Five Out-of-the-Ordinary New Art Exhibitions to See in July

Christine Dean is the alter ego of Christopher Dean, an artist working across two genders over a period of four years. This exhibition at Alaska Projects will look at the spectrum of gender codes and the two problematic polarities of male and female. Curator Daniel Mudie Cunningham came up with the idea of pairing Dean’s early career pink monochromes with a later suite of multicoloured text paintings. In particular, the monochrome is loaded with gender-based assumptions; the colour pink is typically identified as feminine, while the monochrome style of painting is part of a masculinised history of modernism. One thing is for sure, these vibrant works will brighten up your favourite grey cement gallery.

Influential photographer Rosemary Laing has a long-held interest in place and landscape. Her photographs are like dreamscapes — familiar subjects or settings with a fantastical twist. You might remember her 2002 Flight Research series, featuring a bride with a bullet wound hanging like a puppet against blue skies. In further exploring notions of flight and travel, Transportation at the Art Gallery of NSW will bring together two bodies of work: Greenwork (1995) and Brownwork (1996-7). The first series consists of lush wilderness scenes, which are digitally enhanced, and jet streams against the bright sky. The second series is all about in-between spaces and capturing the materials associated with flight, such as metal shipping containers and wooden crates in transit.

This unique exhibition at Carriageworks will be accompanied by a series of nightly performances. It will see esteemed choreographer Sue Healey collaborate with photographer Judd Overton to produce a series of live portraits of dance artists. Healey is interested in exploring how we view performance and how we make sense of moving images. Utilising the whole of Bay 20, the exhibition will comprise filmed and live choreography that will play out simultaneously — the dancers will perform against their virtual selves. If you’re planning on taking a look at this immersive interdisciplinary project, note that while the daily exhibition is free, the nightly performances will be ticketed.

At the end of July, the MCA will showcase four decades worth of work from Aleks Danko. This Victorian-based performance artist and sculptor creates poetry out of objects. He is continually playing with puns and visual jokes. Growing up in suburban Adelaide to Ukrainian parents, Danko gravitated toward art school as a place to explore his feelings of alienation. The whimsical and cartoonish nature of his practice caught the attention of national and international galleries, transforming him into one of our foremost conceptual artists.

The rising threat of robots is not simply the stuff of science fiction. Curated by Luke Letourneau, this Firstdraft show looks to be more Terminator than Ted Talk when it comes to technology. It’s all about mess — natural and artificial. That means loose wires and pastel-coloured goop. Sprawled out in the gallery space will be work from four artists, each looking at a different relationship between humans and technology.