After a decade-long hiatus, one of Australia’s most significant platforms for emerging contemporary artists has returned. NEW26 sees the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) revive its landmark commissioning series, presenting seven ambitious new works that reflect a cultural landscape transformed by technology, identity and shifting ideas of place.
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27 October 2026
Originally presented from 2003 to 2016, NEW became an important launchpad for early-career artists, involving more than 100 artists, 75 writers and 10 guest curators during its original run. Now relaunched as a biennial, the series once again gives artists and curators the time and space to take creative risks and realise substantial new work.
Curated by ACCA’s Dr Shelley McSpedden and Sophie Prince, NEW26 brings together seven artists working across painting, sculpture, moving image and installation. While distinct in their approaches, recurring ideas connect the exhibition, from the accelerating influence of technology and artificial intelligence to questions of identity and subjectivity, colonialisation and the role cultural institutions play in shaping contemporary conversations.
Among the exhibition’s most striking works is Amanda Bennetts’ Axis Mundi, a five-and-a-half-metre tower of data racks and cabling conceived as a contemporary altar. Incorporating found footage and an AI voice delivering a sermon-like benediction, the installation questions our growing faith in algorithms to understand and predict our bodily futures.
Elsewhere, Nicholas Currie presents a five-metre spiderweb made from bitumen alongside a new suite of oil paintings, exploring First Nations understandings of time, Indigenous labour, Blak humour and family. Diego Ramírez transforms the experience of bureaucracy into an immersive waiting room, even removing a section of ACCA’s gallery wall to expose the institution’s internal structure.
Naveed Farro examines histories of colonial collecting through film, 3D-printed facsimiles and reconstructed friezes based on Iranian artefacts, while Amanda Bell brings together family slides, archival sound and footage filmed on Wardandi Boodja Country to explore grief, cultural rupture and the reclamation of language.
Together, the seven commissions offer a compelling snapshot of a new generation of Australian contemporary practice. NEW26 is showing daily with free entry at ACCA, 111 Sturt Street, Southbank, until 22 November 2026, inviting audiences to experience the ideas and practices shaping what comes next.
LEARN MORE: https://acca.melbourne/exhibition/new26/
