Overview
Already this year, the Biennale of Sydney has filled the city with dazzling art. In its long-awaited return this winter, Vivid Sydney did the same, too. The next event set to get the Harbour City all creative: Sydney Contemporary, which'll make a comeback at Carriageworks in September for the first time since 2019.
The reason for that gap is obvious. When the art fair returns for its sixth edition from Thursday, September 8–Sunday, September 11, it's understandably going big to celebrate. More than 90 galleries will take over the multi-arts centre, featuring works by 450 artists from 34 countries — including a specific focus on large-scale artworks.
Galleries making their presence known — emerging and established alike, and spanning both Australian and New Zealand institutions — include Melbourne's Neon Parc and Niagara Galleries, Station and This Is No Fantasy; Edwina Corlette from Brisbane; Sydney's own Sullivan+Strumpf, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery and Martin Browne Contemporary; and Gow Langsford Gallery and Michael Lett from Auckland. APY Art Centre Collective, which operates across Adelaide and Sydney, will also hit the fair, as will Singapore and Sydney's Yavuz Gallery.
Jacquie Manning
The list goes on — with Sydney Contemporary newcomers Mangkaja Arts (from Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia), C Gallery (Melbourne), N Smith Gallery and Formist Editions (Sydney), and A Secondary Eye and Onespace Gallery (Brisbane) also set to be represented.
And, in terms of the art that'll be on display, it'll hail from artists from Australia, NZ, the UK, the US, China, Germany and Indonesia, as well as Japan, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey — among other nations.
Installation view: Callum Morton, The End #3, 2020, polyurethane, timber, steel, glass, synthetic polymer paint, lights, sound, 240 x 360 x 50 cm. photo: Luis Power, courtesy the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.
As just announced, the newly renamed Installation Contemporary lineup — now called Amplify — will be a hefty feature, focusing on large-scale pieces. Annika Kristensen, Visual Arts Curator at Perth Festival and Associate Curator at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, curates the selection. Like most things at Sydney Contemporary, her program isn't holding back. Peta Clancy's Undercurrent, a photographic series, will be projected across Carriageworks' exterior facade; Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro have made a huge papier-machè representation of the moon's surface; and Callum Morton's sizeable wall sculptures are actually exact-scale replicas of the iconic Sirius Building's window frames.
2020 Archibald Prize-winner Vincent Namatjira will display The Royal Tour (Diana, Vincent and Charles), while Catherine O'Donnell is set to create a drawing directly onto one of the fair's walls — that'll prove specific to the site and stay for Sydney Contemporary's duration. That's just a taste of the Amplify lineup, of course.
Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro, ごめんえ素直じゃなくて GOMEN NE SUNAO JANAKUTE (Sorry, I'm not straightforward), 2021, papier machè and styrene core, metal strap, metal plates, 256cm in diameter. Courtesy of the artists and N Smith Gallery.
Elsewhere across the fair, the Performance Contemporary program will focus on artists WeiZen Ho, Rakini Devi, Salote Tawale and Alli Sebastian Wolf — and the Talk Contemporary rundown will be announced in August.
Whatever catches your eye, expect to have company. More than 112,000 visitors have attended in past years, and more than AU$85million in art sales have been notched up.
"Sydney Contemporary has been firmly established as the most influential fair in the region, and the sixth edition of Sydney Contemporary promises to be our strongest fair yet," said Sydney Contemporary founder Tim Etchells. "The fair provides the largest concentration of art sales annually in Australia and we expect 2022 to be no exception."
Jacquie Manning
Sydney Contemporary 2022 runs from Thursday, September 8–Sunday, September 11 at Carriageworks. For further information and to buy tickets, head to the art fair's website.
Top image: Zan Wimberley.