Out Front 2026: HSC Visual Arts from Sydney’s Northern Beaches 

20 February 2026 - 5 April 2026

This exhibition brings together standout works from HSC Visual Arts students across 21 secondary schools on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. It is emerging voices exploring big ideas through painting, drawing, sculpture, digital media and more. The works on display offer a powerful glimpse into the themes shaping young people’s lives today.

Since 1995, this annual exhibition has showcased MAG&M’s ongoing commitment to nurturing visual arts education in our region. At its heart is the Theo Batten Youth Art Award, supporting students who choose to continue their studies in the visual or broader arts. The award honours Theo Batten (1918–2003)- a respected local artist and journalist, National Art School graduate, and 1972 Walkley Award winner- who dedicated his legacy to encouraging and inspiring the next generation of creatives on the Northern Beaches.

Image: Jennifer Choi, Virtual Daydreams (detail), acrylic on canvas (NBSC Manly Campus)

Amber Boardman: The Puppet Show 

20 February 2026 - 5 April 2026

The Puppet Show explores what happens to human storytelling now that machines can generate narratives of their own. Drawing on the visual language of theatre, Amber Boardman transforms the gallery into an uncanny playhouse where ancient mythic scenes meet the infrastructure of artificial intelligence.

Paintings appear like performers or puppets poised before a digital backstage, where server stacks replace ropes and pulleys. Though the exhibition interrogates simulated storytelling, every element is built by hand: oil paintings, hand-modelled 3D environments, and a 17-metre vinyl set.

Hovering between nostalgia and computation, The Puppet Show asks who is pulling the strings in an age when the systems we’ve created may be shaping our stories, and us, in return.
 

Todd Fuller: Simple Love

20 February 2026 - 5 April 2026

For this exhibition, Todd Fuller brings together his distinctive mix of hand-drawn animation, performance, and interactive drawing to highlight Queer narratives in Australian history. This project is centred on the story of Adam George, a Northern Beaches actor, musician and surfer.

Through interviews with Adam George, Fuller has created a new hand-drawn animation that traces George’s experiences growing up in the Northern Beaches surf scene, where the conservative culture often conflicted with his emerging Queer identity. The work explores themes of resilience, visibility, and belonging, set against the backdrop of MAG&M’s surfboard collection and Manly Cove beach.

This exhibition continues MAG&M’s commitment to fostering cultural dialogue and amplifying diverse voices within the community. It is part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras+ 2026 program.
 

CEAD Collection Stories: Mangroves 

20 February 2026 - 5 April 2026

In this first in the series of collection exhibitions being presented in 2026, dive into our unique mangrove environment through the eyes of artists committed to exploring the natural world. Presented as part of MAG&M’s CEAD (Collective for Environmental Art & Design) initiative, it offers a fresh perspective on how art can illuminate our connection to place.

This exhibition explores the fragile beauty of our mangrove ecology—where freshwater and saltwater meet to sustain a rich web of life. Through ceramics, prints, and paintings, audiences are invited to reflect on how art can spark dialogue, raise questions, and deepen our understanding of this unique environment.

Featuring collection works by Les Blakeborough, Fairley Kingston, Helen Mueller, Joshua Yeldham, Weaver Hawkins, Tony Hedstrom, and others, the exhibition highlights the power of art to connect us more closely with the ecosystems that shape our world.
Image: Joshua Yeldham, Mangrove Country, Hawkesbury River – Protection, 2009, hand carved paper. MAG&M Collection - Purchased through the Theo Batten Bequest 2009

Garden Variety

5 December 2025 - 15 February 2026

This exhibition presents the work of five contemporary Australian artists exploring the garden as a theme. Including a curated selection of works from the Art Gallery of NSW and MAG&M collections, Garden Variety creates a hanging garden of art within the gallery.

Through motifs associated with gardening, horticulture, and landscaping, the artists selected for the exhibition skilfully traverse this complex psychological landscape through a range of cultural narratives and media. Representing different career stages, the artists presented Garden Variety interrogate concepts of control, harmony, beauty, and nature.  The exhibition comprises new and loaned works, as well as a temporary display of bonsai trees.

This exhibition is part of MAG&M’s Collective for Environmental Art & Design (CEAD) initiative and includes works by: Natasha Bieniek, Lucy Culliton, Nic Fern, Michael Kempson, and Louise Zhang. 
 

Counterpoint: Jude Rae, Ruth Waller & Toni Warburton

5 December 2025 - 15 February 2026

An interplay of practices and processes. 

In music, counterpoint describes the simultaneous relationship of independent melodic lines—distinct yet interwoven, each voice retaining its autonomy while creating a richer whole. Counterpoint brings together the work of Jude Rae, Ruth Waller, and Toni Warburton, three artists whose practices resonate through material, form, and process.

Rae’s still life paintings distil the complexities of everyday experience, where light, touch, and spatial awareness transform objects into both image and presence. Waller’s paintings explore the poetics of shape and space, engaging the motif of the vase as a vehicle for abstraction, contemplation, and display. Warburton’s ceramics embrace the uncanny, drawing from botanical, geological, and architectural structures to sustain a sense of wonder through material and form.

The artists share a deep engagement with the physical and formal properties of their chosen materials, paint, clay, and the spaces in between. Their works cultivate attentiveness, revealing the beauty and strangeness of the familiar. The interplay of these practices suggests a counterpoint of ideas: materiality and illusion, perception and process, intuition and structure.

Growing up within a few kilometres of each other on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, the artists also share early experiences of place. Their experiences and practices remain unique, yet in dialogue, three voices attuned to the resonances of the world around them.

The Art of Adaptation: Culture Changes Everywhere

10 April - 7 June 2026

Marking ten years since its founding, this exhibition surveys a decade of projects by the Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation (KSCA). Bringing together contributions from artists across the collective, the exhibition highlights how creative practice can foster cultural change in response to climate challenges. KSCA’s work is grounded in the belief that art is not only a means of reflection but also a tool for shaping how communities adapt to shifting social and environmental conditions.

Based in Kandos on Wiradjuri country and extending across urban, regional and rural Australia, KSCA has developed projects that engage with sustainable food and resource practices, the preservation of natural systems, and the values of local communities. This first major institutional survey presents the breadth of artistic experimentation and collaboration that has defined the group’s practice, offering audiences an immersive look at a decade of art-led cultural adaptation.

Participating exhibition artists are Diego Bonetto, Laura Fisher, Lucas Ihlein, Ian Milliss, Georgina Pollard, Imogen Semmler, Peter Swain, Leanne Thompson, Erika Watson, Kim Williams, Alex Wisser, and Vickie Zhang.

Image: Alex Wisser, Mine, 2024, photograph of billboard

Tamara Dean: Leave only footprints 

12 June - 2 August 2026

This was the first survey exhibition of the critically acclaimed photomedia artist Tamara Dean. Dean’s career began as a photojournalist for the Sydney Morning Herald (2001–2014). She was renowned for finding the quieter, more introspective moments between subject and photographer. Dean’s practice transitioned from documentary to conceptual photography after the arrival of her first child. It transformed her practice into one that explores the primacy of nature and our connectedness to it and to each other.

The exhibition spanned over 11 key bodies of work that explore transitional moments in our lives – rites of passage, rituals and motherhood – and is underpinned by the artist’s longing and desire to be within, and to protect nature. This immersive exhibition incorporated scent, photography, installation and the moving image to create an environment that engages the senses.  It was a Museum of Australian Photography travelling exhibition.

This exhibition was part of MAG&M’s Collective for Environmental Art & Design (CEAD) program.

Image: Tamara Dean, Follow me, 2022, from the series High jinks in the hydrangeas, pigment ink-jet print. Image courtesy Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin

Min Wong: You shall definitely pass

12 June - 2 August 2026

Produced during a three-month residency at Yellow Brick in Athens in 2026, You shall defiantly pass emerged from Min’s engagement with collective care movements, restorative justice practices, mutual aid networks, and communities supporting migrants and individuals experiencing violence in gendered spaces. Responding to what the artist describes as a fractured world shaped by systems of genocide, patriarchy and capitalism, the works explore intentional love, ritual practice, and collective care as forms of resistance. Embedded with experiences of grief, compassion, rage and hope, the banners and text reflect on the capacity of communities to nurture care, healing and transformation.

Min Wong is an Australian sculptor and installation artist. She has shown work in exhibitions around Australia, including at the 2022 Adelaide Biennale of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Min was the 2023 Samstag Scholarship recipient, and has participated in numerous international residencies, including most recently in Berlin and Athens. Min grew up on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

Image: Min Wong, Budapest-sauna, digital print on paper

2026 Environmental Art & Design Prize 

7 August - 20 September 2026

In its sixth year, the prize is the leading national environmental prize for artists and designers, platforming inspiring and critical works that engage with today’s environmental issues.

It is open to artists and designers of all levels and backgrounds from across Australia, including young people aged 7 to 18 years, and judged by industry leaders across visual arts and design.

The finalists’ works were on display from 7 August - 20 September 2026 at Manly Art Gallery & Museum and Curl Curl Creative Space. 

Image: Caroline Christie-Coxon, Collapse In Yellow, (2026 EADP Finalist – Art category)