They used to lay-buy contemporary art together when they were low-paid gallery workers, forging a business relationship early on.

Now, Ursula Sullivan and Joanna Strumpf are one of Australia's most successful art partnerships in terms of the cultural impact of the artists they represent — Tony Albert, Lindy Lee, Polly Borland, ex de Medici, Sam Leach, and Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, to name a few. This year, they're celebrating two decades together at the head of Sullivan + Strumpf.

What's even more remarkable is that after 20 years in the commercial gallery business they're still friends.

It was while researching the provenance of a child’s boomerang, found in topsoil near the site of Melbourne Zoo, that Kimberley Moulton found the key to her curatorial vision for We Are Eagles, the latest edition of the TarraWarra Biennial. 

The Yorta Yorta curator worked with artefacts and other historical material at Melbourne Museum for years before moving into contemporary art in her current role at the Tate in London. 

Kim explains how that boomerang unearthed a long-buried and disturbing history and earned its place in the biennial, which includes 20 new commissions from artists such as Lisa Hilli, Shireen Taweel, Iluwanti Ken, Nathan Beard and Warraba Weatherall.

The Lebanese-born Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi joins The Art Show exclusively to talk about the profound impact of the decision to unceremoniously dump him as Australia's representative artist to the 2026 Venice Biennale. 

The decision exposed the arts funding body Creative Australia to claims of political interference, racism and censorship — emptying Australia's Pavilion in Venice after our most successful outing ever in 2024 and leading to a series of open letters from different parts of Australia's arts community which called for Sabsabi's reinstatement.

In this exclusive conversation, Sabsabi shares the highs and the lows of his selection and removal, talks about the work that was called into question by the Liberal Senator Claire Chandler, and explores the ideas that are behind his proposed work for the Venice Biennale.

The Art Show has made multiple requests to speak with the CEO of Creative Australia, Adrian Collette, and that invitation remains open.

For Kamilaroi artist Warraba Weatherall, art that isn't a catalyst for something—that isn't driven by critique of gatekeeping museums, the criminal justice system, or the wilful historical amnesia and complacency—isn't worth making. 

Warraba has just unveiled his first institutional solo at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, laying bare his politics in a manifesto of simmering rage catalysed into monumental sculptures, anti-monuments, and a tense 8-minute film that explores the violence of the archive.

In art, verisimilitude — representing things as they appear — is something like telling the unvarnished truth and it makes perfect sense that it's the form in which Vincent Fantauzzo is most comfortable. 

His first commercial artworks were actually counterfeit 50 dollar notes, just one of the uncomfortable truths which he tells in his new autobiography, Unveiled. 

Although his childhood in the outer suburbs of Melbourne was wracked by endemic poverty and a distant but physically and emotionally violent father, it was undiagnosed dyslexia that almost beat this Jack Rennie-trained boxer.

But Fantauzzo has gone on to great success, and while his representational style isn't wildly popular with critics, his portraits are perennial people's choice award winners at the Archibald Prize.

Robert Andrew's artwork features simple robotic machines, with a stylus that impulsively draws or leaves a trace; not so much artificial intelligence as incidental happenstance. 

Although he works with technology, Andrew has always been deeply inspired by country. So it made sense that he was invited to make work for a new group exhibition at Bundanon, the timeless yet scarred landscape that figured in the paintings of its previous owner, Arthur Boyd.

Robert and Daniel chat about wombats, watercourses, and the mother of all road-trips.

Nici Cumpston has played a transformative role at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Over the past 16 years she has driven First Nations curatorial practice to new heights, shaping what began as a biennial exhibition into a festival of contemporary Indigenous art that surveys artmaking across the continent.

As Tarnanthi reaches its tenth anniversary, Nici has accepted a new challenge overseas — becoming the first Indigenous director of one of the world's great collections of Aboriginal art housed at Kluge-Ruhe at the University of Virginia.

When questions were raised in Federal Parliament about two artworks by Khaled Sabsabi from 2006 and 2007, it was enough to convince Creative Australia to dump the artist from next year's Venice Biennale. 

The board hoped to avoid a "prolonged and divisive" public debate, but the unparalleled move to rescind the invitation to Sabsabi to represent Australia risks creating has had the opposite effect: compromising artistic freedom and the appearnance of arms-length independence of the arts funding agency.

Art historian Rex Butler and barrister Paris Lettau, contributing editors of the art magazine Memo, lend an art historical perspective to the debate.

Driven by their mission statement to create a queer wonderland, Will and Garett Huxley are true polymorphs. 

A real-life couple who rival camp predecessors Gilbert and George, Will and Garett Huxley talk about their long-term collaboration and the transformation and reinvention that exemplifies queer experience. 

Garrett speaks about finding his voice as a Gumbaynggir and Yorta Yorta person ahead of The Huxleys' performance at the First Nations concert gala, Blak & Deadly.

After rising to prominence locally in the early 2000s, Ricky Swallow left Australia and built an international art career with his small-scale, often intimate bronzes.  

Speaking from LA, Ricky talks about his unconscious move towards abstraction, his first foray into public art for Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, and the profound impact of the recent California fires.