At Sydney Contemporary, art doesn’t stop at Carriageworks. Installations extend beyond the Fair, bringing large-scale works into some of Sydney’s most iconic public spaces.
Browse the 2026 Installations program below. Details for 2027 will be announced next year.
THE 2026 PROGRAM
14 Ambitious Projects
Curated by José Da Silva, the 2026 Installations program spans 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
Installations extends beyond Carriageworks to offsite locations across Sydney, creating unexpected encounters with artists who 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
Reko Rennie questions the politics of visibility and brings histories of Aboriginal culture and identity to the iconic Sydney Fish Market. Presented by Ames Yavuz with the support of Destination NSW and Placemaking NSW.
PIER PAVILION, BARANGAROO
Joan Ross
Joan Ross’ video animation transforms Pier Pavilion into an encounter with a critical eye on colonial history. Presented by N.Smith Gallery with the support of Destination NSW and Placemaking NSW.
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.
Billy Apple® (1935-2021) was a pioneering artist in the pop and conceptual art movements. His art remains one of the most incisive commentaries on the unspoken economic structures that underpin contemporary art. Sydney Contemporary celebrates his legacy with three related projects.
Mike Hewson
Presented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
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.
Alex Seton
Presented by Sullivan + Strumpf
Alex Seton transforms the everyday puffer jacket item into a vessel for contemporary anxieties around protection and truth.
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.
Dr Grace Lillian Lee, Dr Ken Thaiday Snr & Allan George Lee
Presented by CASSANDRA BIRD
Dr Ken Thaiday Snr, Dr 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 Gallery
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.
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.
