Sydney Contemporary 10th Edition: Highlights From Local, Indigenous & International Artists.
Sydney Contemporary, Australasia’s leading contemporary art fair, returns to Carriageworks from 3–6 September 2026 for its 10th anniversary edition. Presented in partnership with MA Financial Group, the Fair today unveils gallery booth highlights, with more than 100 galleries travelling from across Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and the United Kingdom to participate in the Fair, presenting work by more than 500 artists from 33 countries.
Over a decade on, Sydney Contemporary continues to attract the country's most respected galleries, with the majority of exhibitors returning year after year - a testament to the Fair's enduring role as Australasia's premier platform for contemporary art. Showcasing the breadth of contemporary art across painting, sculpture, photography, installation, works on paper and new media, the Fair offers audiences and collectors at every stage the opportunity to discover significant new work by leading and emerging artistic voices, with all works available for acquisition.
Sydney Contemporary Highlights
International presentations.
International galleries and artists continue to be a major feature of Sydney Contemporary, bringing global perspectives to Australia's biggest week of contemporary art:
Gow Langsford (Auckland / Tāmaki Makaurau) brings together internationally recognised artists, including South Korean artist Lee Bae, exhibiting in Australia for the first time, and Yuki Kihara, who represented New Zealand at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Kihara presents Woven Memories (2026), featuring embroidered pandanus mats created with the Moata’a Aualuma Community in Samoa. The gallery will also present new works by Tony Cragg, Gregor Kregar, Colin McCahon, Bosco Sodi, and Grace Wright.
PARC Editions (Seoul) presents contemporary Korean artists Taeim Kwak, Ki Kim, Ava An and Yvonne Boag, whose works are rooted in Korea’s strong paper and printmaking culture, while opening outwards through practices that connect Korea with broader international contexts. The presentation approaches paper as a living material that can be transformed and form a dialogue between craft, image and process.
Messums (London) presents works by acclaimed British sculptors Laurence Edwards and Nicola Hicks and work by painter Tyga Helme who has been supported on residency in Australia. Edwards' casts bronze figures that meld humanity, nature and time, while Hicks' expressive sculptures and works on paper draw a closer liminal space between the animate and the object through animal world, mythology and reflecting our shared conditions.
Landmark First Nations presentations.
First Nations art anchors this year’s edition, from historic works to major new works. Some highlights include:
Alcaston Gallery (Melbourne / Naarm) presents Binygurr Wirrpanda, Betty Kuntiwa Pumani and Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, bringing together significant First Nations artists with new works celebrating Country, culture and enduring artistic legacies.
A Secondary Eye (Sydney / Gadigal Country) presents a sculpture-focused booth of works from Far North Queensland, including rare historical pieces from the First Nations community of Aurukun made before, during and after the landmark Wik Decision native title ruling in 1996, alongside a selection of works by renowned Torres Strait Islander artist Ken Thaiday Snr.
D Lan Galleries (Melbourne / Naarm, Sydney / Gadigal Country, New York) presents a rare survey of works by acclaimed Ngaanyatjarra artist Cliff Reid, alongside a secondary market presentation of works from the Estate of Tiger Palpatja (c.1920–2012), and significant works by Gunybi Ganambarr, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili and Paddy Bedford, celebrating senior First Nations artists whose practices carry enduring cultural narratives across Australia.
Futures.
One of the Fair's most exciting destinations, Futures showcases emerging galleries and artists at pivotal moments in their careers, offering visitors the chance to discover exceptional new talent before the wider market.
C. Gallery (Melbourne / Naarm) presents a dual show pairing ceramic works by Ben Mazey and Nic Fern, whose works convey similar visions of the medium from entirely different conceptual starting points. Both bring humour into their investigations of how our narratives are built.
First time exhibitors in the sector include LAILA (Sydney / Gadigal Country), presenting paintings by Sydney-based painter Luke Brennan, that capture the tension between the microscopic and the cosmic, and SYRUP CONTEMPORARY (Sydney) presenting Haines + Hinterding alongside Eleni Ioakimidis, bringing together expanded image-making, painting and installation in a presentation exploring time, materiality and the act of looking.
Five Walls Gallery (Melbourne / Naarm) presents Max Lawrence White and Shuhei Fukuda, whose practices push the boundaries of sculpture and materiality; Jennings Kerr (Robertson / Gundungurra & Dharawal Country) brings together Harriet Goodall and Ochre Lawson in a dialogue between landscape, ecology and abstraction; while VELVET LOBSTER (Sydney / Gadigal Country) showcases Mungo Howard's playful sculptural works that transform familiar forms into unexpected encounters.
Photo Sydney.
Returning for its second year, Photo Sydney reaffirms the growing prominence of contemporary photography, with presentations from galleries, artists, and photography organisations across Australia. Some highlights from Photo Sydney include:
Caterina Pacialeo (Sydney / Gadigal Country) unveils a new series of large-scale cyanotype works, examining the intersection of photographic history and contemporary astronomical discovery. Unified by a deep Prussian blue field, produced through traditional cyanotype chemistry, the works trace and abstract data derived from contemporary astronomical observation, reflecting on humanity’s enduring engagement with the cosmos.
Christopher Ireland (Sydney / Gadigal Country) reveals a new body of work, revisiting the subjects from a portrait series in 2008, eighteen years on, displayed alongside each other. Documenting widowed women whose husbands died from asbestos-related disease, the series traces how grief changes over time and how lives continue beyond loss, with memory settling into the body and identity.
Cybele Malinowski (Sydney / Gadigal Country) presents Deep Fake, a new photographic series that turns the lens on celebrity impersonators, capturing the everyday lives of performers as their alter egos – from Cher to Prince to Marilyn Monroe – and questioning what, and who, is real. In a time of AI-generated media, DEEP FAKE reveals that the most profound and unsettling simulations are still flesh and blood.
Works on Paper.
A Fair within the Fair, the Works on Paper sector showcases the best of national and international contemporary works on paper. Watercolours, drawings, artist books, prints and editions. One of the most accessible entry points for new collectors, and a rich hunting ground for seasoned collectors.
SYRUP CONTEMPORARY’s (Sydney / Gadigal Country) booth features Mike Parr and Ruth Marbun, who each approach the body as a site of self-reflection and political agency. Marbun, a radical presence in Jakarta’s contemporary art scene, manipulates watercolour to evoke transitory states of memory and presence, while Parr shows prints from recent etchings alongside never-before-seen works that trace bodily inscription through the processes of printmaking.
Australian Print Workshop (Melbourne / Naarm) presents new original prints by leading contemporary artists including Heather B. Swann, Megan Cope, eX de Medici, Caroline Rothwell, Lisa Waup and Louise Weaver, alongside works by Patricia Piccinini, Danie Mellor, Nusra Latif Qureshi and David Sequeira, showcasing the breadth of contemporary Australian printmaking.
Onespace (Brisbane / Meanjin) presents new works by two significant First Nations printmakers based in Cairns: Brian Robinson and Teho Ropeyarn. Robinson’s 2026 series of prints, Abundance of Country, derives from his recently unveiled sculpture Floriate, celebrating Queensland’s Seven Watersheds through sculptural forms that evoke river systems. Ropeyarn presents a series of works featuring organic forms and layered compositions, reflecting the seasonal rhythms of Cape York shaped by lived experience of travelling across Country.
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