Our galleries are an important resource and educational platform for students and staff. Through our galleries we offer opportunities to experience the curatorial process, to prepare and deliver an exhibition, and to build professional and academic networks.

The galleries also provide a space for staff and visiting professional artists, scholars and curators to develop, experiment and present research and artistic works to the college and broader arts communities.

By providing access to a range of challenging and innovative exhibitions and events, the galleries contribute signficantly to the public's understanding and appreciation of contemporary art.

The Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Scholarships

Opening Night: Wednesday, 27 September, 6-8pm
Exhibition: Thursday 28 September – Saturday 28 October

The Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Scholarships support Sydney College of Arts (SCA) graduates to pursue a program of professional development through international or domestic travel. 

The scholarships are open to all SCA alumni across two categories: a $10,000 Emerging Scholarship and a $30,000 Mid-career/Established Scholarship.

Drawing from the wealth of talent from SCA graduates, the Fauvette exhibition has cemented a strong reputation for quality in contemporary art. The recipients and finalists include some of the most prominent contemporary artists in Australia. 

The 2023 finalists include: 

Mid-Career/Established Finalists: Lauren Brincat, Consuelo Cavaniglia, Marley Dawson and Clare Milledge

Emerging Finalists: Georgia Banks, Dylan Batty, Szymon Dorabialski, Morgan Hogg,  Anna May Kirk, and Danica I. J. Knežević

Past recipients: Fassih Keiso (Mid-career/Established, 2022), Elwira Skowronska (Emerging, 2022), Emily Hunt (Mid-career/Established, 2021), Pamela Pirovic (Emerging, 2021), Yasmin Smith (Mid-career/Established, 2020), Kalanjay Dhir (Emerging, 2020)  Chris Dolman (2019), Penelope Cain (2018), Nick Dorey (2017), Biljana Jancic (2016),  Julian Day (2015), Jonny Niesche (2014), Vicky Browne (2013), Mark Shorter (2012),  Alanna Hunt, (2011), and Justene Williams (2010). 

New Contemporaries 2023 

Opening Night: Thursday, 30 November, 6-9pm
Exhibition: 1-9 December

At the end of each academic year, we celebrate our graduating cohort and the culmination of their collective research and practice-based outcomes. We invite you to visit us at the Old Teachers’ College to see this year’s New Contemporaries and enjoy the work of our students and selected alumni.  

Works will be on display from studio areas including Screen Arts, Photography, Painting, Printmedia, Sculpture, Ceramics, Glass and Jewellery and Object.  

Ultra-Sonic

Exhibition opening: Wednesday, 8 March, 6-8pm
Exhibition dates: Thursday, 9 March – Saturday, 22 April

An exhibition curated by Joyce Hinterding and David Haines. Ultra-Sonic weaves unconventional musical and sonic lines through the flotsam and jetsam of the shipwreck of installation art to create a new territory in an upended world – Peter Blamey, Lichen Kelp, Dylan Martorell, Naomi Oliver, and Kusum Normoyle create musical and non-musical kingdoms in which everything shakes and moves. 

David Haines and Joyce Hinterding have worked collaboratively and independently for over twenty years to investigate the unseen forces that accompany our existence. Their multi-disciplinary practice employs antennae, scents, photographs, drawings, and actions, which illuminate otherwise invisible events. Haines & Hinterding's initial scientific enquiries are adapted into sophisticated, poetic provocations, which unsettle the privileging of vision or 'ocularcentrism'. They are represented by Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney and lecturers at Sydney College of the Arts. 

Present Continuous

Exhibition Opening: Wednesday, 10 May, 6-8pm
Exhibition: 11 May – 17 June 2023 

“Glass is breaking”, is a sentence in the present continuous tense, conjuring an anxiety-inducing state. Most artists who are experts in handling glass know how to control breakages. But they are also aware that glass is a subject, it has its own will, if you like. Glass will break. Present Continuous is also, therefore, about being continuously present to the possibilities of the medium in the moment of making: to allow glass to speak to its own immanent fragility. This movement from material to metaphor is taken up by all the artists in Present Continuous, none more so than by the late Neil Roberts whose sculptural understanding of glass is represented by works from 1983 to 2001. His influence continues in the work of the contemporary artists in this exhibition who are attuned to both the conceptual and formal properties of their media. 

Present Continuous, curated by Barbara Campbell and Liam Garstang, proffers glass as material and metaphor. The exhibition features works from the Estate of Neil Roberts (1954–2002), alongside recent works by Sydney College of the Arts staff and alumni: Gabrielle Adamik, Consuelo Cavaniglia, Cobi Cockburn, Chris Dolman, Stevie Fieldsend, Paul Greedy, and Andrew Lavery.   

Writing Backwards  

Opening night: Wednesday, 9 August, 6-8pm 
Exhibition: 10 August – 9 September

Presenting four Sydney-based independent publishers whose work emerges from artmaking, this exhibition considers their process. Bringing these distinct publishers into SCA gallery, Writing Backwards reverses the typical art-publishing paradigm by which existing published works are recontextualised.  

Curated by Emma O’Neill and Alex Gawronski, Writing Backwards will be the third exhibition in an annual series of exhibitions focused on independent artist organisations. Through this series of exhibitions, SCA Gallery highlights the indispensably dynamic, inventive, and collaborative activities of contemporary artist-run initiatives.

Read Writing Backwards essay [pdf, 82kb]

Featured publishers: Hag Mag, Runway Journal, Pebble Press and Stolon Press.