The University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum welcomes 2026 with two solo exhibitions featuring new works by Australian artists.
Undying: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah and Unkept: Kirtika Kain are both free and open to the public.
Undying: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah
Abdul-Rahman Abdullah’s longstanding interest in animal stories intertwine with a delve into the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s natural history collection in an exhibition of new and existing works.
Undying consists of a series of animals, intricately hand carved in wood, which confront our complex relationship with the natural world, one Abdullah says humans often use to assert their “ownership”.
Abdullah has exhibited widely around Australia and his work is held in significant Australian public and private collections. His influences include working as a habitat designer for Perth Zoo before becoming a fulltime artist and his current life on a cattle farm in Bindjareb Nyoongar Country, in regional Western Australia.
Abdullah was invited by the museum to engage with the museum’s collections and was particularly drawn to the Macleay collection of natural history, the oldest in Australia. This experience underpinned new works created for Undying. Many offer his response to preserved specimens, including taxidermied animals and rows of birds stored in drawers.
“Until quite recently taxidermy displays were a big part of museums around the world. The way animals were collected and displayed told a story of empire.
“I wanted to shine a light on these archetypes, animals that died in the service of science. These animals reflect a human story: the aspirations, voracity and search for meaning that defines our sense of humanity.”
Renderings in Undying range from less familiar, and often exploited, creatures to those we encounter in our daily lives. The latter are presented in a semi-mummified form, prompted by mummified animals Abdullah encountered in the museum’s Nicholson Collection of antiquities.
“For so long we humans have elevated ourselves as the world’s ‘pants wearers’. I wanted to put forward the idea that we’re a small part of a much bigger system, often playing a very destructive role.”
“Abdul-Rahman’s work is a thoughtful reflection on how artists bring new ideas and perspectives to museum audiences,” said exhibition curator Katrina Liberiou. “We were delighted for him to engage with our extensive collection of animals, bringing his own extensive knowledge of the natural world, and to build on his highly regarded artistic practice.”
Supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, Undying: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah was commissioned in May 2024. It runs from 7 February to 26 July 2026 at the Chau Chak Wing Museum and then travels to Queensland for exhibition at Griffith University Art Museum from 3 September until 28 November.
Unkept: Kirtika Kain
blue impression, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney
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LinkNew works by Kirtika Kain offer an abstract exploration of India’s controversial caste system and untold stories about marginalised people.
Australia-based Kain was born in India as a Dalit woman, from the Indian caste long considered the lowest in India’s ancient and enduring caste system. She has been practicing as an artist for 11 years. Kain has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 24th Biennale of Sydney in 2024, the current Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India and the upcoming Adelaide Biennal of Australian Art. Her work is held in numerous private and public collections including MCA Australia’s collection.
The beginnings of Unkept came about during a residency in East London in 2025, when Kain spent long stretches at the Victoria and Albert (V&A) East Storehouse, recently opened to the public. Free of curatorial input and labels, V&A East Storehouse gives visitors greater access to that museum and encourages them to build their own narratives of the pieces on display.
The exhibition evolved when Kain returned to Australia and explored the Chau Chak Wing Museum’s eclectic collections. Here, she further considered histories not told in museums. This brought home her own history as a Dalit woman.
Unkept is Kain’s artistic exploration of caste discrimination and the poorly documented Dalit history, explained in abstract forms. The exhibition is created in a makeshift "storehouse" space in the museum’s Penelope Gallery, addressing historical gaps and questioning traditional museum curation. It unfolds in an intermediary zone, where crates are open and objects suspended between order and disorder, preservation and corrosion.
The works are made with elemental materials such as copper, tar, hessian and beeswax. Kain says her new works consider cultural loss and the overlooked contributions of marginalised communities.
“Unkept explores the gaps, silences and unrecorded histories that sit beside what museums collect and preserve. It asks how an artist might honour histories not archived or acknowledged, and how imagination can be a form of remembrance. For me, the studio becomes an archive in its own right: a site informed by history yet open to something new and unwritten.”
Exhibition curator Dr Ann Stephen said Kirtika Kain is a powerful young artist with an alchemical touch. “She turns the stuff of supermarket shelves into rich abstractions,” Dr Stephen said. “This new installation, Unkept, turns the museum inside out to make visible lost histories.”
Supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, Unkept runs from until 26 July 2026.
Hero image caption: Installation shot, Undying, Abdul-Rahman Abdullah. Image credit: David James
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