If you've been keeping up with Sebastian Goldspink's Art Agenda series for RUSSH, or have been keeping up with our arts field updates more generally, then you'll know that we don't play when it comes to our favourite exhibitions. A gallery stroll is the perfect winter pastime, often able to be executed in the comfort of a warmly heated room, escaping into the imaginations of some of the world's brightest creative talents.
If you're looking for a list of exhibitions happening in your local post code, look no further. We've gathered a list of the best exhibitions happening around Australia in August 2026. Whether they're institutional retrospectives, Indigenous group exhibitions, or landmark presentations from bright young things. Check them out, below.
NSW
Art Gallery of NSW
ສູ້ສູ້ Sou Sou – until 1 February 2027
Acclaimed Sydney artist Mechelle Bounpraseuth has a landmark presentation at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, featuring around 150 works for 12-months, where her immersive installation celebrated Lao culture, ritual and intergenerational storytelling through large-scale ceramic works.
China Heights
Notepads and Blur – until 8 August 2026
Chris Town's Notepads transforms the overlooked language of everyday life into a visual archive, elevating familiar words and phrases into personal reflections on memory, meaning and the constant flow of information that shapes contemporary life. In Blur, Dean De Landre explores the shifting nature of perception through paintings and intricate beadwork that blur the boundaries between the natural and digital worlds, inviting viewers to reconsider how images shape the way we see.
CASSANDRA BIRD
Axiom – opening 7 August 2026
Celebrated Australian artist Robert Owen's first solo exhibition with Cassandra Bird Gallery brings together works that reflect more than five decades of his pioneering exploration of abstraction through light, colour, geometry and perception. Spanning painting, sculpture and spatial installation, the exhibition invites viewers into immersive environments that reveal Owen's enduring fascination with the relationship between the natural world, mathematics and human experience.
Ngununggula
New Religion – until 18 October 2026
A group exhibition bringing together contemporary Australian works, new commissions, and major historical works to explore how symbols of faith persist, evolve, and outlive belief. The exhibition asks why certain images continue to hold
meaning and what forms of authority they retain after systems of devotion have shifted.
Newcastle Art Gallery
The Mordant Family Gift – until 8 November 2026
Presents 25 works across paintings, photography, textiles, installations, prints and sculptures by Australian and international artists Ian Abdulla, María Fernanda Cardoso, Brent Harris, Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Janet Laurence, Hiroyuki Kita, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Jamie North, Raquel Ormella, Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Tim Silver, Gemma Smith, Yuken Teruya, Brendan Van Hek and John Young. The exhibition celebrates the significance of the gift, the largest number of works the Mordant Family have ever gifted to one institution, and marks the first time these works will be presented collectively to the public.
CHALK HORSE
Level Two – until 21 August 2026
CHALK HORSE marks its gallery expansion with a new, major group exhibition spanning both floors of its William Street building. Level Two comprises the gallery’s entire stable of artists, along with four guest artists: Omar Musa, Arm Wantaya and Kohl Tyler.
MCA
Not a Souvenir – until 19 October 2026
Tony Albert – one of Australia’s most fearless and influential contemporary artists – stages his newest major exhibition exclusively to Sydney. The show will feature works across sculpture, photography, installation, painting and assemblage alongside major new commissions.
COMA Gallery
No Shadow Under A Second Sun – until 15 August, 2026
This group exhibition examines the uncertain space between the dissolution of old structures and the emergence of new ones, asking how futures are imagined before they are built. Featuring artists working across diverse mediums, it reflects on the shifting symbols, rituals and values that shape contemporary life.
N.Smith Gallery
Aidan Hartshorn – until 24 August 2026
Walgalu/Wiradjuri artist Aidan Hartshorn presents a new body of work examining the institutional collection and storage of Aboriginal cultural material. Through vacuum-sealed stones collected from Walgalu and Wiradjuri Country, the exhibition reflects on dispossession, memory and the enduring connection between people and place.
VIC
Heide Museum of Modern Art
Brassaï: Secret Paris – 25 July – 15 November 2026
The most comprehensive exhibition of Brassaï's work ever presented in Australia, Brassaï: Secret Paris brings together more than 150 original vintage prints capturing the streets, nightlife and creative circles of 1930s Paris. From iconic nocturnal scenes and portraits of Pablo Picasso to surrealist experiments and pioneering photographs of graffiti, the exhibition offers a rare insight into one of the twentieth century's most influential photographers.
NGV International
CARTIER – until 4 October 2026
The largest exhibition of Cartier ever presented in Australia, CARTIER brings together nearly 400 extraordinary jewels, watches and precious objects, alongside rare archival material tracing the maison's evolution from Parisian jeweller to global design icon. Exclusive to Melbourne, the exhibition features iconic pieces worn by figures including Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, Rihanna and the Duchess of Windsor.
C. Gallery
Analogue and Alchemy – until 20 August 2026
Elliot Bastianon's latest body of work explores the tension between traditional craftsmanship and industrial production through copper forms hand-crafted by Hari Krishan, a senior member of Punjab's Thathera coppersmith community, before being transformed through extensive nickel electroplating. The resulting sculptures reflect on the point where centuries-old making traditions collide with industrial excess, raising questions about labour, materiality and the environmental cost of progress.
Buxton Contemporary
Poetry goes no further than language: A historical moment of art becoming art again – until 3 October 2026
The University of Melbourne's Buxton Contemporary has unveiled a major new exhibition exploring the emergence of conceptualism in China. Curators Carol Yinghua Lu, Director of Beijing's Inside-Out Art Museum, and artist Liu Ding, have brought together the entire body of work by Beijing-based artist collective New Measurement Group (1989–95), as well as a selection of works by Shanghai-based conceptual artist Qian Weikang (active 1990–95).
Bunjil Place Gallery
The Offbeat Sari – until August 2026
A landmark international exhibition celebrating the sari – one of the world’s most worn garments. It brings together 54 groundbreaking saris on loan from leading global designers and emerging studios across India, in a large-scale exploration of the contemporary Indian and South Asian fashion staple.
Potter Museum of Art
Ngarn Wa’ngal: Art of the gum tree – Until 21 November 2026
Exploring the enduring significance of Australia's iconic gum tree, Ngarn Wa’ngal: Art of the gum tree brings together more than 175 works spanning First Nations, colonial, twentieth-century and contemporary art. Alongside five major new commissions, the exhibition considers the eucalypt as a powerful symbol of Country, identity, ecology and cultural memory across generations.
QLD
Rockhampton Museum of Art
Tarnanthi on Tour: Too Deadly – until 5 October 2026
Celebrating ten years of the Art Gallery of South Australia's acclaimed Tarnanthi festival, Tarnanthi on Tour: Too Deadly brings together more than 30 works by contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. Featuring monumental paintings, installations and moving image works, the exhibition showcases the diversity, innovation and cultural depth of First Nations art through works by leading artists including Reko Rennie, Judy Watson and Tony Albert.
Home of the Arts (HOTA)
This Moment: Highlights from the White Rabbit Collection of Chinese Contemporary Art – until 11 October 2026
Presenting key works from the White Rabbit Collection, one of the world’s most significant and influential holdings of contemporary Chinese art, this extraordinary exhibition features bold, experimental artworks produced over the last 25 years that interrogate authority, reclaim history and reflect profound social change.
Museum of Brisbane
Warrajamba – until 15 November 2026
Quandamooka artist Delvene Cockatoo-Collins will reimagine Museum of Brisbane's Creative Space into an interactive and immersive realm, exploring the ancestral story of Warrajamba, the mermaid.
SA
Art Gallery of South Australia
James Tylor: Turrangka…in the shadows and CIPX Kaurna Miyurna (Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange with the Kaurna Community) – until 1 November 2026
Bringing together the work of Kaurna artists James Tylor and Damien Shen, this powerful presentation explores Kaurna history, identity and cultural continuity through photography, portraiture and reclaimed visual narratives. Spanning a major survey of Tylor's decade-long practice alongside newly commissioned tintype portraits of Kaurna Elders, cultural leaders and community members, it offers a moving reflection on Country, memory and the importance of First Nations self-representation.
Art Gallery of South Australia
Monet to Matisse: Defying Tradition – 11 July – 8 November 2026
An Australian-exclusive exhibition bringing 57 masterworks from Ohio's Toledo Museum of Art to Adelaide, Monet to Matisse: Defying Tradition traces the radical evolution of modern art from Impressionism through to Abstract Expressionism. Featuring iconic works by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian and Helen Frankenthaler, the exhibition explores how successive generations of artists challenged convention and reshaped the visual language of the 19th and 20th centuries.
WA
KolbuszSpace
Liliana Pasalic: A Quiet Force – 7–9 August 2026
Bringing together tapestry, painting, photography and sculpture, A Quiet Force explores the reciprocal relationship between people and the environments they inhabit. Through layered materials and organic forms, Liliana Pasalic reflects on the quiet yet profound ways landscape shapes our lives.
PICA
Soft Grates – until 20 December 2026
Jen Berean and James Carey’s Soft Grates is the fourth in the Judy Wheeler Commission series and invites visitors to contemplate how institutions mark time and hold memory through the presence of water. Continuing their collaborative exploration of architecture, infrastructures and embedded systems, the duo aims to reveal the unseen networks that move water through and around PICA’s location in Boorloo (Perth).
Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA)
The West Australian Pulse 2026 – until 13 September 2026
AGWA's annual showcase of Western Australia's most exciting emerging artists, featuring work by recent Year 12 Visual Arts graduates.
Stala Contemporary
Rose Moxham: Nervous Pastorals – until 12 September 2026
Queensland artist Rose Moxham presents new paintings exploring landscape and the uneasy relationship between humans and the natural environment.
NT
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) – from 8 August 2026 until 25 January 2027
Australia's longest-running and most prestigious First Nations art prize returns with a powerful exhibition showcasing the work of emerging and established Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. Spanning painting, sculpture, weaving, photography and installation, the exhibition offers a compelling snapshot of contemporary Indigenous art from across the country.
Midpul Art Gallery
Salon des Refusés – from 5 August until 26 September 2026
Presented alongside the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, Salon des Refusés celebrates outstanding works submitted but not selected for the award. Featuring artists from remote art centres across Australia, the exhibition highlights the breadth, diversity and innovation of contemporary First Nations practice.
Northern Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA)
IncarcerNation – August 2026
Presented as part of Darwin Festival, IncarcerNation brings together contemporary artists examining Australia's prison system through powerful works exploring justice, identity and lived experience. The multidisciplinary exhibition encourages critical reflection on incarceration and systemic inequality.
Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs
Desert Light: Central Australian Landscapes: John Borrack – until 11 October 2026
The first public gallery survey of celebrated Australian landscape painter John Borrack's Central Australian work, Desert Light brings together 30 paintings, watercolours and drawings spanning six decades. Presented alongside key works from the Araluen Collection, the exhibition explores the enduring influence of Country on artistic practice, offering a dialogue between Borrack's vision of the desert landscape and Central Australia's rich cultural and environmental histories.
ACT
Canberra Museum + Gallery
Maria Fernanda Cardoso: Spiders of Paradise – until 23 August 2026
Internationally renowned artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso explores the beauty and complexity of nature through intricate sculptural works inspired by peacock spiders.
Canberra Contemporary
2026 Members Show – from 22 August until 13 September 2026
A showcase of emerging and established ACT artists spanning painting, photography, sculpture, textiles and installation. It's one of the best ways to discover new local talent.
TAS
Museum of Old and New Art (Mona)
In Absence – Now open
Created by Kokatha/Nukunu artist Yhonnie Scarce in collaboration with architects Aaron Roberts and Kim Bridgland, In Absence is a striking permanent architectural installation overlooking Berriedale Bay. Inspired by traditional eel traps and adorned with 1,400 hand-blown black glass murnong (daisy yams), the nine-metre-high pavilion offers a contemplative space that honours the enduring strength, knowledge and storytelling of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
Dada Muse
Dante's Divine Comedy – ongoing
A complete suite of 100 authentic water-colour works on paper by Salvador Dali, based on Dante Alighieri's literary classic of the same name. Over 3500 woodblock carvings are said to have been used in the printing process.
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG)
Becoming Modern: Mid-century Australian Art – until 26 September 2027
A major survey exploring Australian modernism through painting, sculpture and design from the mid-twentieth century.
Looking for more ways to fill your month? Check out our comprehensive list of everyone who announced Australian tours in 2026 (and where to buy tickets).
Feature image: Vincent van Gogh, born Zundert, Netherlands 1853, died Auvers-sur-Oise, France 1890, Wheat Fields with Reaper, Auvers, 1890, oil on canvas, 73.6 x 93.0 cm; Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, United States of America.
