Recently on the show we met Filipino artist Pio Abad to hear about his Turner Prize nominated exhibition 'To Those Sitting in Darkness' which re-presented museum objects to reveal hidden histories and the deep legacies of colonialism. 

Thai-Australian multidisciplinary artist Nathan Beard takes a different, less didactic, approach but, like Pio Abad, is working with cultural objects that are largely unseen. In Beard's case, Buddha heads made for ritual use, squirrelled away in the British Museum. 

The exoticisation and familiarity of Thai culture has proved to be fertile ground for Beard's artwork — where he gives free rein to his critical approach and his broad, irreverent sense of humour.

Although he's one of Australia's most established, commercially successful and prolific artists, Dale Frank is a reluctant interview subject.

Eccentric, reclusive, visionary, trailblazer — a sublime colourist, even a likeable arsehole — these are just some of the ways he's described.

Which makes it even more remarkable that he agreed to be the subject of a documentary feature film — a rare thing for a living Australian artist.

With a menagerie of exotic taxidermied animals and the odd studio assistant for company, Frank not only produces enormous bodies of work, but he is realising another artistic vision: a botanical garden filled with dry climate species from all over the world.

He does all this while managing acute pain from a debilitating illness, and the wear and tear of an embodied artmaking practice that stretches back four decades.

Sydney-based artist Nadia Vitlin works with olfaction — our sense of smell — infusing her artwork, whether it be clay or paint, to create bespoke pieces that mimic the transportive power of scent: one of the most evocative, deeply personal and memory-laden senses humans possess. 

She experiments in the fourth dimension, and it all began with leaves from the garden and spices you might find in your kitchen. 

Vitlin's background is in science, a helpful start when you consider that scent is carried in molecules, which bypass our brain's central operating system to work on a different region wired to feel emotions.

Just as historical objects in museum collections embody certain histories — of British imperialism and modernity — they also map loss and disappearance for those in former colonial states.

Pio Abad, whose work is "concerned with the personal and political entanglements of objects," has mined the stories embedded in certain cultural material such as kris, ceremonial swords from Mindanao, and a tiara worn by Imelda Marcos, the wife of Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos. 

The result, To Those Sitting in Darkness, earned the London-based Filipino artist a nod for Britain's most high-profile art prize, but Pio Abad says reviews of the work — and that of other POC nominees — ranged from asinine to borderline racist.s.

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.