Ten Fascinating New Sydney Art Exhibitions to Check Out This October

Next up at 4a is Not Niwe, Not Nieuw, Not Neu, a group exhibition inspired by botanist Sir Joseph Banks and the research he undertook as part of the HMS Endeavour voyage 1768–1771.

Under Lieutenant James Cook, the then-little-known Banks collected a crazy huge amount of plant life from all across the Asia Pacific, including approximately 1600 species that at the time were completely new to the scientific world. It was exciting stuff, yes, but the exhibition is interested in the complex ideas of power and ‘colonial prejudice’ that arise when you consider these pioneers named and defined what was new to them, creating imposed systems of vocabulary and hierarchies for describing and making sense of this strange ‘new world’ that we still use today.

Artists including Daniel Boyd, Newell Harry, Fiona Pardington, Michael Parekowhai and James Tylor aim to ‘disturb the past, by reframing and reworking the mythologies of nationhood’ established by Banks’ work. Combining archival and recent works, along with a series of copperplate etchings of Australian botanical illustrations by Banks himself, Not Niwe, Not Nieuw, Not Neu is sure to get you thinking.

If you missed out on last month’s Sydney Contemporary fret not, you’ll have another opportunity to snatch up an artwork from emerging and unrepresented artists at this year’s The Other Art Fair, running from October 26–29.

Presented by Saatchi Art, the fair showcases more than 100 artists (selected by a formidable committee of contemporary art experts), typically drawing in about 10,000 people over four days. Celebrating the vibrancy and innovation of Sydney’s emerging art scene, it’s a rare chance to buy work directly from artists rather than through a gallery. Thinking of buying? Fair organisers advise you to obey your taste, buy what you like, take a risk and most of all, make the most of having the artist on hand to chat to.

Alongside the art will be workshops, large-scale installations, talks and events, plus drinks to refresh your palette between perusals. Opening night tickets ($25) also get you re-entry to the fair Friday to Sunday, with general entry tickets costing between $12 and $15.

Head along to catch a rising star at the beginning of their career — or just to soak up all that creativity and get inspired.

Abstract sculpture fans will want to wander through Remnants, Luke Storrier’s latest exhibition of new sculptures opening at OLSEN SYDNEY this month.

An artist that draws inspiration from the outback and ‘the shapes that nature provides’, Storrier often partners natural materials like feathers, rocks, dirt and bones with concrete, wire and steel, allowing them to inform the work and inject flow and ‘majesty’ into otherwise lifeless materials. Professing to find the process of the medium deeply cathartic, this new show continues Storrier’s exploration of solitude and isolation (echoing the remoteness of the outback he finds so creatively sustaining), alongside themes of brokenness and repair. “The abstract process of wrapping, binding and wrangling a collection of detritus reveals the beauty inherent in the act of repair and gives way to an unexpected visual language.”

Storrier’s work is starkly beautiful, with an ability to somehow convey both energetic, light movement and weighted stillness. Haven’t seen his stuff before? Australian painter Mclean Edwards summarises his style as such: “If Anselm Kiefer and Cy Twombly had a naughty child it would be Luke Storrier.” Maybe go along yourself and see how accurate that feels.

Annette Larkin Fine Art hosts their first-ever Carl Plate exhibition this month, with a show focusing specifically on his Paris Works 1970–1971.

So who is Carl Plate, you ask? He was an influential modernist painter and collage artist in post-war Sydney, and arguably the first Australian non-figurative artist to secure solo shows in NYC and London — a big deal at the time. He traveled extensively through Europe and was excited by what he saw of the modernist movement. Drawn to abstract, non-representational language, he was a life-long fan of collage throughout his career, using materials sourced from papers and magazines to create poetic, lyrical worlds of shapes, lines and forms.

This show captures a time in his work where he broadened his colour palette dramatically, pared back the details and returned to a purer form of collage (solely cutting and pasting), creating a series hailed as ‘luxurious’ and ‘sumptuous’ by the critics of the day. You’ve got from October 11 till November 11 to have a squiz.

Sculpture and installation artist Min Wong has a new show opening at Firstdraft on October 4. Titled If You Are Struggling Then You Must Be Happy 🙂, the exhibition explores spirituality, thirst for collectivism and human failure through the spectacle of US counterculture from the ’60s and ’70s.

An artist deeply interested in utopian concerns — in this case the utopian aspirations of West Coast counterculture and how they relate to present-day spirituality — Wong’s art investigates how the once genuinely revolutionary ideas put forward during the ’60s and ’70s were commodified and eventually repackaged into today’s self-help/self-care culture. Playfully uniting contemporary sculpture and repurposed material from the hippie era with deliberate references to her practice of Bikram yoga, Wong desires to, in her words, “present a physical space for the viewer to experience the ’60s and ’70s new wave counterculture as a simulacrum of lost hope, illusory dreams and shattered utopias”. Promises to be an insightful show.

Don’t leave Firstdraft without taking in the coinciding exhibitions from artists Cybele Cox, Aaron Christopher Rees and Masaharu Sato.

Kitchen-Studio is the next Black Box Projects exhibition at MAY SPACE. Curated by Megan Fizell and featuring artists Nina Ross, Miku Sato, Hana Hoogedeure and Luke O’Donnell, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Hanne Nielsen and Birgit Johnsen, and Ana Prvački, the show turns the domestic kitchen into a performance space.

Exploring themes such as the divide between public and private, female labour, collaboration, language, the body, and physical beauty, each artist takes inspiration from the everyday domestic gesture of preparing food. Underneath it all is the echo of Judith Butler’s argument for gender as a cultural construction established through a ‘stylized repetition of acts’ — in this case, the repeated domestic gestures enacted day after day by women in their kitchens. What is the relationship between the kitchen, food preparation and the solidification of gender norms? And if an artist takes a space that is normally private and brings it into the realm of public performance? What happens then?

Video artist Kawita Vatanajyankur in particularly is sure to capture your attention — her vibrantly hued staged performances explore the female body, its connection to domesticity, and most of all its capacity for strength and endurance.

‘Tis the season for art awards, with the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award opening this month at Campbelltown Arts Centre. Spanning various prize categories including sculpture, contemporary, photography and traditional, it’s another great chance to see a diverse collection of artists in the one space. And unlike the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes, it’s free entry.

The ‘open’ section of the award is the biggie: there’s a $20k prize and it’s acquisitive to the permanent collection at C-A-C. In the past contemporary artists like Elisabeth Cummings, Khaled Sabsabi and Raquel Ormella (whose work you’d have seen if you visited The Great Strike: 1917 at Carriageworks) have been awarded the prize. You’ll have until December 14 to check it out.

Trivia: the prize takes its name from the Campbelltown tradition it coincides with: the annual ‘Festival of Fisher’s Ghost’. Going strong since 1956, it’s named after local farmer Fred Fisher, who was murdered by his neighbour in 1826 and is — apparently — Australia’s “most famous” ghost. Held over ten days, this year there’s a street fair, a carnival and fireworks alongside the art exhibition. Plus at least one person dressed up in a massive Casper-style ghost costume.

It’s a special birthday for one of Sydney’s favourite art events, as 2017 marks 21 strong years from Sculpture by the Sea. Kicking off on Thursday, October 19, two clicks of Australia’s most picturesque coastline in Bondi will be transformed into a living, breathing artscape. Over 100 pieces from both Australian and international artists will be on show, including one from James Dive, creator of 2006’s now infamous melting ice cream truck.

There’s also the chance for a chin wag with the artists themselves at the Aqualand Artist Talks series, which will take place each Saturday and Sunday of the exhibition. Plus, it coincides with this year’s Sydney Sculpture Conference if you can’t get enough of the art form. So keep your fingers crossed for good weather — the whole thing runs until November 5.

Combining sound and sculpture, his dynamic work The Last Resort is part of the latest free presentation by the Kaldor Public Arts Projects, which has been transforming public spaces into groundbreaking, contemporary art projects since 1969.

Presented daily from October 13 to November 5, the 33rd Kaldor Arts Project sees Sala explore the connection between sound, time, place and history, carefully tweaking Mozart’s W.A. Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622 into an evocative, modern soundtrack to his multisensory installation. Visitors will experience the reimagined musical piece while wandering beneath a ceiling of custom-built drums, with a glistening Sydney Harbour as the backdrop.

Backing up Sala’s piece is a diverse public program of talks, masterclasses, performances, workshops and family-friendly activities, all diving into the artwork’s themes of journeys, the communicative power of music and that intersection between time, place and sound. Guest speakers include the likes of award-winning composer Andrew Ford, astronomer Duane Hamacher and Sala himself.

Liveworks is back and bigger than ever. This year the experimental art and performance festival boasts three world premieres and features an impressive array of local and international artists whose works explore everything from Indigenous memory to sexuality and the future.

Highlights include the Australian premiere of Rhetorical Chorus, the largest and most ambitious performance work to date from Agatha Gothe-Snape that sets out to unravel ‘the myths and methods of the 20th Century male artist’; the world premiere of Justin Shoulder’s Carrion, a work that tests the boundaries between machine, animal and human in an imagined post-apocalyptic setting; and Nat Randall’s The Second Woman, a 24-hour performance where 100 male participants are invited to reenact a scene from 1977 film Opening Night (which you may have be lucky enough to see at this year’s Dark Mofo).

This year Day for Night joins the program for the very first time, inviting the best queer artists, DJs, musicians and performers to the festival’s closing weekend for a ‘glorious collision’ of queer performance, contemporary art and club culture.