Arthouse Gallery is delighted to share an exclusive preview of our dynamic exhibition program for 2026. The coming year will feature solo exhibitions by newly represented artists, alongside exciting new works from our celebrated and diverse roster of Australian contemporary practitioners.
DEBORAH HALPERN
'CREATURES OF LOVE'
5 — 28 February
Deborah Halpern in her studio photographed by Mia Mala McDonald; Bodrig the Powerful Owl, glass, steel and fibreglass, 116 x 100 x 60 cm
Deborah Halpern is multi-disciplinary artist who explores the mediums of sculpture, painting, ceramics, glass blowing and printmaking. Her work can be exuberant and whimsical but is also imbued with a deep artistry. Over her long career Halpern has produced an extraordinary body of work and through her numerous public sculptures has become well known and respected within the community.
MICHAYE BOULTER
5—21 March
Michaye Boulter photographed by Julien Scheffer; Passages, oil on linen, 154.5 x 206.5 cm (framed)
The masterful paintings of Tasmanian artist Michaye Boulter chart the paradoxical vastness and intimacy of the ocean. Having spent much of her life on the sea, Boulter draws from a wellspring of experience in capturing the transformative and transcendent tenor of the endless ocean. Her paintings on linen, board and steel chronicle the artist’s enduring search for hidden aspects of self and place. Informed by recent trips around Southern Tasmania – the secluded bays and still waters of Southport Lagoon, Port Davey and Bruny Island – the artist attempts to conjure and clarify the elusive emotions felt along these wild and remote coastlines.
MARTINE EMDUR
26 March — 25 April
Martine Emdur in her studio photographed by Jyles Reynolds; Coasting ll, oil on linen, 183 x 229 cm
A multi-award winning artist, Emdur has been exhibiting for over twenty five years with her enigmatic and evocative depictions of Bondi and the surrounding oceans capturing the imagination of art admirers around the world. Observing the ocean is a daily ritual that perpetually nurtures Emdur's practice, and she invites us to share in the splendour of the coastal offerings.
KATE BERGIN
7 — 30 May
Kate Bergin photographed by Will Mansfield; Birdsong, oil on canvas, 78 x 83 cm (framed)
Kate Bergin's works revel in the unusual, the precarious and the unexpected. Far from 'still', these paintings quiver with movement, laughter and life. It is impossible to ignore their vitality. Animals poised to leap from the canvas, birds to take flight; compositions on the brink of collapse. Bergin’s work, intoxicating and absurd, captures the mundane and the exotic in virtuosic detail.
MICHAEL MUIR
4—27 June
Michael Muir photographed by Jessica Maurer; The Breeze, oil on linen, 122 x 107 cm
Michael Muir's work alludes to the underlying echoes of solitude found in the suburban landscape and the co-existing joie de vivre which he brings to the surface with his sun drenched colour palette recalling Australian nostalgia. Conveying this familiar duality where candy pinks and blues, merge into the saturated greens of new growth and nature, his paintings are almost surrealist where a dream-like state and reality converge. Figures wander through urbanscapes; crossing streets, entering shops, resting on beaches or admiring the sky. Faceless and turned away from the viewer we are firmly placed on the other side, watching and contemplating. Muir’s work exists in the inherent delicate balance of all things; vibrant and joyful, open and welcoming recalling the enigmatic energies of Summer, while interconnecting with the secluded and earnest moments reality can bring.
JO BERTINI
2 — 18 July
Jo Bertini photographed by Wil Mansfield; Devotional, oil on French polyester canvas, 201 x 201 cm (framed)
Wynne & Sulman Prize finalist Jo Bertini’s paintings traverse well-worn landscapes in an exploration of the true nature of wilderness. Drawing from the traditions of artists on scientific and ecological survey expeditions into the most remote and inaccessible regions, Bertini celebrates her long and intimate engagement with the desert. Her work bears witness to natural and human histories of nomadism observing the seasonal rhythm of landscapes and the people connected to them. With loose yet refined brushwork, Bertini depicts the fragile beauty of the world's remote desert landscapes connecting to what is seen and felt within. An innate longing that she expresses through her visceral, emotive paintings that serve as an act of devotion to the natural world.
KATE DORROUGH
23 July — 8 August
Kate Dorrough in her studio photographed by Jenni Carter; Ancient Song of the River's Edge, acrylic on linen, 155 x 170.5 cm (framed)
The practice of Kate Dorrough sustains a conversation between paint and clay, launching an inquiry into the interplay and tension between the gestural mark and the hand built ceramic form. The artist's recent work explores landscape as metaphor, with its inland river systems a vital source of survival and bestowal of fertility. Dorrough considers the cyclicality of renewal and destruction that defines the land, her painterly gestural marks evoking totemic symbols of this enduring landscape.
SAMANTHA EVERTON
23 July — 8 August
Samantha Everton; Birthday Wish (ed. of 8 plus 2 artist's proofs), pigment ink on cotton rag paper, 102 x 117.5 cm (framed)
Olive Cotton Award finalist Samantha Everton’s tightly choreographed photographs create visual narratives that have profound cross-cultural, sociological and psychological implications. The artist’s vivid style, described as ‘magic realism’, has a cinematic and surreal quality that pushes her subjects further and further from reality. They inhabit an uncanny world that is at once familiar and foreign, real and symbolic, and it feels as though our forgotten dreams have been projected into the picture plain.
BELINDA FOX
13 August — 5 September
Belinda Fox in her studio photographed by Pia Johnson; Reach, watercolour, ink, acrylic spray, pen on board, 72 x 92 cm (framed)
Drawing from her virtuosic skills as a former Master Printer and fusing together profoundly personal and global concerns, Belinda Fox’s work lays bare the paradoxes endemic to contemporary human experience. Working in painting, drawing, glass, sculpture, printmaking and collaboration, Fox examines the volatility of our era, excavating the iridescent beauty that flickers below the shadowy surface of conflict and despair. Currently based in Melbourne, Fox presents us with a series in which beauty is a gateway into dense conceptual terrain patchworked with blackness and light, an ‘antidote’ to our polarised epoch; a bridge connecting us through a shared – albeit almost forgotten – humanity.
SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY
3 — 6 September
Artists captured on residency at Fowlers Gap 2024. Photography by Will Mansfield
The art event of the year, Sydney Contemporary is Australasia's premier art fair - the largest and most diverse gathering of leading contemporary art galleries in the region.
dean home
17 September — 3 October
Dean Home in his studio; Evening in Tongli, oil on board, 98 x 126 cm (framed)
Drawing from the traditions of Vanitas and Flemish still life painting, Dean Home’s virtuosic compositions celebrate the metaphysical power of objects. Entering the worlds that Home creates is like stumbling into an enigmatic narrative bursting with sensuality and exoticism. Pushing the viewer into an almost cinematic close-up with each artfully arranged collection of objects, Home’s hyper-realistic and expressionistic works provoke a palpable meditation on beauty, mortality and truth and carry with them a cultural currency that transcends time and speaks of a shared humanity.
AARON KINNANE
8 — 31 October
Aaron Kinnane in his studio; The early hours as the fog clears, the sun ascending and the birds begin their morning calls, the day is full of hope, oil on linen, 100 x 220 cm
A restless explorer in the landscape, Kinnane is constantly searching for moments in his vision that allow him to morph the landscape from the representation of place, to a more meditative landscape of the mind. His practice is vital and visually dynamic—moving across the canvas in powerful swathes—playing with the viscosity of paint. The artist entices the audience to enter his world.
NAOMI HOBSON
5 — 28 November
Naomi Hobson in her studio; Golden Wattle Among Eucalyptus, acrylic on linen, 181 x 182 cm
A member of a dynamic new generation of First Nations artists, Naomi Hobson has exhibited widely both within Australia and internationally since 2008. Hobson resides on the banks of the riverbeds her grandparents were born. Her colourful abstract compositions act as a link between individuality and a shared identity. Her continual inspiration is the vast traditional lands of her ancestors surrounding the town of Coen in Queensland and her culture.
ROBYN SWEANEY
3 — 19 December
Robyn Sweaney in her studio photographed by Oh Boy Agency; Slow drift, acrylic on polycotton, 42.5 x 52.5cm (framed)
The tightly-choreographed paintings of Robyn Sweaney respond to the philosophical and ontological currency of the built environment. The artist’s preoccupation with the Australian architectural vernacular – particularly from the post war period – is rooted in an enduring fascination with the physiognomy of cultural identity. Domestic dwellings divulge more than their mere exteriors, functioning as physical incarnations of the aesthetic, ideological and social structures influencing human behaviour. Informed by travel through familiar and unfamiliar rural and suburban places, Sweaney finds that, ‘certain elements of place resonate an unexplainable reaction within me – something ignites deep within memory. The landscape is somehow opened up by the search itself and my response can reach beyond its visual appearance.’
SCOTT DUNCAN
3 — 19 December
Scott Duncan photographed by Silversalt Photography; Bronze figure with passionfruit (detail), glazed earthenware, 90 x 52 x 19 cm (artwork), 190 x 52 x 38 cm (display)
Scott Duncan is a dynamic ceramicist whose work is a pastiche of mid-century design and antiquity where the traditional forms of ceramic practice are reconstructed through his whimsical work. Creating his own chalks and pencils, there is an alchemy at play where low and high fuse together creating forms reminiscent of Italian Bitossi Ceramiche and Scheurich Pottery with ceramic food labels delicately sculpted by Duncan resembling faces adhered across the surface in pareidolian amusement.
