Inside Sydney’s Newly Blossoming Contemporary Art Scene
Exterior view of Sydney Contemporary, 2022. Courtesy of Sydney Contemporary.
Taking place between September 7th and 10th, the art fair Sydney Contemporary marks a key moment in the Australian art world calendar. Now in its seventh edition at Carriageworks, the fair provides an immersive experience for a broad audience of art lovers by commissioning curators and artists for a program of performances, installations, talks, creative workshops, and dynamic evening events.
First launched in 2013, Sydney Contemporary is a part of the Art Assembly, which operates several fairs in Asia Pacific including Taipei Dangdai, PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai, Art SG, and Tokyo Gendai. It actively works at fostering a connection with its close neighbors in New Zealand and Asia, as well as further afield to a worldwide audience and collectors. More than 90 galleries—some 11 of which are international—will take part in this year’s Sydney Contemporary.
It’s an open approach that is mirrored across the art scene in Australia’s largest city, which is grounded in various public galleries, festivals, grassroots initiatives, and art festivals. “The Sydney art scene is very connected with the Australian arts ecology while nurturing a genuine interest in the international arts landscape,” said Ursula Sullivan, director of Sullivan+Strumpf, which she runs with co-founder Joanna Strumpf.
With posts in Sydney, Melbourne, and Singapore, Sullivan+Strumpf promotes a dynamic slate of regional contemporary art, with a stable that features names such as Lindy Lee, Tony Albert, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Yvette Coppersmith, Alex Seton, and Gregory Hodge. All will appear at the gallery’s Sydney Contemporary booth, and in installations dotted throughout the city in what Strumpf described as “a curated edit of works alive with energy, meaning, and purpose, all at the frontier of their mediums.”
“The impact of Sydney Contemporary for us cannot be understated,” added Sullivan. “It’s one of the most important events in our year [and] an opportunity to come together with an energy that is unmatched. It’s a pleasure to see the zeal for discovering new works from across the spectrum of the arts community [through] collectors, artists, curators, and patrons alike.”
For STATION, founded in 2011, Sydney Contemporary comes at a notable time. “The Sydney art scene is a very vibrant one, especially at the moment,” said the gallery’s associate director of curatorial, Laura Couttie. The gallery first launched in Melbourne before adding a branch in Sydney in 2019. It recently relocated to a larger space in the bustling, inner-city creative hub of Surry Hills, where it has noticed increased visitation and engagement from the art community.
Recent years have seen a blossoming in the local art scene. The end of last year saw the opening of the multimillion-dollar Sydney Modern public art gallery, and this year saw the re-opening of the conceptual public art gallery Artspace, with an increased amount of rent-free studio spaces and expanded exhibition galleries. As well as these projects, the emergence of several artist-run initiatives and growth in the local commercial gallery scene has been pronounced. “Australian art practices are comparable with the rest of the world in terms of ambition, energy, and conceptual rigor,” noted Couttie. Like several galleries in the city, STATION is also looking to expand its presence internationally.
“Over the coming years, we will participate in more international art fairs,” she noted. “This is an important step in creating opportunities for our artists to engage with international markets and position their work in a broader global dialogue.” At its Sydney Contemporary booth, the gallery is showcasing works by three of its established artists—Tony Clark, Karla Dickens, and Heather B. Swann—who each offer subversions to the narratives of contemporary art through landscape paintings, found objects, and sculpture, respectively.
Another local gallery bringing Australian artists to the world is the nomadic arts endeavor DARLINGS, which will participate in The Armory Show in New York next week. “While DARLINGS stages exhibitions in Sydney, my focus as an art dealer is to give Australian artists a greater international audience, so my efforts have been put into long-term, sustainable collecting and exposure strategy outside of Australia,” said the gallery’s director Gregory Uzelac.
At Sydney Contemporary, meanwhile, several galleries are excited to bring international names to regional collectors. “This is a great opportunity for the gallery to present artists who have never been exhibited in this region before, such as Teresa Baker,” said Sotiris Sotiriou, director of COMA, which has two spaces in the city and represents artists including Renée Estée, Shan Turner-Caroll, and Justin Williams. “Baker has recently had artwork acquired by the Whitney in New York and was announced as a Joan Mitchell Foundation fellow.”
Ahead of the fair next week, it’s clear that Sydney Contemporary comes at a time of optimism for local galleries. “It’s vibrant, it’s ambitious, it’s inquisitive,” said Strumpf. “People in Sydney meet everything with enthusiasm. They are engaged with new works, mediums, or artists while also building long-lasting relationships with those who resonate with them deeply—we have clients who have been collecting certain artists for over 20 years.”
