Talks Archives | Page 2 of 2 | Sydney Contemporary

How do today’s photographers stand out – and who’s collecting their work?

In today’s world, photographic images proliferate at an extraordinary rate, serving as the currency through which we share our personal narratives. This begs the question: where does that leave photography as an art form? Has the prevalence of the camera phone, AI, social media, and algorithmic visibility enhanced – or diluted – photography’s creative and cultural value?

This panel explores how leading contemporary photographers navigate this evolving landscape, maintain artistic voice, and build a lasting presence in both the public imagination and the collector’s eye.

George Byrne creates large-scale photographs that depict everyday surfaces and landscapes as painterly abstractions. Borrowing from the clean, vivid clarity of modernist painting, he also references the New Topographics photography movement via a subject matter firmly entrenched in the urban everyday. “I’d always been interested in anti-landscape photography, but it wasn’t until I moved to LA and started shooting in colour and experimenting with manipulation and assemblage that I felt I was able to do anything very expressive or original with it. The images I’m making now are quite removed from reality, but I tend to bury the lead and not let the seams distract. Hence the effect is hopefully one of pleasure and disconcertion. They are dreamscapes.” – GB. Born in Sydney in 1976, Byrne graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 2001, travelled extensively, and then settled in Los Angeles in 2011 – where he now lives and works.

Amber Creswell Bell is an art curator, an author of books on the arts, a lifestyle writer, a public speaker, and artist mentor. She was the Director of Emerging Art for Michael Reid galleries, curating both the emerging art and ceramics programs from 2019-2025. In 2021 Amber established the National Emerging Art Prize (NEAP) in collaboration with Michael Reid. Amber has been curator of the NEAP since its inception. Amber has published seven art books with Thames & Hudson to date: Her first book, Clay, released October 2016, showcases over 50 contemporary ceramic artisans from Australia and abroad. Amber’s second book, A Painted Landscape, released in October 2018, profiles the diverse work of 50 of Australia’s landscape painters. 2021 saw the release of Amber’s monograph on artist Ken Done ‘Art. Design. Life’, as well as Still Life – a compilation of Australian still life painters which won Illustrated Non-fiction Book of the Year at the Indie Book Awards. Australian Abstract, was released in March 2023, and was awarded Illustrated Book of the Year at the Australia Book Industry Awards. About Face was released in September 2024, profiling Australian and New Zealand portrait and figurative painters. Exposure, released September 2025, is her latest release.

Leila Jeffreys is a renowned contemporary artist working across photography, moving image and installation. She is best known for images of birds, photographed at human scale, that explore and subvert the conventions of portraiture. Jeffreys, who lives and works in Sydney with her husband and son, sees her avian subjects as living beings, part of a practice that expands viewer’s hearts by drawing attention to interdependence between species. Jeffreys’ work is a result of years-long periods of research and exploration. In the tradition of artist-activists, she conducts fieldwork, collaborates with conservationists, ornithologists and sanctuaries and champions programs to protect and restore endangered habitats. Jeffreys has exhibited in Australia and around the world for fifteen years, everywhere from Sydney and Melbourne to Paris, Brussels and Los Angeles. In 2023, her work was curated into The Best in Show at Fotografiska in New York, as part of an exhibition dedicated to animals in contemporary photography that toured Tallinn and Stockholm. She featured alongside the world’s most respected photographers as part of Civilisation: The Way We Live Now, a landmark 2023 exhibition at London’s Saatchi Gallery.

Lisa Sorgini is an Australian/Italian artist who works in still photography. She investigates themes of the human condition: caregiving, motherhood, memory and familial spaces. Within her two long-form projects, Mother and In-Passing, Lisa uses personal experience combined with sociological research to reveal complex narratives about the representation of women, mothers, and care roles in current cultural spaces. Other notable works include Behind Glass, which considers motherhood during the COVID-19 pandemic; The Bushfire, the Flood, addressing climate anxiety and place; and Thick Like Water, focusing on family dynamics. In 2025, her work The Bushfire, the Flood was exhibited at Rencontres d’Arles as part of On Country: Photography from Australia, and she published her second monograph, In-Passing, through Libraryman. Sorgini’s work has been profiled extensively in prominent outlets such as The New Yorker, TIME, The New York Times, and The Guardian. In 2022, she released her debut monograph, Behind Glass (2022), and in 2023 held her first solo show at The Centre for Contemporary Photography, Australia. Her work has also been showcased at numerous international festivals, including PhEST, Landskrona Photo Festival, Ragusa Photo Festival, and the Ballarat Photo Festival, as well as receiving nominations and awards, including the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, the National Portrait Prize, the Lucie Portrait Project, and Portrait of Humanity.

wani toaishara’s practice incorporates performance, video installations and image-making, which are informed by his ongoing explorations of Indigenous Black African subjectivity. toaishara works in an approach he describes as auto-ethnographic, and his practice often employs material forms and aesthetics traditionally associated with the African diaspora. His performance-influenced installations create spaces where historical precedent and self-determination intertwine. Drawing on the quotidian visual traditions across the African continent, toaishara’s work engages with the diverse Black cultural histories and complex experiences across the diaspora. toaishara’s site-responsive approach considers the relationality between cultural materiality, memory, and place, unpacking connections between historical narratives and contemporary realities.

A valid ticket to Sydney Contemporary 2025 is required for entry to this talk. We recommend arriving 10 minutes before the talk’s start time. Buy tickets now.

Image Credit: George Byrne, 99c Culver City, 2017. Image Courtesy of George Byrne and Thames & Hudson Australia.

Two hearts. One Dropbox.

From the Love Seat: Reflections gathers art world couples who live, love, and make art together—sharing studios, secrets, and the occasional email account.

Join them on the proverbial love couch to reflect on how art-making (and art-working) can become a language of care, conflict, and collaboration.

Expect romance, realness and a little bit of tenderness.

Mariam Arcilla and Mason Kimber | Speakers
Amrita Hepi and Abdul Abdullah | Speakers
Benjamin Law | Moderator

Mariam Ella Arcilla is a community servicer, writer, social designer, and arts consultant based in Sydney, Australia. She runs Magenta House, a multi-modal domestic space fostering intimate assemblies through workshops, art pop-ups, communal meals, reading sessions, library, a shop, and test kitchen. Raised in a household of artists and cooks in the Philippines, Mariam maintains a collaborative practice grounded in collective nourishment, cultural incantations, and knowledge-trading. Mariam has managed galleries, artist-run collectives, and grassroots projects since 2006. She is the former Co-Chair and Digital Producer at Runway Journal and guest editor of Debris Magazine, fine print Magazine, and 4A Papers. Her writing appears in MeMo Review, Art Guide, Running Dog, ACCLAIM, and Art Collector. As a creative practitioner, she partners with social enterprises, ARIs, and cultural institutions in Australia and the Philippines to produce programs and resources that uplift emerging artists and experimental practices. Mariam has staged programming, strategic and marketing projects with key bodies, namely 4A Centre of Contemporary Asian Art, Arts House Melbourne, STATION Australia, Institute of Modern Art, Queensland Government, and Museum of Brisbane. She has served as an industry mentor for Parramatta Artists Studios, Outer Space, Griffith University, and Runway Journal. Mariam maintains the Barkada Index, an online inventory for Filipino diaspora in Australia.

Mason Kimber is a Sydney-based artist and educator. Kimber uses painting, sculptural reliefs, and installation to engage with the social dimension of architecture, particularly its relationship to memory. After graduating in 2013 with an MFA in Painting from the National Art School, Sydney Kimber was awarded a three-month studio residency at the British School at Rome, Italy the following year. It was here that he studied ancient fresco painting, which led him to look closely at the various connections between painting and the built fabric of cities. Kimber’s current PhD research at UNSW Art + Design is titled: ‘Assembling at the Surface: Reframing relations to place and architecture through expanded painting’. He is represented by Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne.

Amrita Hepi (Bundjulung/Ngapuhi Territories) is a multidisciplinary artist & choreographer based in Naarm/melbourne and Bangkok. Her interest as an artist is in the idea of archive; particularly in relation to the body and how it is organized by ancestry/people/events and environment. By coalescing fact and fiction, memoir and ethnography, the local and the singular into the performance/artwork she makes. Amrita trained at NAISDA & Alvin Ailey NYC. A critically acclaimed artist she has twice been the winner of the people’s choice award from the Keir Choreographic Award, was a Forbes 30 under 30 for artist, and has shown and been commissioned nationally and internationally. Amrita is a Triad member of performance company APHIDS, on the board of directors and artistic associate for RISING festival and part of the Artistic Associate group for STRUT dance. Her commitment to collaboration, experimentation and kinship are key tenets to her practice.

Abdul Abdullah is a multi-disciplinary artist based between Australia and Bangkok. His practice is concerned with the experience of the ‘other’ and is particularly interested in the disjuncture between perception/projection of identity and the reality of lived experience. He is represented by Ames Yavuz Gallery and has been exhibiting across Australia for twenty years. He is included in the collections of all the major Australian state public-institutions and has been presenting through Asia, Europe and the United States since 2014. Abdul is passionate about working with young people, and advocates for arts education, intercultural exchange and human rights.

Benjamin Law is an Australian writer and broadcaster. He’s the author of The Family Law (2010), Gaysia (2013), the Quarterly Essay Moral Panic 101 (2017) and editor of Growing Up Queer in Australia (2019). Benjamin is also an AWGIE Award-winning screenwriter. His forthcoming play for Melbourne Theatre Company is Dying: A Memoir (Oct–Nov 2025). He’s the co-executive producer, co-creator and co-writer of the Netflix comedy-drama Wellmania (2023), playwright of Melbourne Theatre Company’s sold-out play Torch the Place (2020), and creator and co-writer of three seasons of the award-winning SBS/Hulu/Comedy Central Asia TV series The Family Law (2016–2019). He is a board member of Story Factory and Co-Curious, and an ambassador for Plan International Australia, the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, Victorian Pride Centre, Bridge for Asylum Seekers and the Pinnacle Foundation. Benjamin has a PhD in creative writing and cultural studies from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). In 2019, he was voted one of the 40 Most Influential Asian-Australians, winning the Arts & Culture category of the Asian-Australian Leadership Awards.

Curated by Micheal Do

A valid ticket to Sydney Contemporary 2025 is required for entry to this talk. We recommend arriving 10 minutes before the talk’s start time. Buy tickets now.

Image Credit: Mason Kimber and & Mariam Ella Arcilla; Photo: Dave Wheeler.

From those who still care, paying attention, asking what’s next?

True Believers brings together artists and organisers who’ve stayed in the art world—through its shifts, its challenges and its contradictions.

Join them as they talk about belief, burnout, soft power, and what it takes to keep going with care and imagination.

Glenn Barkley is an artist, writer, curator and gardener based between the Shoalhaven and Sydney, NSW, Australia. His work operates in the space between these interests drawing upon the history of ceramics, popular song, the garden and conversations about art and the internet. Major exhibitions include ‘experimental idiocy’, Sullivan+Strumpf (2024); ‘the electrical experience’, Sullivan+Strumpf (2023), ‘Plant Your Feet’, Shoalhaven Regional Gallery (2022), ‘The Urn of Bitter Prophecy’, Sullivan + Strumpf (2021); ‘Regarding George Ohr’, Boca Raton Musuem of Art, Florida USA (2017); ‘yetmorecontemporaryart’, Artspace, Sydney (2017); the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: ‘Magic Object’, Art Gallery of South Australia (2016); ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’, Westspace, Melbourne (with Angela Brennan) (2016); ‘Watching Clouds Pass the Moon’, Lake Macquarie Regional Gallery, NSW (2016); and ‘Glazed and Confused: Ceramics in Contemporary Art Practice’, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, NSW (2014). Barkley was previously senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2008–14) and curator of the University of Wollongong Art Collection (1996–2007). In 2023, Barkley launched his book Ceramics: An Atlas of Forms, a global cultural study of the history of ceramics, sharing the stories of over 100 objects, honouring the artists who have left their mark on this timeless practice. This coincided with the curation of brick vase clay cup jug, a look at the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s collection. Barkley was a finalist in the 2017 Sidney Myer Ceramics Award and was the 2025 winner of the Reimagine Art Prize. His work is held in numerous collections both nationally and internationally, including the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Shepparton Art Museum and Artbank, Sydney.

David Marr is widely regarded as one of Australia’s most influential commentators, writing on subjects such as politics, censorship, the media and the arts. He has been a journalist since 1973 and is the recipient of four Walkley awards for journalism Over the years David Marr has written about politics, society and the arts for the National Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Guardian. His books include Patrick White, A Life (1991) and Dark Victory written with Marian Wilkinson (2003) plus half a dozen Quarterly Essays on political leaders from John Howard via Bill Shorten to George Pell. Lately his essays, stories and speeches exploring Australia over the last 45 years have been collected in My Country. He lives in Sydney with his partner Sebastian Tesoriero, his collaborator on Killing for Country (2023), a reckoning with the role of Marr’s family in the bloody frontier wars of Queensland. He is host, Late Night Live on ABC Radio National.

Richard Perram OAM has a long and varied career in the arts having been Visual Art Project Officer at the Australia Council, Director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, Executive Officer of Arts Queensland, Executive Officer of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, and from 2004 until his retirement in 2017 Director of Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG). Richard curated many exhibitions for BRAG including: Baubles, Bangles & Beads: Australian Contemporary Jewellery (2006), Light Sensitive Material: works from the Verghis Collection (2009), AES+F: The Feast of Trimalchio(2012), Stars + Stripes: American art of the 21st Century from the Goldberg Collection (2014), Beyond Belief: the sublime in contemporary art (2017), and the award-winning TheUnflinching Gaze: photo media and the male figure (2017). In 2014 Richard was awarded an OAM for services to the visual arts in particular the museums and galleries sector.

Myles Russell Cook is the Artistic Director and CEO of ACCA, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. Myles has a long-standing interest in cultural, gender and sexual diversity within both Australian and International contemporary practice, and has worked across a broad range of exhibitions and projects. For over eight years Myles was one of a team of curators who oversaw major contemporary art exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria, including NGV Triennial, and Melbourne Now.  Myles is the curator of the upcoming touring show, The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art, presented in partnership with the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. This exhibition is the largest exhibition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art ever presented internationally.

Talia Smith is an artist and curator originally from Aotearoa New Zealand but now based in Sydney, Australia. She is of Cook Island, Samoan and Pakeha heritage. She has curated major exhibitions for the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, the Singapore Photography festival, MAMA Albury and IMA Brisbane among others. Her writing has been published for various journals and artist essays such as Memo review, Art New Zealand and the World Weather Network program and in 2026 will be published in the new anthology of Pacific writing titled Fresh off the Boat. Talia has completed curatorial residencies in Singapore, Germany and the Nordics. She currently works as the Coordinator Programming at Blacktown Arts and holds an MFA (research) from UNSW.

Curated by Micheal Do

A valid ticket to Sydney Contemporary 2025 is required for entry to this talk. We recommend arriving 10 minutes before the talk’s start time. Buy tickets now.

Image Credit: 1987 Opening Lotti Smorgon Gallery, Image courtesy of ACCA Archive.

For the divas, the disruptors, and the chronically online.

My brat summer assembles the art world’s culturally omnivorous agents of change—those rewriting the rules with irony, intellect, and high-gloss bravado. Think pop star Charli XCX meets historian and critic Claire Bishop: they’re unserious about seriousness, allergic to legacy, and fluent in critical theory.

Coby Ann Edgar is a queer multi-racial (Gulumoerrigin (Larrakia)/Jingili/Filipino/Chinese/Irish/Scottish/English) First Nations curator, writer and presenter living and working on unceded Gadigal land in Redfern, Sydney. With over 15 years’ experience in government positions across education, galleries, and museums, Coby has recently transitioned to independent work and is currently focussing on building her consultancy company Driftwood Consultancy which was incorporated earlier this year.

Toby Chapman is Director, Lewers: Penrith Regional Gallery, where he leads the strategic and artistic programming. He is interested in cultural forms and expressions that often sit outside of a gallery context, and how institutions can serve as valued space to bring new audiences and conversations together. This often manifests through community or socially-engaged artistic programs. He has curated projects for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia; 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art; Arts & Cultural Exchange, Parramatta; Sydney Festival; the 9th Shanghai Biennale; and the 13^th Jakarta Biennale. He currently sits on the Arts and Cultural Advisory Board, Bradfield City Centre; Western Sydney University’s Western Sydney Creative Advisory Board and regularly advises on public art projects across Western Sydney. He is a diehard Penrith Panthers supporter and collector of their merchandise.

Jazz Money is a Wiradjuri poet and artist whose practice is centred around poetics to produce works that encompass installation, performance, film and print. Their writing has been widely published nationally and internationally, and performed on stages around the world. Jazz’s first poetry collection, the best-selling how to make a basket (UQP, 2021) was the 2020 winner of the David Unaipon Award. Their second collection mark the dawn (UQP, 2024) is the 2024 recipient of the UQP Quentin Bryce Award. Trained as a filmmaker, Jazz’s first feature film is WINHANGANHA (2023), commissioned by the National Film and Sound Archive.

Elias Redstone is the Founder and Artistic Director of PHOTO Australia and PHOTO International Festival of Photography in Melbourne, a biennial event that has been viewed by over a half a million people across its first three editions (PHOTO 2021, 2022, and 2024). Elias has initiated international partnerships to connect Australian photography with global audiences, including collaborations with The Photographers’ Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He is co-curating On Country: Photography from Australia for the Rencontres d’Arles 2025 — the first major focus on Australia at the festival — featuring 17 Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and collectives. He also oversaw the curation of Trent Mitchell: Australian Lustre, currently on view at the Australian Embassy in Paris until October 2025. Prior to launching PHOTO Australia, Elias curated Constructing Worlds at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, and authored Shooting Space: Architecture in Contemporary Photography, published by Phaidon.

Tim Riley Walsh is Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney. His current MCA curatorial projects include Primavera: Young Australian Artists (2025, curator); Data Dreams: Contemporary Art in the Age of AI (2025, co-curator); and MCA Collection: Artists in Focus (2025, curatorium). Outside of the MCA, Tim’s recent projects include Unbecoming at La Trobe Art Institute, Djaara/Bendigo (2025, curator); You Are Here Too at the Institute of Modern Art, Magandjin/Brisbane (2025, co-curator); and Gordon Bennett: This World Is Not My Home at Sutton Gallery, Naarm/Melbourne (2023, curator). Tim is also a founding member of Kink, a collective writing a history of queer Australian art. Tim has previously held curatorial and related roles at Gertrude and MADA Gallery, Monash University, Naarm/Melbourne; Camden Art Centre, London; and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Magandjin/Brisbane.

Curated by Micheal Do

A valid ticket to Sydney Contemporary 2025 is required for entry to this talk. We recommend arriving 10 minutes before the talk’s start time. Buy tickets now.

Image Credit: brat Album cover, Charli XCX.

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