Please see below for current and forthcoming exhibitions and events featuring our staff and alumni.

Joan Ross: Solo Exhibition

With her fluoro-infused imagery subverting colonial art, National Art School alum and fellow Joan Ross examines the legacy of invasion and the consuming forces of settlement in Australia. 

On now view across N.Smith Galley, Ross’ new exhibition continues her incisive examination of Australia’s colonial histories and the visual languages through which they have been formed. 

Drawing on the traditions of colonial portraiture and still life, Joan disrupts familiar images and symbols to expose the power structures embedded within them. Her work is characteristically irreverent, unsettling established narratives and question who has been represented, who has been excluded, and how these histories continue to shape contemporary Australia.

Opening night: Friday 28 August, 6 – 8pm. All welcome, no RSVP required.⁠ 

On view until 19 September 2026.

Joan Ross: Sydney Contemporary 2026

National Art School Fellow and Alum Joan Ross features in N.Smith Gallery’s presentation at Sydney Contemporary 2026. Exploring the relationship between art, architecture and lived experience, the presentation brings together works across two interconnected environments: a traditional gallery setting and a domestic living space. By presenting works across these contrasting contexts, audiences are invited to consider how surroundings shape the way contemporary art is encountered and experienced. 

On view 2 – 6 September.

Alongside the booth presentation, Ross will feature in Sydney Contemporary’s public art program at Pier Pavilion, Barangaroo. Ross will present three animated works that continue her incisive examination of Australia’s colonial histories through satire, vibrant digital imagery and layered visual storytelling. Her works invite audiences to reconsider inherited narratives while reflecting on the enduring impacts of colonisation on landscape, culture and identity. 

On view 3 – 6 September.

National Art School: Inherent Vice  

Inherent Vice is curated by NAS alum and current staff member Amelia Skelton, with curatorial support from Dr Elizabeth Pulie. The exhibition features NAS alumni Mitchell Davis, Drew Connor Holland and Sadie Whalen, alongside work by sessional lecturer Katy B Plummer and former Head of Drawing Maryanne Coutts. 

Inherent Vice brings together a diverse group of artists whose practices are drawn to materials that resist stability, permanence and control. Borrowing its title from John Barbour’s Inherent Vice (2005 – 06), the exhibition plays on the conservation term used to describe an object’s tendency to deteriorate from within, while also suggesting the unruly pleasures, flaws and temptations embedded in material practice. 

Third Space, Building 25, National Art School. 

On view until 14 August. 

CBD Gallery: New Voices 

CBD Gallery presents New Voices, showcasing six emerging 2025 National Art School graduates who push the boundaries of contemporary artmaking through painting and printmaking. Featuring Fergus Berney-Gibson, Mary Benvenuto, Lei Feng, India Jablonski, Daniel He Wang and Fiona Verity. 

On view until 15 August. 

Aaron Crothers: Interconnected 

Alum Aaron Crothers presents Interconnected at Olsen Annexe. Working primarily with large-scale ceramics, Crothers draws inspiration from twentieth century Brutalist architecture. In this body of work, construction marks and scraped surfaces remain visible, emphasising the materiality of the clay and the physical process of making. 

On view until 15 August. 

Olsen Sydney: Winter Survey 

Alum Babette Robertson, Zoe Young, Aaron Crothers and Eliza Gosse, feature in the Winter Survey at Olsen Sydney. This curated selection of featured works showcases the best of contemporary Australian art. 

On view until 22 August. 

Cameron Haas: Pretty Hurts Sometimes  

Alum Cameron Haas presents Pretty Hurts Sometimes at .M Contemporary. Marking a significant new direction in his practice, Haas expands his exploration of abstraction through new works that consider surface and spatial relationships, introducing a fresh dialogue between material, colour and form. 

On view until 22 August. 

Anya Pesce: Baroque Fetish 

Alum Anya Pesce presents Baroque Fetish at .M Contemporary.  Through sculptural works in polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), Pesce brings together the industrial aesthetics of the 1960s Finish Fetish movement with the theatricality of the Baroque. Heated and shaped into dynamic, undulating forms, the works explore light, shadow and refraction, transforming a typically cold, industrial material into expressive spatial gestures. New metal frames support the PMMA veils, offering a rigid material contrast and anchoring the work in space.

On view until 22 August. 

Peta Minnichi: Dissonance at the Edge of Light 

Alum Peta Minnichi presents Dissonance at the Edge of Light at VELVET LOBSTER. 

This exhibition explores the shifting relationship between light, reflection and perception. Working with glass vessels, porcelain and mirrored surfaces, Minnici creates still-life compositions where objects appear, dissolve and transform through changing conditions of light and shadow.  Minnici’s approach is informed by the Japanese philosophical concept of Ma; the meaningful interval between things. The works ask how light can change the way we understand an object, how reflections can create another reality, and how shadows can preserve something that no longer exists.

On view until 23 August. 

Paul Williams: where they land

Ceramics Lecturer Paul Williams appears in where they land at Sydenham international. 

On view until 29 August 2026.

Zoe Young: Solo Exhibition

Alum Zoe Young presents a solo exhibition at Philip Bacon Galleries. Young is a painter whose practice focusses on still life, portraiture, and abstraction. Young’s work transforms everyday settings and objects in to idyllic and evocative scenes enticing the viewer in to stay.

On view until 5 September.

Babette Robertson: And her hallway moves like the ocean 

Alum Babette Robertson presents And her hallway moves like the ocean at Lismore Regional Gallery. Drawing on her ongoing interest in dreams, Robertson begins each work with a written dream account, which is then developed through watercolour studies. These studies form the basis of large-scale paintings and sculptural works that explore the logic, atmosphere, and shifting symbols of the dream state. 

On view until 20 September. 

 
Annelies Jahn: Habitat 

Drawing lecturer Annelies Jahn presents Habitat with Jane Burton Taylor at La Perouse Museum. Habitat is an exhibition which explores Australia’s immediate pre-colonial ecology through sensory and immersive artworks.

On view until 27 September. 

Osvaldo Budet: Upriver Downriver

Drawing lecturer Osvaldo Budet features in Upriver Downriver at Maitland Regional Art Gallery. Building on the 2023 iteration of the exhibition, Upriver Downriver celebrates the expansive range of art and ideas resonating throughout the Hunter region. 

On view until 11 October 2026. 

Luke Thurgate: New Religion

Drawing lecturer Luke Thurgate appears in New Religion at Ngununggula, Retford Park, Southern Highlands Regional Gallery. New Religion fosters a dialogue between works of art and objects from both historical and contemporary origins. It intentionally places historic works within a modern context, asking us to consider why they continue to captivate us. By bringing contemporary commissions into dialogue with historic works, New Religion invites reflection on why certain images, rituals, and systems of belief continue to resonate, and how they are reinterpreted across time, cultures, and lived experience.

On view until 18 October 2026. 

Mosman Art Prize 2026

NAS alumni Michelle Belgiorno, Ildiko Kovac and India Jablonski, alongside staff member Liz Pulie, are among the artists exhibiting in the 2026 Mosman Art Prize. One of Australia’s most respected art awards, the exhibition showcases a diverse selection of contemporary painting and artistic practice from across the country. 

On view from 21 August 2026 until 26 October 2026

Bunbury Regional Art Gallery: Pasar Malam 

Alumni Leyla Stevens, Malcolm Le Smith, Tobias Richardson and Ida Lawrence feature in Pasar Malam | Night Market: Contemporary Printmaking from Indonesia and Australia. An initiative of Krack! Print Studio and 16albermarle, this touring group exhibition brings together artists from Indonesia and Australia, celebrating contemporary printmaking and cross-cultural exchange through a diverse range of works. 

On view from 15 August to 25 October 2026.

If you are NAS alumni or staff, and would like your current or upcoming exhibition listed on this page, please email alumni@​nas.​edu.​au  

Image: Babette Robertson: And her hallway moves like the ocean (installation view), exhibited at Lismore Regional Gallery from 12 June until 23 August 2026. Photography by Leif Prenzlau. Courtesy the artist, Lismore Regional Gallery, and Olsen Gallery.