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

Oliver Abbott: Guide  

Alum Oliver Abbott (MFA, 2024) presents Guide at Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney. 

“Guide continues an ongoing investigation into a synthesised world. I glean fragments of architecture, infrastructure and landscape, rebuild and reconfigure them, and navigate the new space that emerges. The fragments accumulate into a kind of city inside 3D software. I think of this workflow as a replication of the photographic process, one that includes the creation of the subject, and where painting acts as a manual recreation of a photochemical process. 

This show is a series of snapshots, virtual photography rendered in paint. The process of painting and the history it carries, lend a verisimilitude to the renderings, acting as a binding agent for the disparate places I’ve collected from life, film, books and memory. I’m interested in the slippery boundary between real and fake, and the trust we place in those that guide us.” 

– Oliver Abbott, 2026 

On view from 19 September to 17 October 2026. 

Anthony Cahill: Winner of the Calleen Art Award 2026  

Congratulations to Drawing lecturer, Anthony Cahill, the winner of the Calleen Art Award 2026 at Cowra Regional Art Gallery. The Calleen Art Award is an annual acquisitive painting prize and exhibition celebrating excellence in contemporary Australian painting. 

Open to artists from across Australia, the 2026 award carries a prize of $30,000. This year, the selection panel chose 56 artworks for the finalist exhibition, with the winning work set to join the Calleen Collection at Cowra Regional Art Gallery. 

The finalist exhibition is on view from 16 September until 18 October 2026. 

Stephanie Monteith: Paddington Art Prize 

Drawing lecturer, Stephanie Monteith is a finalist at the Paddington Art Prize at Council House, Sydney. 

Opening night, Thursday, October 15, 6 – 8pm 

On view from 15 October to 25 October 2026. 

Zi XIn: Words of Wisdom 

Alum Zi Xin (BFA, 2024) presents Words of Wisdom at CBD Gallery, Sydney. 

Words of Wisdom reflects an artist navigating the space between inherited cultural expectations and personal sion. Rather than seeking resolution, Zi Xin embraces uncertainty as a productive force, proposing that growth emerges not from certainty, but from the continual process of becoming. 

Born and raised in China before migrating to Australia, Zi Xin’s practice is deeply informed by the traditions of Chinese ceramics while simultaneously challenging their conventions. Following her graduation from the National Art School in 2024, she undertook further study and residencies in Jingdezhen, the historic centre of Chinese porcelain production. There, encounters with rigorous technical traditions encouraged her to embrace experimentation and develop a distinct sculptural language that sits between established categories. 

Hand-built rather than wheel-thrown, Zi Xin’s ceramic forms draw inspiration from folk crafts such as paper lanterns, kites, and fabric toys. Through layered stencils, airbrushed underglazes, and textile-like surfaces, these works combine decorative traditions with contemporary concerns surrounding migration, belonging, and self-determination. 

On view from 24 September until 22 October 2026. 

Aaron Aryadharma Matheson: Flickering Lamp, a Phantom and a Dream

Alum Aaron Aryadharma Matheson (MFA, 2018) presents Flickering Lamp, a Phantom and a Dream at Liverpool Street Gallery, Sydney

“These works are made over the last two years, where I’ve found myself concerned with impermanence, insubstantiality and contingency, partly because of the progress of MS in my life. The importance of appreciative awareness in the face of loss has become more distinctive to me, and painting has revealed this uniquely.

The taste of a good painting, for me, is that it reflects your most expansive and imaginative mind back to you. A good work seems to flow from the whole of you reimagined and reconstructed, whilst being totally natural and unforced. Good paintings unconceal the mind’s natural clarity and radiance.”

- Aaron Aryadharma Matheson, 2026
 

On view from 1 October to 31 October 2026.

Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize 

Congratulations to the following alumni, who are finalists in the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize 2026: 

• Lynda Draper: Alum and Ceramics lecturer (sessional) 
• Mark Booth: Alum 
• Olivia Chin: Alum 
• Francheska Coenraads: Alum 
• Liz Bryan: Alum 
• Martin John Oldfield: Alum 

Celebrating its 25^th anniversary in 2026, the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize is Australia’s first acquisitive award dedicated to sculptures measuring no more than 80cm in any dimension. 

The finalist exhibition will be on view at Woollahra Gallery, Sydney, from 2 October to 29 November 2026. 

Ebony Russell: Girly in Manly 

Alum Ebony Russell (BFA, 2025) is featured in Girly in Manly at Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Sydney.

Beginning with the colonial naming of Manly, Girly in Manly brings together works to explore femininity through ideas of inheritance, care, creativity and connection to place.  Working with porcelain and visual language of cake decorating, Russell transforms traditionally feminised forms into sculptural worlds.

“Each sculpture is built entirely through the slow accumulation of piped porcelain, where thousands of hand-formed marks transform decorative labour into architectural form. This process honours the matrilineal traditions of making that have shaped my practice — crafts passed between generations of women through acts of care, devotion and creativity. Rather than treating ornament as superficial embellishment, these works reclaim it as a powerful sculptural language capable of carrying memory, imagination and cultural meaning.” – Ebony Russell

On view 25 September to 29 November 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: Installation view, Oliver Abbott, Guide, Dominik Mersch Gallery, image courtesy the artist and Dominik Mersch Gallery, © the artist