Contemporary Art Tasmania

01/06/2026

Our latest podcast episode, Eat the art, has dropped! Starting at the intersecting point of culinary and creative practice, Haneen Mahmood Martin and Caitlin Fargher discuss how an arts practice can be productive medium to unpack lineage and familial history, talk models of curatorial care and explore what it can look like to hold space for different experiences.

Listen to the full episode on our website, or wherever you get your podcasts.
https://contemporaryarttasmania.org/whats-on/eat-the-art/

This episode was hosted by Sharifah Emalia Al-Gadrie and produced by Honor Marino.

28/05/2026

Xiyue CiCi Zhang moved to Lutruwita/Tasmania in 2020 and works from a studio in Maydena, surrounded by mountains and rainforest. She studied at the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing from the age of 15 until attaining her MFA degree. She has exhibited in China, Korea, Germany, France and Australia.

Cici's magical TrunkMan playground opens soon in the main gallery, in partnership with Dark M**o. The installation will be activated by three performances featuring Sabio.

For extended festival opening times and performance times, check our pinned post or our website.

22/05/2026

On "Art that remakes", our latest episode of the pod, Noah Johnson shared the ideas and values that drive their practice.

Noah is a black multidisciplinary artist, born in Lutruwita (Hobart). They first began painting as a way to visually represent their creative mind and their roots to their African American culture which paved the way for their love of fashion and consequently sewing & design.

Noah runs a fashion label DERECYCLER, an upcycling slow fashion label which came to fruition when they were 16 years old. Their values lie in sustainability and story telling through their textile art while they use a mixture of simple to intricate design choices to convey that.

🎧 Find What are you looking at? on most podcast apps

21/05/2026

Our latest Journal explores contested space through the eyes of louen, a direct-action activist, [redacted] side of the hemisphere.

"We had to filter in new ways of solidifying our position, test new things that would push back on the authority’s blockade. But the police had new products too. We called them smurf bombs — teargas water, bright blue dye. You’d strip down in front of everyone, try to stop it sticking to your skin, peppery, burning, and you’re freezing too, late winter, dripping wet, but also on fire. The stains lasted, even if you got out you were marked. So you stayed."

📖 Read the full piece here:

We had to filter in new ways of solidifying our position, test new things that would push back on the authority’s blockade. But the police had new products too. We called them smurf bombs — teargas water, bright blue dye. You’d strip down in front of everyone, try to stop it sticking to your s...

19/05/2026

UPCOMING // A fantastical playground where the real and the imagined mingle. Xiyue CiCi Zhang's immersive installation of animations, paintings, soft sculptures, set design and performance tells the story of TrunkMan, journeying through a world of mystery and myth. Supernatural beings traverse the dualities of light and darkness, order and chaos. Born in China, and now living in Lutruwita, CiCi considers that ‘magical and strange stories like this happen every day on the island of Tasmania.’

During Dark M**o, the TrunkMan installation will be activated with three performances featuring Sabio.

▶︎Opening event:
Thursday 11 June, 5pm-10 pm

▶︎Opening hours during Dark M**o:
Friday 12 – Sunday 14 June, 12pm-8pm
Wednesday 17 June, 12pm-5pm
Thursday 18 – Sunday 21 June, 12pm-8pm

▶︎Performance times:
Thursday 11 June, 6pm
Saturday 13 June, 6pm
Friday 19 June, 6pm

▶︎Exhibition continues:
Wednesdays–Saturdays, 12pm-5pm until 18 July

Location: Contemporary Art Tasmania, 27 Tasma St, North Hobart

Accessibility: The galleries are mobility accessible. An audio description will be available from 11 June. A roomsheet will be available online and in large font hardcopies at the front desk. Find more at contemporaryart.org.au/access.

Presented in partnership with Dark M**o.

14/05/2026

Highlights from Saturday's Psychogeographic Walking Tour, led by Julie Gough through Nipaluna/Hobart. Visiting locations across the city related to the Force Field exhibition, the tour invited participants to consider the histories that lie hidden, and those brought to the surface by social, economic and cultural interests.

This booked-out event was incredibly well received, with participants especially appreciative of the extended tour. Clearly a popular one, judging by the waitlist!

Three sites, Macquarie Point, Franklin Square, and a carpark where the Pool of the Aborigines once was, are linked to the the exhibition at CAT via a live video feed. If you haven’t experienced this haunting work yet, this is your final week to visit before it closes on Saturday 16 May.

A special thank you to Julie Gough for the immense time, care and research devoted to developing and leading the tour, and Jason James and Kylie Johnson for their event support.

Images: Millie Crouch

29/04/2026

"In Force Field, Julie Gough shows us Hobart as a precarious city, perched awkwardly on the precipice between past and future. Three sites are weighed down equally by history and potential. Two of these are places few Tasmanians would be unaware of, places that have—for some reason or another—regularly made national and even international headlines. The grey, industrial expanse of Macquarie Point. The tense, empty plinth in Franklin Square. The third is perhaps more obscure, inaccessible and unrecognisable but to the historically-minded: a grate, covering the spring that once drew forth behind George Augustus Robinson’s house. Once known as ‘the Pool of Aborigines’, it became an object of nostalgic, folkloric fascination for late-Victorian society, the place “in which the blackfellows took their daily wash” and the tense conflict of the city’s early years—at that time increasingly retold in grand, heroic terms—found its culmination in Robinson’s great act of betrayal."

— Hugh Magnus, a writer based between Naarm and Nipaluna, writes for the Force Field exhibition catalogue. He is interested in desire, repair, and the difficulties of history.

The catalogue available in hardcopy at CAT or online. Force Field continues until 16 May.

Image: Jesse Hunniford.

27/04/2026

"An invitation to respond to Hobart the city is a daunting prospect. Although I have lived here for more than 30 years, I inhabit this place through an 1800s lens. Those People, relationships, landmarks and stories swirl around me, they overwhelm my present. Today’s citizens are the spectres."

— Julie Gough, 'Scrying the Pool', Force Field exhibition catalogue (available in hardcopy at CAT or online): https://contemporaryarttasmania.org/whats-on/force-field/

Force Field continues until 16 May.

Image: Jesse Hunniford

22/04/2026

We caught up with Sara Morawetz to chat about her practice and what she’s been working on in her CAT studio.

Sara’s two-year residency (2025–2026) will lead into a solo exhibition at CAT next year. You can also catch her work 'Cut from the Same Cloth (Disassembly of Empire)' as part of Hobart Current, now showing at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

Video: Huemen Media

20/04/2026

Calling all curators, the Exhibition Development Fund (EDF) is open for applications.

The EDF supports curatorial research for touring exhibitions by offering up to $10,000 to help curators develop a proposal for a major visual arts touring project.

If you would like to discuss a touring project, appointments are available with Exhibitions and Touring Coordinator Laurie Oxenford from 9AM-5PM on the first and third Friday of each month. Apply, book an appointment or learn more at contemporaryarttasmania.org/edf

Applications close: 11:59pm Tuesday 30 June 2026