SYDNEY.- Eleven contemporary artists from across Australia feature in the Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2026, the country’s leading curated exhibition dedicated to contemporary drawing, opening tomorrow at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Titled Near at Hand, the exhibition explores drawing as an intimate art form, showcasing personal mark-making, inner imaginings and up-close observations of the everyday.
Working across a diverse range of materials including pastel, pencil, watercolour, ceramic, light and thread, the artists in the exhibition reveal innovative approaches and techniques to one of the world's oldest art forms, demonstrating the vitality and evolving possibilities of drawing today.
The exhibiting artists are Stephen Benwell (Vic), Tom Blake (WA), Andrew Browne (Vic), Emily Ferretti (Vic), Rosemary Lee (NSW), Mary MacDougall (Vic), Julian Martin (Vic), Jennifer Mills with Darcy Luker (Vic), Ryan Nazzari (WA), Louise Weaver (Vic) and Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu (NT).
Supported by the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation, this is the sixth Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial presented by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Curated around a different theme for each edition, the Biennial showcases the diversity of contemporary drawing practice. The 2026 edition brings together senior to early-career artists, including several exhibiting at a public institution for the first time.
Exhibition curator, Art Gallery of New South Wales Assistant Curator of Australian Art, Scott Elliot, said: ‘For some artists in this year’s biennial, drawing encourages attention to the minutiae of the everyday, or close observation of the people and places that make up their worlds, while others draw to give shape to the elusive forms of their imaginations.
‘For several artists, drawing is about the elaboration of a personal visual language – the putting down of lines and marks that are all their own. Looking beyond the medium’s physical attributes, this edition of the Biennial proposes that the closest thing to a definition of drawing is its capacity for intimate expression.’
Near at Hand: Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2026 features scenes from the artist’s everyday lives. Highlights include Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu’s drawings of his coastal homeland in north-east Arnhem Land, which are integrated with video projections of the sea to convey its vital power in Yolŋu culture; Emily Ferretti’s installation of 473 drawings depicting rhythmic landscapes and interiors; Rosemary Lee’s meticulous renderings of mundane subjects, which awaken a sense of wonder in the everyday; and Andrew Browne's series of pencil drawings zoom in on tattered surfaces in his urban environment.
Figurative drawing also features across the exhibition. Working in watercolour, Kalgoorlie-based artist Ryan Nazzari depicts animals, figures, limbs and faces that merge into fantastic hybrid forms. Jennifer Mills makes meticulous watercolour drawings based on personal and found photographs. In recent works, Mills has collaborated with her son Darcy, who lives with disability, inviting him to draw new faces over those she has selectively erased. Senior ceramicist Stephen Benwell draws onto large handmade vessels, adorning them with figures and landscapes that allude to an Arcadia in the classical world.
A number of artists in the exhibition explore experimental mark-making and materiality. Mary MacDougall’s 350-piece ceramic installation evokes ancient surfaces that teem with traces of human touch, while Louise Weaver pierces paper with thread to create intricate line drawings. Tom Blake's hand-etched mirrors and cyanotype drawings meditate on themes of presence, absence and the passage of time, while Julian Martin presents a series of abstract pastels that describe forms dissolving and emerging from fields of saturated colour.
