Seven Must-See Art Exhibitions to Check Out in Sydney Before Winter Ends

When it comes to history’s legendary painters, Claude Monet’s name stands out above most. Now, for the first time ever, Australian audiences are invited to experience the painting that the entire Impressionist movement was named after as the National Gallery of Australia exhibits Monet’s world-famous masterpiece, Impression, sunrise.

As well as a striking collection of other Monet paintings — including the instantly recognisable Waterlilies and On the Beach at Trouville — the exhibition features works by an array of artists who inspired or followed Monet into leaving behind the studio and painting ‘en plein air’. From JMW Turner to James McNeill Whistler and Eugène Boudin, other contemporaries of Monet featured at the NGA include Alfred Sisley and Berthe Morisot, one of the few female painters among the Parisian Impressionists. With their visible brush strokes and incredible depictions of light and its subtle changes, many of these works have been gathered from the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, which almost never loans its collection.

Running until Sunday September 1, Monet: Impression Sunrise is undoubtedly worth taking a wintertime road trip to Canberra for, so grab your pals and hit the road.

52 Artists 52 Actions is the culmination of a year-long series commissioned by Artspace. Over 52 weeks from January 2018 to January 2019, the gallery engaged 52 artists and collectives to pose political, cultural and social actions and share them through Instagram and digital platforms. 

Bringing together all these works in one space, through themes of censorship, activism, migration, labour, gender and economies of power, the exhibition forces us to consider our role within the systems that surround us — if we have one at all. Expect to see pieces by Aussie artists like Richard Bell, Vernon Ah Kee, and Mike Parr. 

The exhibition will be on display at Artspace in Woolloomooloo until August 4, and a symposium will be hosted at the gallery on the weekend of July 20–21 to discuss the far-reaching span of the art and artists who connect with the immediate world around them. Within this, the audience will be invited to consider Australia’s position within the broader region of the Asia-Pacific.  

OK Democracy, We Need to Talk is Campbelltown Art Centre’s response to the recent election. The exhibition brings together 12 newly commissioned works by local artists, who posed interventions on ideas of democracy and were encouraged to talk to journalists on how tokens of the free world can be presented to its inhabitants.

The pieces include a series of works by Deborah Kelly that pay homage to both John Lennon and Yoko Ono and make statements on Australia’s environmental politics, and Lara Thoms’ video portrait of Harper Nielsen, the nine-year-old that caused a stir among politicians when she refused to stand for the national anthem at her school in 2018. Western Sydney’s own Abdullah MI Syed has even created a series of garments out of real bank notes.

In addition to the exhibition, the gallery will host a free day-long symposium on July 27. Developed by UNSW Art and Design lecturer Simon Hunt — perhaps better known for his 1990s satirical character Pauline Pantsdown — the day will include panels, workshops and performances that further explore topics from the exhibition.

This winter, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art is bringing together five artists to explore both our fascination and relationship with technology, but also the concerns of a world depended on this uncontrollable — and all-seeing — force. 

In The Invisible Hand, artists Simon Denny, Exonemo, Sunwoo Hoon, Mijoon Pak and Baden Pailthorpe will pose questions and alternative concepts to our current digital landscape. With artists from Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan, they will explore what this interconnectedness, reliability and data collection could mean for the East Asia region.

The curators and gallery have put together a series of public programs that aim to challenge and expand on these ideas, including one of the gallery’s congee breakfast gallery walkthroughs, which will take place on Saturday, July 20. 

Prepare to stare at the moon in all of its glory — up close, without a telescope and without zooming into space. Measuring seven metres in diameter and featuring renderings of the celestial body’s surface based on NASA imagery, the Museum of the Moon is a detailed installation by UK-based artist Luke Jerram. It’s in Sydney as part of a 200-item exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum marking the 50th anniversary of the famed moon landing.

The looming artwork recreates the moon at a scale of approximately 1:500,000, with each centimetre equating to five kilometres of the lunar surface. The spherical sculpture is lit from within, so it’ll add a glow when it comes to the Powerhouse Museum. It also combines its imagery and light with a surround sound piece created by composer and sound designer Dan Jones, and just how each venue displays it is up to them. Basically, it’s never the exact same installation twice.

Other objects you’ll find throughout the Apollo 11 exhibition include parts of the original Redstone Rocket and Parkes Radio Telescope, as well as a computer used by NASA to calculate the launch and landing. There’ll be more immersive and interactive events happening, too, including a virtual reality experience in which you watch the moon landing, an interactive arcade game, tours of the observatory and a heap of talks by astronauts and astronomers.

If you’re not familiar with the work of Australian artist Shaun Gladwell, that’s about to change. The MCA is launching an expansive survey of his 20-year career this July. 

The artist is known for his video work, and connectedness to the body and movement through images of surfers, skaters and dancers. This survey offers a great viewing platform to look back at the last two decades of Australia and its expanding reach to the rest of the world.

It also reflects a time of technological change as we become more and more reliant on the digital. As such, the exhibition includes newly commissioned augmented and virtual reality works, as well as earlier tech-based works, including renowned video Storm Sequence (2000) set at Bondi Beach.

The title of the exhibition, Pacific Undertow, comes from a critical video to the show that embodies Gladwell’s movement through location, his obsessions with colonial and art histories, as well as forms of everyday urban performance and mortality.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales’s annual celebration of Aussie faces is back for another year. The Archibald finalists are currently on display at Art Gallery of NSW until Sunday, September 8, running in conjunction with the Wynne and Sulman Prizes — recognising the best landscape painting of Australian scenery or figure sculpture and the best subject painting, genre painting or mural project, respectively.

The prestigious portrait competition pulls a compelling lineup of artworks each year, portraying an eclectic mix of artists, musicians, politicians, sports heroes and other notable Aussies. This year’s $100,000 prize attracted a record 919 entries, with Tony Costa’s portrait of fellow artist Lindy Lee, simply titled Lindy Lee, taking out the top gong.

Meanwhile, Tessa MacKay was awarded the 2019 Archibald Packing Room Prize, chosen by the packing room team, for her hyperreal portrait of actor David Wenham, called Through the Looking Glass. Both of which will be on display, of course. Plus, you’ll see a painting by Vietnamese-Australian artist, actor and writer Anh Do, a portrait of Paralympic champion Dylan Alcott by Sydney-based stencil artist Kirpy, Carla Fletcher’s cosmic work of Del Kathryn Baron and a hyperreal self-portrait of a nude, pregnant Katherine Edney.