Sydney Contemporary 2026.: Carriageworks

With a bold humanist style, Ross’ cross-disciplinary practice is driven by a desire to examine Australia’s shadowed colonial histories. Fluoro and furious, she reimagines colonial imagery, layering each work with cultural references that reflect shared eras – critiquing the ongoing effects of greed, globalisation and colonisation, all while leaving you with a smile.

Joan Ross recently presented a major career survey at the National Portrait Gallery, Joan Ross: Those trees came back to me in my dreams, selecting portraits from the collection to show alongside her own works – extending her long-standing exploration of collecting and collections.

Her practice spans roles as educator, mentor and judge, with works held and presented by leading institutions. In recent years, Ross has expanded into virtual reality, presenting Did you ask the river? at ACMI, followed by Collector’s Paradise for the National Gallery of Australia and I give you a mountain, projected onto the façade of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

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Fiona Lowry’s practice has explored the complexity of the human condition. Through the use of airbrushed pastels and monochromatic colour palettes, Lowry’s images maintain an overarching softness and ambiguity.

Her paintings of the Australian landscape depict the bush as both alluring and unsettling. Rendered in dreamlike colour and diffused through her distinctive technique, these scenes become surreal theatres for human intervention, charged with unease and quiet menace.

A winner of the Archibald, Moran Portrait, and Fleurieu Landscape Prizes, her work is held in major collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Portrait Gallery, and The University of Queensland Art Museum.

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Thea Anamara Perkins is an Arrernte and Kalkadoon artist whose practice incorporates portraiture and landscape to question representations of First Nations peoples and Country. With a delicate hand, Thea answers heavy questions about what it means to be First Nations in contemporary Australia, and interrogates portrayal.

Thea’s middle name Anamara is an Arrernte word that describes a river and a Dreaming that runs north of Mparntwe (Alice Springs) – the place that keeps calling her back and has been the wellspring of art and activism for her family, and by extension, the nation. Perkins continues her family’s commitment to what she calls “strong and ready communication” and is part of an extraordinary dynasty of First Nations activists and creatives that includes activist Charles Perkins (her grandfather), Arrernte elder Hetti Perkins (her great-grandmother), curator Hetti Perkins (her mother) and acclaimed film director Rachel Perkins (her aunt).

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Tom Blake’s practice draws on fragmented moments, looped imagery and recurring motifs as potential sites for contemplating the psychological, architectural and technological frameworks that surround us.

A proud Pitjantjatjara woman from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in remote South Australia, Sally Scales paints vibrant landscapes grounded in her ancestral Country and tjukurpa. Her distinctive style draws on the practices of her grandmothers, Kuntjiriya Mick and Kunmanara (Wawiriya) Burton, and her mother, Josephine Mick.

Alongside her studio practice, she holds significant leadership roles, including with the Uluru Dialogue for the First Nations Voice to Parliament, the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, and the National Gallery of Australia Council. A regular finalist in major prizes, she won the People’s Choice Award at the 2021 Telstra NATSIAA and the Roberts Family Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Prize at AGNSW in 2022, and was named one of the BBC’s 100 Women in 2022.

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Christopher Zanko is an artist based in the Illawarra/Dharawal region of the New South Wales south coast. Drawing on the architecture and culture of his hometown, he reimagines suburban environments through a distinctive, deeply personal lens.

Influenced by Japanese woodblock carving, Zanko focuses on the details that shape domestic identity – from red brick facades to tyre swans and terrazzo porches. Through meticulous, meditative carving, he preserves these quiet suburban markers as enduring records of place and memory.

A finalist in the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Sulman and Wynne Prizes, and the King’s School Art Prize, his work is held in major collections including the White Rabbit Collection, Museums of History NSW, Wollongong Art Gallery, and the University of Wollongong.

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