Off-Site Exhibition: John Prince Siddon — The Biennale of Sydney 2026
The Biennale of Sydney
14 March – 14 June 26
White Bay Power Station
A leading and highly anticipated international contemporary art event, Mangkaja artist John Prince Siddon was commissioned by Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain and the Biennale of Sydney and is featured with a new collection of paintings on leather hides, canvas, repurposed oil drums and bullock skulls.
Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, the theme for this edition of the Biennale is 'Rememory' - a means of revisiting, reconstructing, and reclaiming histories that have been erased or repressed. 'Rememory' signifies the intersection of memory and history, where recollection becomes an act of reassembling fragments of the past—whether personal, familial, or collective. The 25th edition of the Biennale connects the delicate space between remembering and forgetting. By engaging with 'Rememory', artists will highlight marginalised narratives, share untold stories, and inspire audiences to rethink how memory shapes identity, belonging, and the creation and celebration of new communities and connections.
In this installation Siddon engages with familiar Australian icons, including the Harbour Bridge, reimagining them as both inviting and unsettling. As audiences move among totemic oil drums, they encounter the intricate detail of his paintings, drifting between fragments of reality and memory. The histories of Fitzroy Crossing pulse beneath the surfaces, guiding audience across Country and city, past and present, where ancestral stories, colonial histories, and contemporary life intersect.
Working on canvas, oil drums, satellite dishes, kangaroo pelts, found bullock skulls, carved boab nuts, feathers and wood, Prince’s work is in his own words ‘all mixed up’; there are no rules or limits to his creative endeavours, instead all is a conduit for his artistic expression.
Siddon has been a finalist in the Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2023), The Fisher's Ghost Art Award (2022) and the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) at the Museum and Art Gallery Northern Territory (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018). He was also a featured artist at the Tarnanthi 2021 festival at the Art Gallery of South Australia. His solo exhibition All Mixed Up at the Fremantle Arts Centre, presented in conjunction with the Perth Festival 2020, was heralded as the ‘stand-out exhibition’ of the festival by John McDonald of the Sydney Morning Herald. In 2023, the Art Gallery of New South Wales commissioned Prince to paint three works for the opening of the much anticipated North Building, Sydney Modern Project which were exhibited in Dreamhome: Stories of Art and Shelter. In 2024, Arthouse Gallery presented Prince’s major solo exhibition Our Mother Tongue at Melbourne Art Fair, and in March, Disco Dreamtime Drums curated by Emilia Galatis opened at Cement Fondu. His work has been acquired by institutions including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, The National Gallery of Victoria, Artbank, Art Gallery of Western Australia, and Art Gallery of South Australia.
