Sydney Contemporary 2023: Advisory Selections

Karla Dickens' The Nation Has Gone Nuts (2020) at STATION

Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens brings her assemblage wall works to Sydney Contemporary for a presentation alongside Tony Clark and Heather B. Swann with STATION.

Dickens studied at the National Art School in Sydney, where she experimented with painting and collage throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, later incorporating found objects into her practice. Concerned with themes including, race, gender, and injustice, Dickens' oeuvre uses dark humour to scrutinise such subjects.

In The Nation Has Gone Nuts (2020), Dickens gathers diverse materials including a burlap sack and cut-out imagery to create a collage with a mocking title. Printed across the sack are the words 'NATIONAL NUTS' with a snippet of a laughing face below.

Dickens' imaginative use of materials invites us to delve into her provocative reflections on Australian culture, while also reminding us of the important histories of marginalised identities.

Gretchen Albrecht's Night Falling (2023) at Two Rooms

Gretchen Albrecht's large-scale painting, Night Falling (2023), will be shown publicly for the first time at Sydney Contemporary.

One of New Zealand's most celebrated contemporary painters, Albrecht is renowned for her abstract compositions that embrace gesture, geometry, and colour.

In this painting, the artist illustrates her dedication to exploring the potential of abstraction. Albrecht's application of paint is visceral—her brushstrokes are gestural and allude to the power of her inner sense of rhythm and movement. The horizontal lines create a contrast between geometry and gesture, introducing a dialogue around intent and impulse.

Aiko Robinson's As evening draws on, and I gaze on long rains falling (2023) at Gow Langsford

Influenced by her Japanese and New Zealand heritage, Aiko Robinson makes work that merges traditional craftsmanship with contemporary aesthetics.

In As evening draws on, and I gaze on long rains falling (2023), Robinson's large-scale work on paper depicts two figures in an elaborately decorated interior. The figures, who are erotically engaged, are immersed in intricately patterned textiles reminiscent of Japanese woodblock print designs.

The Perth-based artist's work balances the provocative with the everyday while demonstrating Robinson's technical precision in hand drawing with pen and paint on washi paper.

Robinson is the most recent addition to Gow Langsford's roster of represented artists. Sydney Contemporary will be the Auckland-based gallery's first major showing of her paintings, which will be shown alongside work by Chris Heaphy, Grace Wright, and Dale Frank.

Sarah Smuts-Kennedy's Joy Field - I Feel Love 5th May (2023) at Laree Payne Gallery

Laree Payne Gallery presents a new body of work by Sarah Smuts-Kennedy at this year's fair. The solo presentation will spotlight the New Zealand-born artist's developments since she began practising in Auckland two decades prior.

Joy Field - I Feel Love 5th May (2023) introduces dreamlike fields of colour in a large-scale soft pastel work. To make the work, Smuts-Kennedy uses a similar technique to Surrealist automatism—where the artist suppresses conscious control in favour of the unconscious mind—to adopt a more spiritual and spontaneous approach to art-making.

Bold scrawlings of dark purple and umber hover above hazy, sofer planes of pastel tones and coalesce in a magnificent outburst of abstract expression.

Tomislav Nikolic's But I never lost a minute of sleep worrying about the way things might've been (2023) at Fox Jensen Gallery

A self-taught artist, Tomislav Nikolic approaches painting as a three-dimensional object.

To create his large-scale abstract paintings, he applies multiple layers of transparent colour washes to paper and blends marble dust to create works that teeter between opaque and translucent.

What might first appear as one solid colour, gradually transforms into hundreds of layers of paint that achieve a luminous effect, drawing onlookers into a seemingly infinite portal of colour.

The Melbourne-born artist was awarded the Bulgari Art Award in 2017 and has work included in public and private collections including the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and the Auckland Art Gallery in New Zealand.

Jedda-Daisy Culley's We real-life-girl-club online, inter-ninth dimensional uprising in the desert (2023) at Yavuz Gallery

Australian artist Jedda-Daisy Culley creates colourful, figurative paintings that often investigate the female experience and themes surrounding sex, motherhood, and objectification.

Rendered in shade-shifting palettes of pink, purple, blue, and more, Culley depicts fragmented representations of the female form.

We real-life-girl-club online, inter-ninth dimensional uprising in the desert (2023) is evocative of a butterfly, with four wings outstretched and tropical colouring. At its thorax, a menacing face emerges, the insect's body giving way to a monstrous form erupting from within.

Culley's loose, energetic strokes imbue her paintings with a sense of vivacity. It's as though she has to paint quickly to capture her subjects' swelling emotions and unpredictable movements.

Angus Gardner's Landscape Painting 14 (2023) at Gallery 9

Angus Gardner, who lives and works in Melbourne, is interested in the nuances of different materials and mediums. Keeping his approach to painting in mind, the Australian artist plays with the surface of clay to reveal gestural mark-making.

Landscape Painting 14 (2023) is an earthenware sculpture composed of rough edges, bold colours, and cartoonish forms. Part of his 'Landscape Painting' series (2023–ongoing), the sculpture's tongue-in-cheek title ignites a dialogue that explores the relationship between ceramics, paintings, and drawings.

Gardner's presentation at Sydney Contemporary coincides with his solo exhibition, Landscape Paintings (16 August–9 September 2023), currently on view at Gallery 9 in Sydney.

Peter Adsett's 4Sq. No.3 (2023) at PAULNACHE

Gisborne-born artist Peter Adsett is known for his abstract paintings which he makes by working flat on the ground.

Dedicated to studying art by central desert aboriginal artists and Maori artists, Adsett's practice often explores themes of historic cultural and social injustices.

4Sq. No.3 (2023) creates the illusion of depth. Rendered in flat monochrome, the painting depicts vertical rectangular forms delicately outlined by thin black lines.

Adsett's abstract composition is absorbing. With striking contrasts between black and white and strong but simple shapes, the painting offers a mirage of negative space.