February is gearing up to be a big month in the arts space. Melbourne will host its 19th edition of the Melbourne Art Fair, and Sydney's National Art School celebrates 20 years of the National Art School Gallery.

If you're looking to fill your cultural cup or simply to escape the heat for a bit of aircon – we've got you covered with our curated list of all the best art gallery shows and exhibitions happening around the country this month.

 

NSW

Art Gallery of New South Wales

Encounter – until 12 April 2026

This exhibition brings an unparalleled selection of the acclaimed Australian artist Ron Mueck's sculptures exclusively to Sydney. His captivating figures, scaled from the monumental to the minute, embody themes such as birth and death, alienation and togetherness, tenderly inviting us to explore our relationship with the world.

 

Bundanon

The Hidden Line: Art of the Boyd Women – until 15 February 2026

This exhibition celebrates the women of one of Australia's most prominent artistic dynasties with more than 300 works from five generations, including never-before-exhibited works. The exhibition will present works by Emma Minnie a’Beckett Boyd (one of the rare female artists of her era able to have a full-time artistic practice) and Yvonne Boyd, who with her husband Arthur Boyd, gifted Bundanon to the Australian people, representing one of the most significant acts of philanthropy in the history of the arts in Australia.

 

Sullivan+Strumpf

The Middle of the Flower – 26 February until 28 March 2026

Developed in response to a renewed connection with her Hungarian heritage, Jess Cochrane’s latest body is a self-exploration through the intertwined roots of culture, family history and the contemporary landscape. This is Cochrane’s first solo exhibition with the gallery following the announcement of her representation in August 2025.

Sullivan+Strumpf

Support Structures – 26 February until 22 March 2026

Artist Sanné Mestrom features powerful new paintings, works on paper, terrazzo concrete and bronze sculptures, alongside key pieces from her recent installation for the National Gallery of Australia, The Whole is Greater than the Sum of Her Parts.

 

COMA

The World As Glass – until 21 February 2026

Featuring all-Australian artists, this exhibition investigates the opacity of human intention, revealing how easily certainty can splinter under pressure. It looks at how a layering of the act of presenting fact provides multiple points for reality to fracture and shatter. The World As Glass brings together a group of Australian artists that seek contemporary art-making as not only a retelling of truth and reality, but how it may break or hold when we do.

 

Artspace

Collapse Euphoria – until 15 Feb 2026

Tasmania-based painter Marion Abraham presents a new, three-panel work – a contemporary take on a romantic pastoral portrait. . Investigating the sensation of longing and the collapse of time, Abraham conjures a frenzied evolutionary diagram of Uunidentified figures tussle and collapse onto each other.

 

National Art School

SEARCHERS: Graffiti and Contemporary Art – until 11 April 2026

Celebrating 20 years of the National Art School Gallery, the exhibition brings together more than 35 artists spanning four decades to explore the intersection of contemporary art and graffiti culture, and the enduring impact of spray paint on both.

 

VIC

Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

Melbourne Art Fair – 19-22 February 2026

Back for its 19th edition, over four days the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre will be transformed into a meeting place for leading galleries and Indigenous-owned art centres, collectors, artists, and those simply drawn to the hum of new ideas.

 

Linden New Art

Melbourne Art Print Fair (MAPF) – 6-8 February 2026

Melbourne Art Print Fair (MAPF) is a dynamic annual program celebrating the collective creativity of Australia’s contemporary printmaking community and highlighting the artistic, cultural and technical diversity of the medium.

 

Buxton Contemporary

Stone Soup – until 11 April 2026

A major solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed sculptor Hany Armanious. He is celebrated for his inventive and often playful approach to sculpture, inviting audiences to experience ordinary objects anew. Drawing from the everyday, he recasts found objects in resin at a 1:1 scale, with meticulous attention to colour, texture and form, while allowing subtle imperfections to remain visible.

 

NGV

Westwood | Kawakubo – until 19 Apr 2026

This major international exhibition pairs the work of two of the most visionary and influential fashion designers in recent history, Vivienne Westwood (1941–2022) and Rei Kawakubo (1942–) of Comme des Garçons.

 

Heide Museum of Modern Art

Always Modern: Radical Nurture – 10 February until 9 August 2026

Featuring more than 60 works drawn from the Heide Collection and The Estate of Mirka Mora, the exhibition explores the early decades of Heide, when art and life were deeply intertwined. It brings together works by Sam Atyeo, Charles Blackman, Joy Hester, Mirka Mora, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Albert Tucker, and Danila Vassilieff.

 

LON Gallery

DECADE – until 21 February 2026

An exhibition featuring artwork from each of the gallery's 16 represented artists, covering a wide range of materials and themes. DECADE includes architecturally inspired woven fabric works, a formalist bronze sculpture, an oil painting rendered on a piece of copper that shimmers under the landscape, a spatial lens-flare replicated through stained glass and so many more inspiring pieces.

 

Potter Museum of Art

A velvet ant, a flower and a bird – from 19 February until 6 June 2026

The University of Melbourne’s Potter Museum of Art will present an ambitious new exhibition curated by internationally renowned curator Chus Martínez. The exhibition brings together works from the University of Melbourne’s Classics, Biology, and Art collections, alongside new commissions and performances by acclaimed artists from Australia and abroad.

 

QLD

GOMA

Presence – until 12 Jul 2026

Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson invites you on an expansive, multi-sensory journey that engages our sense of perception. Choose your path through a primordial landscape, encounter moments that heighten awareness and envision the future form of our city. This Brisbane-exclusive exhibition draws from the three‑decade career of one of the world’s most influential living artists.

 

Jan Murphy Gallery

Water and stone – 11 – 28 February 2026

The exhibition explores Marina Strocchi’s recent return to her family’s Italian roots, translating the rhythms of canals, village life, and layered histories into large-scale paintings that reflect continuity, memory, and place. Strocchi is a Melbourne-born, internationally exhibited artist with a decades-long career across Australia, Europe, and the USA, known for her deep engagement with landscape, community, and cross-cultural exchange.

 

Edwina Corlette

Kuwarritja Irriitinguru - A way before and a way now – 4 – 24 February

The latest exhibition from Indigenous artist Carbine McDonald Tjangala, whose work uses an innovative technique that divides his composition into rectangles by painting gridlines of assorted size across the canvas, he laboriously paints the individual rectangles in circular motions.

 

19 Karen Contemporary Artspace

Two of a Kind International Group Show – until 30 June 2026

The Two of a Kind International group show features 58 new works by thirty emerging artists identified by the gallery's director as ones to watch. Each artist was invited to create two pieces representing their current style.

 

SA

AGSA

Metamorphosis – ongoing

Featuring over 40 works from across AGSA’s collection, many of which have never been seen before, this exhibition looks at themes of transformation and change in nature, the body and materials, in surprising and non-linear ways.

 

ACE Gallery

Kumarangk – 21 February - 4 April 2026

This exhibition is an intergenerational love letter for Ngarrindjeri women; an exhibition that explores the survival of culture, and resistance to colonial destruction. As part of it, Sandra Saunders’ Hindmarsh Island Collection will be remounted for the first time since it was first exhibited 20 years ago.

 

WA

AGWA

Infinite Terrain – until 6 April 2026

A landmark retrospective honouring the extraordinary career of internationally renowned ceramicist Pippin Drysdale.

 

Linton + Kay Cottesloe

High Tide – 7-28 February 2026

Ian Mutch's new exhibition is inspired by childhood memories of walking along the south coast of Africa with his Grandmother, gathering shells, driftwood, and exploring rock pools. Created down south, this body of work evokes feelings of nostalgia and joy, inspired by the Western Australian coastline.

 

PICA

Soft Grates – 6 February 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).

 

NT

MAGNT Darwin

Tiny Territory – on now

This ongoing exhibition at MAGNT makes large and wondrous the small, colourful and alien-like invertebrates of the Northern Territory. Invertebrates in the Top End are the most numerous and important ecosystem engineers, service providers and waste managers.

​

ACT

NGA

Body Adorned – until 14 Feb 2027

This exhibition celebrates the National Gallery’s rich and diverse jewellery collection through an intentionally maximalist display. Bringing together over 370 works by First Nations, Australian, European, American, Asian and Pacific designers, artists and makers, the display honours jewellery as both an artistic mode and a form of personal expression.

 

Canberra Contemporary

DEEP END – 7 February until 12 April 2026

Deep End is an immersive sensory installation by Amy Claire Mills that invites exploration through touch, sight, and sound. The project explores the concept of accessible and adaptive ‘third spaces’.

 

TAS

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

Restoring the Past – 6 February until 31 May 2026

This captivating exhibition offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the conservation of three remarkable 19th-century paintings and their ornate frames, revealing the delicate balance between science, artistry, and storytelling. Made possible through the support of the Keith Clarke Foundation, it invites visitors to explore the hidden layers of Tasmania’s artistic heritage.

 

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.

 

Art Gallery at Royal Park

Mortal Reflections – until 31 May 2026

Marking the first major exhibition in Tasmania by Sam Jinks, this is a rare opportunity for audiences to encounter a collection of sculptures not typically accessible to the public. QVMAG has transformed the entire upper level of its Royal Park site, where magical figures are held forever suspended within the uncanny realms of Jinks’ sculpted hyperrealism.