At Sydney Contemporary, art doesn’t stop at Carriageworks! This year, to celebrate our 10th edition, Installations expands beyond the Fair, bringing large-scale installations into some of Sydney’s most iconic public spaces.

Alongside a major program of large-scale works throughout Carriageworks, visitors can experience Kamilaroi artist Reko Rennie’s striking new commission at Sydney Fish Market and Joan Ross’s immersive video installation at Pier Pavilion, Barangaroo, both free to visit!

THE PROGRAM

14 Ambitious Projects

Curated by José Da Silva, the Installations program features 14 projects spanning sculpture, textiles, painting, photography, kinetic forms and public interventions, with works that are generous and immediate but also ask us to look more closely at the social, ecological and cultural systems shaping our world.

Artists use spectacle, material invention and public address to explore some of the defining questions of contemporary life: how histories inhabit place, how images circulate, how materials carry memory, and how audiences gather, move, participate and reflect.

BEYOND CARRIAGEWORKS

Installations Extend Across the City

For the first time, Installations extends beyond Carriageworks to offsite locations including Sydney Fish Market and Pier Pavilion at Barangaroo. The 2026 program creates unexpected encounters with artists who also transform public spaces into powerful contemporary experiences. These projects invite audiences to experience contemporary art in public spaces before, during and after their visit to the Fair.

SYDNEY FISH MARKET

Reko Rennie

Presented by Ames Yavuz with the support of Destination NSW

Reko Rennie questions the politics of visibility and brings histories of Aboriginal culture and identity to the iconic Sydney Fish Market. Launching on 27 August, the installation will remain on view until 14 September.

PIER PAVILION, BARANGAROO

Joan Ross

Presented by N.Smith Gallery with the support of Destination NSW.

Joan Ross’ video animation transforms Pier Pavilion into an encounter with a critical eye on colonial history, unveiled on 27 August and on view until 7 September.

THROUGHOUT SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY

Leading Contemporary Artists at Carriageworks

The scale and history of Carriageworks make Installations a compelling experience. Visitors enter a site marked by its industrial past and encounter some of the most current ideas being explored by contemporary artists.

Billy Apple®

Presented by 1301SW | STARKWHITE with the support of Destination NSW

The pop-conceptual works of Billy Apple® are incisive reflections on artistic labour, branding, value, circulation and the relationships that underpin contemporary art. Sydney Contemporary celebrates his legacy with three related projects. Positioned within the context of an art fair, these works are examples of Billy Apple®’s, enduring examination of artistic labour, branding, value and art world professional relationships.

Mike Hewson

Presented by Roslyn Oxley9

Mike Hewson takes over the Sydney Contemporary Café and turns it into a shared sculptural setting, alongside a new fountain assembled from industrial and organic materials.

Jemima Wyman

Presented by Sullivan+Strumpf

Jemima Wyman transforms protest smoke into an immersive textile, considering camouflage, collective action and the political charge of pattern.

Grace Lillian Lee, Dr Ken Thaiday Snr & Allan George Lee

Presented by CASSANDRA BIRD

Dr Ken Thaiday Snr, Grace Lillian Lee, and Allan George Lee bring together Zenadth Kes weaving, ceremony and mentorship through kinetic contemporary form.

Choi Youngwook

Presented by Gallery LNL

Choi Youngwook’s pavilion featuring his Moon Jar paintings offers viewers a serene retreat from the bustle of the fair.

Kirtika Kain

Presented by Roslyn Oxley9

Kirtika Kain brings together material intensity, darkness and luminosity to consider caste, ancestral memory, labour and the charged politics of surface.

Remy Faint

Presented by CASSANDRA BIRD

Remy Faint’s sculptures bring together vessels, limbs and animal forms, creating strange hybrid objects that appear excavated, reassembled and alive.

William Kentridge

Presented by Annandale Galleries

William Kentridge reveals animal and botanical forms through bronzes poised between drawing and theatre.

Nabilah Nordin

Presented by Neon Parc

Nabilah Nordin turns steel into gestural, enigmatic forms that bend, lean and hover between drawing, sculpture and movement.

Ingvar Kenne

Presented by day01.

Ingvar Kenne’s photographs slow our perceptions of landscape through scale and spatial rhythm.

Louis Grant

Presented by SABBIA

Louis Grant’s new sculptures stage glass and found materials in intimate tableaux exploring queer embodiment and relations of support.

Alex Seton

Presented by Sullivan + Strumpf

Alex Seton transforms the everyday puffer jacket item into a vessel for contemporary anxieties around protection and truth.

Sydney Contemporary is proudly supported by the NSW Government through its tourism and events agency, Destination NSW.

Meet The Curator: José Da Silva

José Da Silva is an Australian curator and the Director of Sydney’s UNSW Galleries, where he has led a dynamic program of contemporary Australian art and design since 2018. In 2024, he curated the 18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art and became Chair of University Art Museums Australia.