The Art Show

Most artists like to protect their work from the elements, but Sophie Cape, the winner of the 2025 Hadley's Art Prize, explains how exposing her work to dirt, rainfall, and her own body is an essential part of the process.Filipino artist Pio Abad talks post-colonial loss, disappearance and re-imagining.And filmmaker Danielle Maclean on her documentary about the impact and legacy of one of Australia's most renowned artists, Emily Kam Kngwarreye.

She took a wallpaper with an idealised view of history and turned it into something far more moving - in every sense of the word. Meet Lisa Reihana, one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most acclaimed artists.Ben Law - writer, broadcaster and man about town, opens up about the artist that’s changed his life - photographer William Yang.And Campbell Addy - who has photographed everyone from Naomi Campbell to Beyonce - takes us behind the scenes of a cover shoot for Vogue.

Three artists in their prime talk to The Art Show...CJ Hendry specialises in hyper-real paintings, but she’s just as comfortable with the art of the spectacle as she is creating the art itself - her recent showcase exhibition in NY got shut down because it drew too many people.Fellow expat Ricky Swallow has been taking LA by storm with his striking bronze sculptures, but is returning home for his first foray into public art.And Sydney-based Pasifika artist Latai Taumoepeau's monumental work is a vital call to action on climate change.

In episode 3 of the series Dangerously Modern, we're following the journey of the magnificent Dorrit Black. Dorrit arrived in London in 1927 and embraced modernism in the new medium of lino cut printmaking. She went on to start her own Modern Art Centre in Sydney in the 1930s and inspired the next generation of artists. But professional rivalry and her status as an ‘unmarried daughter’ would challenge her autonomy and legacy. Produced and presented by Rosa Ellen and commissioned by the Art Gallery of South Australia.After a season at AGSA, the exhibition of Dangerously Modern is on at the Art Gallery of NSW until February 16, 2026.

In the early 20th century, an unprecedented wave of women artists left a conservative Australia to pursue modern art in Europe.Margaret Preston is a household name in Australian art, best known for her bold paintings and woodcuts of native wildflowers. But to achieve this level of visibility she had to inhabit a bullet-proof confidence and find a sense of freedom, away from the strictures of a Victorian society. In episode 1, hear how she found freedom in an unlikely Irish rural setting, discovered modernism and, it’s speculated, pursued queer relationships.Produced and presented by Rosa Ellen and commissioned by the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Sisters Anney and Mechelle Bounpraseuth grew up in a world that promised paradise later. But they chose otherwise, leaving their religion to begin making paradise now!For Anney, cloth and sequins became radiant scenes of joy and survival. And for Mechelle, cans of lychees and jars of Tiger Balm, forged in clay, carry memory and care.Their work carries grief and humour, kitsch and devotion, and memories of Cabramatta markets, their mother's hands and the textures of Lao family life.

What would it mean to eat breakfast with a Brett Whiteley or to pass a Sally Gabori in the corridor? Art, not as something you visit, but something that visits you?That's the idea behind Artbank, a federal experiment that began in 1980 and now holds more than 11,000 works of Australian contemporary art.Works that circulate into offices, foyers, and living rooms; into the lives of people who might never have thought of themselves as collectors.Barry Keldoulis, Senior Art Consultant at Artbank, Ray Wilson, an Artbank client, and artist Monica Rani Rudhar, whose work is in the collection share their experiences with The Art Show.

Some landscapes don't just surround us, they get inside us. A windswept farm, a rugged coastline, a cave heavy with shadow: they're places that don't fade, but lodge in the memory.The work of photographer and video artist Sarah Rhodes, who was part of the ABC's Top 5 Arts program in 2025, explores the emotional registers of place: how landscapes can be more than just backdrops, and can instead become part of who we are.Sarah was a recent recipient of an honourable mention at the Bowness Photography Prize for her work, Chamber of Projection 1.

Two hundred years ago, a French wallpaper pictured the Pacific: the islands and empire in perfect harmony against windless calm seas. But it was decoration. Pure fantasy.Until artist Lisa Reihana made history flicker — adding ceremony, desire, misunderstanding, and violence.Her vast video work In Pursuit of Venus [infected] premiered in Auckland, then at the New Zealand Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale. She took a 19th-century French wallpaper, once exotic decor, and transformed it into a living panorama.Reihana talks about what came after that breakthrough and about her latest pieces, at the Sydney Contemporary and Ngununggula.

Some paintings are sealed off from the world: neat, polished, contained.But Sophie Cape's canvases feel porous, weathered by the elements themselves. Not so much painted, as unearthed.Once an elite athlete, Sophie turned to art after devastating injuries.It's a path that has brought her attention and acclaim, including winning this year's Hadley's Art prize, Australia's richest prize for landscape painting.

Nicolas Rothwell writes at the edges of things. He's twice won the Prime Minister's Literary Award — for both fiction and non-fiction — and his work slides between both registers: fiction brushes against fact, philosophy slips into story.His latest novel, Yilkari: A Desert Suite, written with his wife, Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson, takes readers deep into the Western Desert, showing how Country makes art, how absence reveals, and how silence can heal.Rothwell reflects on his autodidactic approach to art and on the tension between concealment and revelation in the work from the Western Desert.

In 2020, Aperture magazine invited Garth Greenwell to write about Mark Armijo McKnight's photographs. The images immediately captivated him, offering new possibilities for thinking and feeling.Their work meets in shared spaces: the erotic, the poetic, desire and restraint, silence and shadow; both illuminating queer lives with honesty and complexity.What began as an assignment deepened into a deep, loving friendship, one that continues to reshape and expand their inner and outer worlds.

Children live in a world not quite built for them and, for a long time, galleries were no exception. No touching. No talking. Just stand and receive.But, something is changing. Across Australia, galleries are beginning to meet children where they are — not just as visitors, but as artists in their own right.Tamsin Cull, head of public engagement at QAGOMA and Lilly Blue, head of learning and creativity research at AGWA, talk about children's creativity, and how galleries are being transformed by it.