Ross, a small village in Tasmania, and the images oscillate between focused studies of the grass, which reveal the form and folds of the earth, and glimpses of the...

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Sunday, 5th July - Saturday, 8th August
@ Anna Schwartz Gallery, CarriageWorks

12 artists are united by the word for this exhibition, all differing in their use of language and text. Watch Grant Stevens’ video work Really Really a few times and you realise the order of words doesn’t so much matter. His message is clear, and the rhythm and spacing of...

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Sunday, 28th June - Saturday, 25th July
@ Darren Knight Gallery

Michael Stevenson’s Introduccion a la Teoria de la Probilidad opens up an intriguing world of political power play. Amid the white shores of Contadora, a Pacific island off Panama, we meet an improbable list of leading characters: The last Shah of Iran, General Omar Torrijos, Manual Antonio Noriega and Patty...

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Wednesday, 27th May - Friday, 26th March
@ Cockatoo Island

I can still hear the rousing tune that plays to William Kentridge's video installation, "I am not me, the horse is not mine." Such is the infectious effect of this seven-screen artwork. One of the highlights of the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, Kentridge's work has been granted its encore, and...

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Friday, 3rd July - Sunday, 11th October
@ Art Gallery of NSW

Be transported with the new exhibition in the Art Gallery of NSW’s Asian gallery: Silk Ikats of Central Asia.Despite the sense of tranquility normally characteristic to the Asian gallery, the vibrant colours and designs of the ikat robes (on loan from the Islamic Arts Museum, Malaysia) create an exciting and...

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Saturday, 4th July - Saturday, 26th September
@ Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

Japanese architectural duo Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA) have created an acrylic structure that uncurls in waves along the rectangular expanse of the SCAF gallery space in Paddington.Upon entering, you find yourself in a negotiation with your own reflection and as you’re filtered through the chambers, you must try...

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Friday, 31st July - 3AM
@ Gaffa

A quaint garden scene in cross-stitch with something that is not quite right. It’s one third of Megan Yeo’s series, Midsomer Murders (Tea Cosie Terror), which leaves no question as to whether this craft is art. Also in this exhibition is Linden Braye’s Rat and little lost glove … are...

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Sunday, 2nd August - 3AM
@ Darren Knight Gallery

Step out of character, become yourself is the fruition of the Rob McHaffie’s stint in the Byron Bay hinterland earlier this year. The exhibition title is borrowed from the walls of the Nimbin Museum, and the show itself is totally Byron, peppered with all the connotations that the coastal haven...

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Saturday, 8th August - 3AM
@ Artspace

Sydney artist Lauren Brincat has been awarded this year’s Helen Lempriere Travelling Arts Scholarship for her work It’s A Long Way To The Top. Brincat, who lives and works in the Inner West has made finalist a number of years, describes her practice as being interested in the crossover between...

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Sunday, 7th June - 3AM
@ Art Gallery of NSW

Sydney Long’s iconic painting Pan has become so much a part of popular Australian culture that it’s hard to imagine the work being responded to as radical. Long’s contemporaries were the Heidelberg  School, painters who took to the fields and sat on hills, like the cliffs at Coogee, painting landscapes...

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Sunday, 28th June - 3AM
@ Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre

Hazelhurst Regional Gallery is making the most of its garden with an exhibition of billboards titled Collide-O-Rama by Australian artist, Maria Kozic. Kozic has worked across many mediums of art since beginning her practice in the late 1970s, and these billboards are not her first expression in this form. In...

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Sunday, 6th September - Sunday, 15th November
@ Australia Museum

Featuring a tiny wooden echidna with oversized quills and a Tasmanian Devil fashioned from patchwork Tassie sea kelp, this new exhibition of contemporary Indigenous animal sculpture is so much more than just cute, quaint or crafty.The artists featured in Menagerie hail from all over our continent, and represent an impressive...

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Sunday, 10th May - 3AM
@ Art Gallery of NSW

Sometimes we take our public art institutions for granted. We forget that behind their familiar exteriors sit not only artworks and artifacts we know and love, but many we haven’t yet met and would hit it off with immediately.There’s nothing like a first impression, but there’s also something to be...

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Wednesday, 9th September - 3AM
@ UTS Gallery

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, and what does that mean for us lay people? Besides a lot of unapologetic star-gazing, it means enjoying exhibitions like Beyond visibility: light and dust at UTS Gallery. Brought to you by astronomer/photographer David Malin, and artist Felicity Spear, this show features their...

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Wednesday, 30th September - Sunday, 18th October
@ James Dorahy Project Space

In sharp contrast to the ever-growing presence and dimensions of warehouse-cum-gallery spaces, there is the James Dorahy Project Space. Perched above Macleay Street in Potts Point, it’s a refreshingly intimate and domestic feeling space. The attraction lies not only the New York apartment feel of the gallery, but in the...

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Sunday, 11th October - Sunday, 29th November
@ Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre

Long before Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson graced our screens in Newlyweds; before The farmer wants a wife and the chaotic disaster of Britney and Kevin’s love life chronicled, there was the (Aussie) mother of all reality shows: Sylvania Waters. The 1992 documentary followed the day-to-day happenings of Sydney couple...

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Saturday, 17th October - Saturday, 21st November
@ Australian Centre for Photography

°SOUTH:WAR offers a sobering reflection of what war, in our day and age, has come to mean. Photographers Sean Flynn, Tim Page, Stephen Dupont, David Dare Parker, Jack Picone, Ben Bohane, Michael Coyne and Ashley Gilbertson make up the collective Â°SOUTH. Since the 1960s, they have been covering was and its...

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Saturday, 17th October - Saturday, 14th November
@ Artspace

A central theme to She went that way, the first major exhibition of Raquel Ormella’s work, currently showing at Artspace, is memory — personal and collective.An image like The Domain reminds us all of a place we know. For Sydneysiders, it’s un–mistakable, for those from anywhere else, it’s their equivalent....

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Thursday, 29th October - Tuesday, 26th January
@ Art Gallery of NSW

These days you can’t tell if it’s going to rain or shine. You could be heading to the beach and get caught in the rain, so rather than hedge your bets and end up wet, head to the AGNSW and see a perfect landscape in The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur....

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Saturday, 13th February - Saturday, 27th February
@ The Cross Arts Projects

Welcoming the brand new Cross Arts Projects space is Danish Ahmed’s eloquent exhibition of recent paintings. The Cross Arts Projects, started in 2003, is a not-for-profit curatorial initiative that shows a mix of curated exhibitions and artist's solos. Their focus is on work with a strong conceptual grounding, and they...

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Friday, 12th February - Saturday, 6th March
@ Performance Space at CarriageWorks

Alice Springs is not what it seems. For a start, it’s not the actual centre of Australia. It’s also not a sleepy, dusty, desert town — there’s a pulse and underlying ferocity that you can find only in the middle of something.What’s beneath the surface is what’s addressed in Alex...

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Thursday, 25th March - Saturday, 24th April
@ CarriageWorks

This year the annual exhibition carriageARTworks is the venue for the closing celebration of Sydney’s inaugural Art Month. Curated by a panel that includes last year’s Archibald winner, Guy Maestri, the show brings together artist-run initiatives and galleries — including Black & Blue Gallery, Factory 49, May Street Studios and...

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Wednesday, 7th April - Saturday, 17th April
@ Gallery 9

If you’re struggling to make sense of our world after the Easter long weekend, or are simply recovering from overindulgence, check out Satanism by what at Gallery 9. With the statement “I do not work for God, directly. I work for God in mysterious ways. I work for God in...

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Monday, 12th April - Sunday, 30th May
@ Object Gallery

Design in Australia is exciting and enlightening for the myriad of forms it takes. From functional furniture to meticulous modelling and innovative ideas, all manner of contemporary design is on show this month in DesignNow! 2010 at Sydney’s Object Gallery. This year’s exhibition brings together graduate students from design schools...

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Sunday, 18th April - Tuesday, 4th May
@ Blender Gallery

Photography used to be something you had to remember to buy film for: listen out for the little click of your last exposure, see unexpected images, ugly scenes and faces. If you’re anything like me and lament the lost days of photos you can touch, then World Through a Plastic...

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Tuesday, 20th April - Saturday, 1st May
@ Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

A sense of nostalgia runs deep in Tracey Moffatt’s Plantation and Other exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. Hand painted in technicolour hues, the vintage-looking diptychs of burning sugar cane and stilted houses conjure up the flavours of the Deep South, despite being shot in Australia’s own sunshine state, Queensland. Moffatt,...

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Tuesday, 27th April - Saturday, 15th May
@ GRANTPIRRIE Gallery

What would happen if Peter Rabbit ditched his little blue jacket, stopped playing games with the duck and went crazy? Well, he’d probably be shot, dipped in formaldehyde and stored in a New Zealand museum awaiting Neil Pardington’s photographic exploration, The Vault. Taxidermy animals have always scared the bejesus out...

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Thursday, 29th April - Saturday, 5th June
@ Australian Centre for Photography

Sydney loves photography and, thanks to Head On Photo Festival, this month you can get your photo fix all over the place. In a lineup bigger than Ben Hur, Head On delights with artists and amateurs, photojournalists and hobbyists, showcasing their talents across a range of venues. For those wanting...

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Thursday, 6th May - Sunday, 9th May
@ MCM House

When Daimon met Chuck: Charles owns a furniture store. Daimon, a musician-cum-artist, wants to stage an art show. Chuck and Daimon get to talking. The 1500 square metres is calling out for some artistic attention, and when better to do it than when the fashionistas come out to play? Et...

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Tuesday, 11th May - Saturday, 5th June
@ Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery

If a photograph has ever been able to transcend the visual, been able to be heard, then Bill Henson’s current exhibition contains some serious contenders. In his characteristic sombre style, Henson’s images encompass the portrait and the landscape, combining fragile human studies (for which he has become renowned), epic vistas...

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Wednesday, 12th May - Sunday, 1st August
@ Royal Botanic Gardens

The 2010 Biennale of Sydney with its theme The Beauty of Distance — Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age addresses nature and its existence, one of the facets of our world that can’t speak for itself (or at least, can’t speak in words that everyone can hear). Two of...

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Monday, 7th June - Saturday, 26th June
@ CarriageWorks

Hands up anyone who’s ever dreamed of touring with the band? The heady mix of hedonism and the seductive lure of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll? David Porter dreamed such dreams and realised them under the pseudonym Jacques L’Affrique, photographing the rock scene in Melbourne as it was gathering...

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Wednesday, 7th July - Saturday, 14th August
@ Stills Gallery

Known for her slick aesthetic and glossy backgrounds, Hicks presents a series of images that serve to question the very thing we're looking at, while Maleonn imagines a wonderland that seems not of this world but derived from it in his Second-hand Tang Poem series.

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Friday, 23rd July - Saturday, 28th August
@ Australian Centre for Photography

Intergalactic hoodies, animal prints, taffeta, bondage and psychedelic catsuits - artists Techa Noble and Emma Price take dressing in your birthday suit to a whole new level.

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Wednesday, 25th August - 6PM
@ Australian Centre for Photography

The Australian Centre for Photography on fashion-happy Oxford Street will host a panel event populated by industry insiders poised to debate the eternal question: does fashion merely play into our consumer cravings, or does it represent a more significant role? Panellists include photographers, designers and fashionistas to help you make an informed decision of your own.

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Thursday, 26th August - Saturday, 18th September
@ GrantPirrie

These works present us with ordinary soft-porn pin-up scenarios that are then hijacked and railroaded by severed limbs and dripping blood. Combining a gorgeous subject, a glossy fashion aesthetic, slasher movie gore and silver-lined photographic paper, these confronting images linger in your mind.

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Saturday, 21st August - Saturday, 25th September
@ Anna Schwartz Gallery, CarriageWorks

Trouble's brewing in Shane Cotton's Smashed Myth. In just over 40 square metres of canvas, Cotton (the renowned Maori artist of, most recently, Biennale of Sydney fame) has made a study in myth-busting that contemplates, among other things, colonisation, migration, resistance, religion and war. Preserved tattooed heads, rugged coastlines and...

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Wednesday, 27th October - Thursday, 7th October
@ Global Gallery

This exhibition of delicate and elegant artworks identifies four major genres of our contemporary society's media dialogue - fashion, film, photography and advertising - and seeks to pull apart and distort the frameworks that bind us.

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Friday, 15th October - Saturday, 20th November
@ Australian Centre for Photography

Stephen Dupont's exhibition of refined photographic portraits couldn't be more timely. He not only documents the face of a nation effected by war, but conveys something deeper.

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Wednesday, 20th October - Sunday, 7th November
@ MOP

I'm Just Going to Live Out of Boxes Until I Decide What I Want to Do. We've all been there — scattered paper on a floor; boxes of stuff you don't know if you want or really need; tidying your life into parcels. Bronwyn Clark-Coolee contemplates the past and the...

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Tuesday, 16th November - Sunday, 5th December
@ Iain Dawson Gallery

Lipstick, a spindle and a budgerigar called Jimmy — what do these three things have in common? The main gallery at Paddington's Iain Dawson Gallery.In Hope Chest, Maree Alexander explores the minutiae of our existence, enlightening us to the preciousness of everyday, seemingly mundane items. The objects Anna's Comb, Caleb's...

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Saturday, 4th December - 7PM
@ Fraser Studios

Mitch Cairns, Janet Laurence, Brown Council and Tom Polo are just some of the big names you could stand to collect if you front up to Queen Street Studio's fundraiser this Saturday. And, who doesn't love a fundraiser? Especially when it's raising funds for a non-profit organisation that supports artists...

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Thursday, 16th December - 6PM
@ Challis Studios

In one shot a man lays submerged, upside-down in a lake, ripples radiating outwards. The only hint of life held in his outstretched arms. In another we see a lonely northern hemisphere street corner where daily grinders hurry, briefcases in hand, to the warmth of their offices. The first has...

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Thursday, 24th February - Saturday, 26th March
@ National Art School

This show is not only a great way of stepping into Sydney's sandstone past but a fabulous way of surveying the art of drawing in the Australia of now.

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Friday, 11th February - Sunday, 13th March
@ Manly Art Gallery & Museum

From documentary to portraiture, Bostock's photography exposes a document of the city and its glorious features, and allows the viewer front-row access to intimate moments

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Friday, 4th February - Saturday, 12th March
@ Australian Centre for Photography

This acclaimed Australian photographer is not merely witness or documenter but architect and conductor. Following her international success, ACP presents a retrospective of her compelling work.

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Friday, 25th February - Saturday, 4th June
@ Blacktown Arts Centre

Four local emerging artists delve into personal and social issues through the lens of the goals we set ourselves at Blacktown Arts Centre.

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Thursday, 10th March - Saturday, 2nd April
@ The Paper Mill

A continuum means 'a continuous extent, series, or whole', and what this exhibition shows is just how a shared thread of inherited traditional practice unites diverse artists.

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Friday, 18th March - Saturday, 30th April
@ Australian Centre for Photography

Featuring the work of five leading Russian photo artists, Crossroads proves just how artistic the camera can be.

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Friday, 25th February - Sunday, 17th July
@ White Rabbit Gallery

Thirty Chinese artists are represented in the current collection show at White Rabbit gallery, and their artistic practices are as varied as painting, sculpture, installation and model-making.

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Friday, 18th March - Saturday, 4th June
@ Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

In his eight-screen installation, Yang Fudong stretches time, making 11 minutes seem like nearly an hour and a half.

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Friday, 8th April - Saturday, 30th April
@ Tin Sheds Gallery

From the whimsical to the serious, and with social connectivity and sustainability in mind, artists, artist collectives, architects and engineers come together in The Right to the City to present real or invented ways to 'remake' the city.

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Wednesday, 6th April - Sunday, 19th June
@ Museum of Contemporary Art

Berlin-based New Zealand artist Michael Stevenson's artworks seem to come at you from every angle, and not only in the literal sense.

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Thursday, 7th April - Tuesday, 19th April
@ Gaffa

Noun Collective invited artists to respond to their most favourite collective noun, make an artwork and be part of the upcoming palaver of paintings at Gaffa Gallery.

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Wednesday, 20th April - Sunday, 22nd May
@ Artspace

Bringing together artists from Australia and across the pond in New Zealand, this exhibition comments on "contemporary issues through reconsidering the past".

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