Sydney Contemporary 2022 opens at multi-arts precinct Carriageworks

The opening to the public tomorrow of the Sydney Contemporary - Australasia’s premier art fair, in partnership with MA Financial Group - marks the first physical edition of the art fair since 2019 and includes an expansive program of art, performance, talks, food and drink, featuring the work of more than 450 artists and over 90 galleries at multi-arts precinct Carriageworks.

The fair runs from 8th-11th September with fair Director Barry Keldoulis noting “as most good art really needs to be seen ‘in the flesh’ to be fully appreciated, we are extremely excited for the art loving community to be able to gather together again. The extensive Program has something for everyone, with art, performance, music, and talks. It is the icing on the cake. The cake is, of course, the presentations by our galleries, exhibiting new work by cutting-edge and established artists from around the globe.”

Since its establishment in 2013, the past editions of Sydney Contemporary have attracted more than 112,000 visitors and recorded more than $85million in art sales, with 2022 set to build further on those figures.

Sydney Contemporary Founder Tim Etchells advises “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. The Fair provides the largest concentration of art sales annually in Australia and we expect 2022 to be no exception.”

The Fair program for Sydney Contemporary 2022 caters for serious collectors and the art loving public alike, presenting engaging activities alongside the extensive artworks on show, with curated AMPLIFY, Performance Contemporary, Kid Contemporary and Talk Contemporary programs that all run concurrently throughout the Fair.

Selected highlight presentations include:

•Justene Williams will present a new work titled She predicted the weather (2022) featuring three performative boat sculptures with colourfully painted sails that will be rocked and swung by singing performers in sculptural weather costumes. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. This project has been supported by the Griffith University's Creative Arts Research Initiative grant.

•THIS IS NO FANTASY will present a solo exhibition of new paintings by 2020 Archibald Prize winner and Western Aranda artist Vincent Namatjira, reflecting on his Aboriginal heritage and the ongoing impact of Australia’s colonial history.

•Utopia Art Sydney will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Papunya Tula Artists, one of Australia's most successful Indigenous Art Community based in Alice Springs, with works by Yukultji Napangati, George Tjungurrayi, Mantua Nangala and Joseph Jurra Tjapaltjarri. Talk Contemporary will feature a talk celebrating the 50th anniversary on the Saturday of the Fair.

•MARS will curate new work by artists Atong Atem, Jenna Lee and Scotty So. A significant theme that is interwoven throughout each artist’s practice is the exploration of identity, cultural othering, and notions of belonging.

•Sam Leach presents Automatic Evolution of the Art Audience, as part of AMPLIFY, an evolving portrait generated by Artificial Intelligence, based on images of participating visitors. Viewers will be captured by facial recognition technology and added to an algorithm using a machine learning algorithm generating an endlessly evolving portrait which will be displayed on a screen. Using an algorithm model based off the artist’s previous paintings, an infinite series of portraits will be generated. This work is presented by Sullivan+Strumpf.

•Venezuelan/Australian artist Nadia Hernández presents It's time for sancocho! for the 2022 edition of Kid Contemporary. Occupying a dedicated space at the Fair, children of all ages are invited to create an artwork inspired by Hernández’s practice. Hernández elaborates, “Sancocho is like a soup/stew/hearty broth, typical to many Latin American countries. We make it back home in Venezuela. It is so delicious and healthy, and we usually eat it on a Sunday. The stew has a lot of ingredients, including various meats, vegetables, and tubers.” Children will be asked to select ‘ingredients’ they would like to put in their sancocho, combining handcrafted paper cut-outs and stencilled objects with crayons, textas, pencil drawings to string together a delicious sancocho- mobile to be suspended from the ceiling of the space.

•Peta Clancy’s photographic series Undercurrent will be projected on the exterior façade of Carriageworks on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday Evenings of the Fair as part of AMPLIFY. To create her highly acclaimed Undercurrent series (2018-19), Clancy collaborated with the Dja Dja Wurrung community during a 12-month residency at the Koorie Heritage Trust. These soft, blushing landscapes are half out of focus and have alluringly dissonant colours. Clancy sets her lens on re- directed waterways in Dja Dja Wurrung country that submerge the sites of Indigenous massacres, capturing a seemingly serene landscape that masks the dark past of colonial frontier wars. Presented by Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney.

•1301 SW | STARKWHITE will present a group of significant works by internationally acclaimed artists working with both galleries. This will include new light boxes by Jonny Niesche, the presentation of two artists who are arguably Australia and New Zealand’s most acclaimed photographers, Bill Henson and Fiona Pardington, and the first Australian presentation of esteemed artist Billy Apple since his passing in 2021.

• The National Art School will present the work of eight, recently graduated, emerging artists who are working across painting, drawing, photomedia, ceramics and sculpture. Artists include Arash Chehelnabi, Susie Choi, Brydie Greedy, Charlie Komsic, Dylan Newling, TC Overson, Onrie Radovic and Greg Stanford.

•STATION will present a curated booth with new works by two of the Gallery’s female artists, Consuelo Cavaniglia and Julia Trybala. Cavaniglia’s sculptural forms and Trybala’s paintings will be presented alongside each other to create a dialogue between two different yet very relevant and critically engaged contemporary practices, focused on colour, tone and perception.

•Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin will present a solo booth of new and unseen works by Tamara Dean which have been produced utilising a custom-built underwater photography studio. Alongside this, the Gallery will present a custom-built annexed exhibition space with a rotating series of mini exhibitions by artists including Marc Etherington, Regina Wilson, Serena Bonson and Derek Henderson.

•In a special one-off performance at Sydney Contemporary, Salote Tawale will reprise a work from her ongoing series of expanded self-portraiture and includes Pasifika community participation. The work takes the form of an awkward celebration, unfolding across performance, live feed video and interventions into spaces throughout the Fair.

•Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert will present a diverse selection of artists and designers including Abdullah M.I. Syed, Fernando do Campo, Donna Marcus, Tammy Kanat, Olive Gill-Hille and Ivana Taylor, working across various textures, forms and colours of their art through the shared visibility of the artist’s hand. In an explicit celebration of painting, weaving, wrapping and sculpting. The presentation will seek to champion a return to process and technique, amidst the unrelenting pace of the technological present.

•Fox Jensen will present the newest of Aida Tomescu’s grand triptychs, alongside large works by Winston Roeth, Jan Albers and Tomislav Nikolic, and smaller paintings by Gideon Rubin and Todd Hunter.

•Mikala Dwyer presents Backdrop for Rounders and Backdrop for Base Matter (2016) – conjuring the origins of abstract art in the early 20th century, particularly the work of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) whose spiritualist beliefs and participation in seances led to some of the first purely abstract paintings. Dwyer calls on the diagrammatic nature of Klint’s work in devising her own paintings, referring to a genealogy of innovative women artists who have worked outside rationalist social and cultural norms. Impressive in scale and presence these works gesture to the transformative power of art. Presented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.

•Unsolved Art Thefts: A Journey Through the Mystery and Complexities of Art Crime is presented as part of Talk Contemporary. Masterpieces cut from their frames, never to be seen again. The museum walls remain adorned with the desolate empty frames. A collection of works mysteriously stolen from a Sydney gallery. The whole lot spirited away and never recovered. A Dutch masterpiece goes missing from a major public gallery. Detectives have little to no clues at their disposal. Another unsolved art theft. Were these insider jobs? Crimes of opportunity? Was it organised crime gangs or something else? Welcome to the shadowy world of Art Crime, where truth is stranger than fiction. Presented by PhD candidate and academic Vicki Oliveri and moderated by Akky van Ogtrop, President, Print Council of Australia and Curator of PAPER.

•NFTs; Sizzle or Fizzle? Now that the investment potential has been exposed as precarious, has the potential on the artistic side room to breathe? Moderated by Fair Director Barry Keldoulis, speakers include Michelle Grey Champion, Arts Matter, consultant and NFT advocate, Michael Bugelli, Gallerist, Patrick Younis, NFT artist, and Dr Josh Harle, Director, Tactical Space Lab.

Tickets to Sydney Contemporary are available to purchase online

Image: Sydney Contemporary Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro N Smith Gallery