Your go-to guide for the best free exhibitions to check out in the month of September across Australian cities, metropolitan and regional.
Free exhibitions – quick links:
Western Australia: free exhibitions
Nuclear Landscapes at Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre, Moores Building Art Space (13-28 September)
Nuclear Landscapes explores the legacy of atomic energy upon the American landscape following 16 July 1945, when J Robert Oppenheimer detonated the world’s first atomic device. Divided into six chapters – Mining, Processing, Testing, Weapons, Power, and Waste – the exhibition by artist Brett Leigh Dicks presents a sobering look at how atomic energy has carved its indelible presence into the America’s past, present, and future.
Open every day 10am-3pm.
Vincent Fantauzzo: Unveiled at Art Gallery of WA (until 15 September)
This dynamic display showcases both past and new works of Vincent Fantauzzo, offering an intimate journey through his evolving artistic styles – from his renowned portraits to his lesser-known but equally compelling abstract pieces. One of his most iconic works, Asher Keddie – This is not an act 2018, is a highlight of the AGWA display.
Open every day 10am-5pm.
Sandra Black: Solace and Jacky Cheng: In the Fold at Art Collective WA (20 September to 25 October)
In Sandra Black’s first solo exhibition at Art Collective WA, deeply personal works created in memory of a beloved sister reflect on shared journeys and landscapes of childhood, grief and quiet renewal. Meanwhile, new work by Jacky Cheng presents a contemplative meditation into kinship, memory and transformation.
Open Wednesday to Friday 11am-4pm and Saturday 12-4pm.
Captured by Colour at Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre (20 September to 26 October)
Trudi Pollard’s Captured by Colour is a vibrant celebration of the natural world and a lifelong commitment to colour, material, and memory. Developed over decades and deeply rooted in Western Australia’s unique landscape, this exhibition brings together textiles, ceramics, and organic forms coloured entirely with natural dyes.
Open every day 10am-5pm.
Andy Warhol Collection at Wanneroo Regional Gallery (until 20 September)
Over 50 works by 20th-century artistic icon Andy Warhol, on loan from the National Gallery of Australia, will be on view in Wanneroo over a two-year period. A selection of pieces will be on display and rotated every three months. Also on view is Inside Pompeii: Origins of a European way of Life – Photographs by Luigi Spina until 4 October.
Open Wednesday to Saturday 10am-4pm.
Place Makers at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia (27 September to 6 December)
Place Makers draws attention to the work of four senior artists, Fiona Foley, Gladys Milroy, Margaret Morgan and Edith Trethowan, whose work is grounded in relationships of place and community. Each artist takes inspiration from the gritty realities of everyday life to re-frame these moments as extraordinary, with nuanced and closely observed narratives offering diverse perspectives for understanding the world.
Open Tuesday to Saturday 11am-4pm.
Maria Fernanda Cardoso: Spiders of Paradise at Geraldton Regional Art Gallery (until 2 November)
Maria Fernanda Cardoso: Spiders of Paradise presents new works from Cardoso’s Spiders of Paradise photographic series (2018–ongoing), alongside her acclaimed video work On the Origins of Art I-II (2016). Cardoso’s subject is the tiny Australian Maratus spider – measuring less than 5mm in size – and their unique, brightly-coloured abdomens, which form part of their elaborate mating rituals. This is a Museum of Contemporary Art Australia touring exhibition.
Open Monday to Friday 9am-4pm and Saturday to Sunday 9.30am-1.30pm.
Northern Territory: free exhibitions
Desert Mob 2025* at Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Spring (11 September to 26 October)
The annual Desert Mob exhibition this year presents hundreds of works selected from 32 art centres, curated by Hetti Perkins and Aspen Beattie. Over 200 works span mediums including painting, works on paper, ceramics, weaving, sculpture, punu and wood carving. It’s a celebration of desert culture in the heart of Australia. A variety of cultural events including artist talks and marketplace will occur throughout September and October; view the program.
Opening night 11 September from 5pm; exhibition open every day 10am-4pm.
*Desert Mob is free for NT residents, adult tickets start from $6.
Jenni Kemarre Martiniello solo exhibition at Outstation Gallery (20 September to 15 October)
Jenni Kemarre Martiniello OAM is an Arrernte glass artist known for making vessels inspired by woven forms. She says, ‘What inspires me endlessly is the profound depths of the cultural heritages, identities and experiences of this land which I see mirrored in the richness and complexity of our natural and contemporary environments. They are metaphors for each other and I am merely one of their many voices through which they are expressed.’
Open Tuesday to Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday 10am-4pm.
Australian Capital Territory: free exhibitions
Rendezvous: Notes from the Botanic Gardens and See What I See at M16 Artspace (4-28 September)
Rendezvous: Notes from the Botanic Gardens features artists Michael Desmond, Peta Jones, Bryn Desmond-Jones and Ossian Desmond-Jones, who are inspired by the botanical diversity of the gardens. See What I See is the annual NatureArt Lab tutor exhibition, showcasing the creative work and immense talent of their teaching team. Also don’t miss Michele England’s work about the Northern hairy-nosed wombat inside chutespace.
Opening night 4 September 6-8pm; exhibitions open Wednesday to Sunday 12-5pm.
Wearing Joy: Beautiful Brooches at Canberra Museum + Gallery (13 September 2025 to 1 February 2026)
Carla Velting owns more than 500 brooches, which she describes as colourful, quirky, and ‘just a little bit silly’. These come from Australian designers such as Erstwilder, LLL Designs and Fractured Lace, some of which will be included in this exhibition that showcases Velting’s brooches with personal stories.
Open Monday to Friday 10am-4pm and Saturday to Sunday 12-4pm.
New Asian Art and Bilong Papua New Guinea 50 years of Independence at National Gallery of Australia (13 September to April 2026)
Two major collection displays will open at the NGA. New Asian Art highlights recent acquisitions by artists from across Asia and the Asian diaspora in a range of media including paintings, prints, textiles, video, photography and multidisciplinary installation. The display illustrates the diversity of artistic practice in the region through a range of works dating from 1860 to 2016.
The National Gallery holds the largest collection of Papua New Guinea urban art outside the country. Each of the works selected for Bilong Papua New Guinea presents a story, reflecting on cultural heritage, historical moments, the influence of ancestors, Christianity, kastom, societal changes and new technologies.
Open every day 10am-5pm.
Art in Miniature at Australian National Botanic Gardens (21 September)
Art in Miniature is a group of 22 artists from the Canberra region who enjoy working and exhibiting miniatures artworks together. This marks the exhibition’s 25th edition, with all artworks measuring 10cm x 10cm.
Open every day 9.30am-4.30pm.
Mr Squiggle and Friends at National Museum Australia (until 13 October)
Step inside the creative world of Norman Hetherington, creator of Mr Squiggle and his friends Blackboard, Gus the Snail and Bill Steamshovel. Read more in ArtsHub’s article here.
Open every day 9am-5pm.
Queensland: free exhibitions
Woven Together: Undivided We Rise and Mere Porvaj [I am Remembering] at Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts, Townsville (19 September to 2 November)
Woven Together: Undivided We Rise is a powerful celebration of resilience, community, and cultural continuity. Curated by Gangulu woman Sabrina-Rose Toby, this exhibition honours the trust of the seven exhibiting artists, who share their stories through the transformative practice of weaving. Meanwhile, the works in Mere Porvaj [I am remembering] speak to a history that has been forgotten, the labour of women, and the love of a land that continues to hold them.
Opening night 19 September 6pm; exhibitions open Tuesday to Friday 9am-5pm and Saturday to Sunday 9am-1pm.
Placky Bags by Margaret McIntosh and Lorna Fencer Napurrula at Mitchell Fine Art (until 20 September)
In her latest exhibition, Margaret McIntosh illuminates societal waste and overconsumption and highlights the intersection between urban waste and natural scavenging. Meanwhile, Lorna Fencer Napurrula, born in the 1920s in the Tanami Desert in Central Australia, is known for her abstract and bold designs.
Open Monday to Friday 10am-5.30pm and Saturday 10am-5pm.
Desire Is a Machine at Institute of Modern Art (until 20 September)
Curated by Institute of Modern Art Adjunct Curator Stephanie Berlangieri, Desire Is a Machine brings together artists who understand desire not as a lack to be filled but as a generative, machinic force coursing through all life. The artists engage with the legacy of schizoanalysis by reorienting how mental health is understood, foregrounding connections between living beings, technologies and other entities, and conceptualising the flows of capital and information.
Open Tuesday to Sunday 10am-5pm.
The God of Small Things: Faith and Popular Culture at Queensland Art Gallery (20 September 2025 to 5 October 2026)
This exhibition draws its title from Arundhati Roy’s evocative novel to explore the omnipresence of faith in the mundane and extraordinary alike. Centred around a rare collection of embellished oleographs by Raja Ravi Varma (India, 1848-1906), the exhibition delves into the intersection between devotional imagery and popular culture, capturing the divine as a living part of everyday life.
Open every day 10am-5pm.
Archie Moore kith and kin at Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (27 September 2025 to 18 October 2026)
The 2024 Venice Biennale Golden Lion winner is coming home to Australia. Archie Moore’s monumental installation, kith and kin traces the artist’s Kamilaroi and Bigambul relations over 65,000+ years. The artist’s extensive drawing captures the common ancestors of all humans alongside animals, plants, waterways and landforms in order to emphasise our kinship responsibilities to each other and our surroundings. At the centre of the installation is a reflective pool, a memorial for First Nations individuals who have died in police custody, highlighting how Indigenous Australians are some of the most incarcerated people globally.
Also on view at GOMA is Inscribing a life, featuring artworks from across the QAGOMA Collection that register existence, histories, and time through the act of mark making.
Open every day 10am-5pm.
South Australia: free exhibitions
Datsun Tran and Sharifah Sorayya at BMG Art (5-27 September)
Datsun Tran’s Master of Transformation highlights the artist’s interpretation of Chinese folk tale legend, Wukong, in a series of works on paper. Tran sees parallels between Wukong, ‘Master of 72 Transformations’, and himself, who has seen himself grow and transform personally and professionally. Meanwhile, Sharifah Sorayya’s abstractions are featured in Permission to Pass. Every piece is an extended hand to the viewer, inviting them to engage with the colour, the shapes, the lines, the layers, and the textures – each a fragment of her journey, an echo of hope, loss, resilience, and rediscovery, having given herself permission to pass.
Open Tuesday to Friday 10.30am-5pm and Saturday 2-5pm.
Clara Adolphs Sleep Shadows and Drew Spangenberg Containers at Hugo Michell Gallery (until 20 September)
In this new body of paintings, Clara Adolphs turns inward, exploring the quiet threshold between memory and imagination. Working from photographs both found and taken, Adolphs isolates figures from their original contexts and places them in new, intimate compositions that speak to a silent conversation between artist and subject. Meanwhile, contemporary glass artist Drew Spangenberg celebrates the vessel as an object of aesthetic value, rather than for its utility.
Open Tuesday to Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday 11am-4pm.
70 years of Ruth Tuck Art School at Carclew (22 September to 10 October)
Over 70 years, South Australian creative institution Ruth Tuck Art School has welcomed thousands of children to its classes. But in all that time, one thing hasn’t changed – the school does not allow its young students to use pencils and erasers. ‘It means students are forced to embrace their mistakes,’ says Lucy Timbrell, who started attending Ruth Tuck Art School at eight years old and assisting with classes a teenager. She is now co-director of the school, as well as a printmaking artist.
Opening event 21 September 1pm; exhibition open Monday to Friday 9am-5pm.
Kyoko Hashimoto: Eight Million Deities (Yaoyorozu no Kami) at Art Gallery of South Australia (until 2 November)
Japanese-born South Australian artist and 2023 Guildhouse Fellow Kyoko Hashimoto presents an exhibition of her work titled Eight Million Deities (Yaoyorozu no Kami), as part of her Guildhouse Fellowship. The exhibition is the culmination of a year of intensive research by the artist during a pivotal time in her life. After a period of ill health in 2022, Hashimoto moved away from the hard metals of her practice as a contemporary jeweller. Instead, she used foraged plant materials transforming them into a range of paper mâché objects or collaged into intricately patterned necklaces or sculptures.
Opening night 5 September 5.30pm; exhibition open every day 10am-5pm.
Tasmania: free exhibitions
PHILOSOPHER’S RIDGE by Tony Weare at Soggy Brolly, Queenstown (5-26 September)
Watercolour artist Tony Weare takes viewers to the scarred yet beautiful ridgeline that links Mt Owen and Mt Lyell. It’s a place of bold rock formations, vivid mineral colours, and surprising regrowth. This new work captures the drama of the landscape and the lingering ghosts of its past.
Opening night 5 September 5-7pm; exhibition open Monday to Friday 9am-5pm.
Abstraction at Despard Gallery (17 September to 11 October)
The exhibition brings together a selection of artists, whose practice is guided by non-representational processes, intuition and gestural based expression. Each artist will showcase how their unique approach to art making utilises the language of abstraction through paint, including how a process led exploration of materials and techniques can produce surprising discoveries and new modes of self-expression.
Open Monday to Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday 10am-4pm.
Britt Fazey and Brigita Ozolins at Bett Gallery (26 September to 18 October)
Based on the South Arm peninsula in southern Lutruwita/Tasmania, emerging artist Britt Fazey is one of three sisters born to a sea loving mother and a seafaring father. In recent years Britt has brought her artistic focus from a successful background in object creation to the dedicated development of her painting practise. Meanwhile, Strength in Numbers by Brigita Ozolins is an exhibition of new work that celebrates the power and visual beauty of numbers.
Open Monday to Friday 10am-5.30pm and Saturday 10am-4pm.
Blossoms of Belonging at Top Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre (until 29 September)
Blossoms of Belonging is a personal and emotionally resonant exhibition by Hobart-based Ukrainian artist Anastasiia Ananieva. This collection of illustrated artworks explores the evolving sense of home, identity, and connection that has shaped her experience since moving from Ukraine to Tasmania in 2022.
Open Monday to Friday 9am-5pm.
Victoria: free exhibitions
Melbourne
Identity: Quiet Acts, Strong Voices at Satellite Projects (3 September to 31 October)
Oscar Wilde once said, ‘Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.’ For artists today, the idea of ‘being yourself’ can be a challenging and complex undertaking. This exhibition brings together three artists – Nani Puspasari, Ramak Bamzar and Bronwyn Kidd – whose image-making is a way to explore and express these layered connections, with each artist offering a distinct lens through which to see and understand the world.
Opening 3 September 3-5pm; exhibition open Monday to Friday 9am-4pm and Saturday 10am-12pm.
Deborah Paauwe The wayward girls at Museum of Australian Photography (13 September to 9 November)
Winner of the Wai Tang Commissioning Award, Deborah Paauwe, will present her latest series that exposes the intricate interplay between childhood, adolescence and adulthood through staged photographs. Paauwe’s oeuvre is characterised by an evocative use of textiles and fabric, which serve as both medium and metaphor, weaving narratives that resonate with subtle complexity and profound sensitivity.
Opening night 18 September 6.30-8.30pm; exhibition open Tuesday to Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday to Sunday 10am-4pm.
Ways Through Amanda Western at fortyfivedownstairs (16-27 September)
Drawing from both rural and urban settings, Ways Through features a series of linocut prints by Ballarat-based artist Amanda Western that trace the quiet power of overlooked spaces – laneways, tree lines, and landscapes in flux. Her first solo exhibition in Melbourne maps emotional and ecological pathways, asking how we find connection and renewal in the places we pass through.
Opening night 16 September 5-7pm; exhibition open Tuesday to Friday 12-7pm and Saturday 12-4pm.
Christopher Kerley and Sid Pattni at Flinders Lane Gallery (until 20 September)
A new series of quietly charged landscaped paintings by guest artist Christoper Kerley and layered canvases by 2024 FLG Emerging Artist Award winner Sid Pattni is now on view at Flinders Lane Gallery, inside Melbourne’s iconic Nicholas Building.
Open Tuesday to Friday 11am-5pm and Saturday 11am-5pm.
Regional Victoria
The Authentic Consequence: Forty years of John Baird at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (6 September to 16 November)
The first major survey of local artist John Baird, The Authentic Consequence features over 60 works spanning paintings, drawings, furniture and sculpture. Baird’s story is rich with artistic connections – from his formative role as studio assistant to Leonard French, to his early days with Roar Studios, to decades painting Mornington Peninsula seascapes and interiors. This deeply personal exhibition also reveals intimate works created after his 2017 heart transplant, reflecting on life, death and second chances.
Open Tuesday to Sunday 11am-4pm.
This Private World of Mind – Stewart MacInnes and Soft Geometry – Stephen Glover at Burrinja Gallery (6 September to 19 October)
Stewart MacInnes’ retrospective highlights an artistic force devoted to creating a vast and varied body of work. His creations would ‘paint themselves’, Stewart used to say. This exhibition showcases a diverse range of his paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and poetry. Meanwhile, Stephen Glover challenges the traditionally rigid symbolism of geometric form.
Opening event 7 September 2pm; exhibitions open Wednesday to Sunday 10am-4pm.
Georgia Banks Villain Edit at Platform Arts, Geelong (until 26 September)
For over 5 years, artist Georgia Banks has rigorously delved into the world of Reality TV and AI—exploring ideas of death, fame and legacy—to fearlessly provoke viewers into critically engaging with the ineffable ways these mediums shape and influence our identities, relationships and the zeitgeist of our nation. Villain Edit brings together Banks’ most significant works for the first time: A Four Letter Word (2020), Remains to be Seen (2021), and DataBaes (2022-23).
Open Monday to Friday 9.30am-4.30pm and Saturday 10am-3pm.
Healing: Art and Institutional Care at La Trobe Art Institute, Bendigo (until 9 November)
Healing: art and institutional care is a group exhibition of contemporary and historic artworks that takes as its starting point the contested space of institutional care. The exhibition draws from the Larundel Collection, and the unique Art Access Studio program led by artists at the former Larundel Mental Hospital (1953-1991), on what is now the grounds of La Trobe University (Bundoora Campus). Art Access Studio pioneered and challenged the ways in which art could be used therapeutically in psychiatric hospitals, shifting away from the artwork as a diagnostic tool, towards artmaking as an opportunity for self-directed healing.
Open Tuesday to Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday to Sunday 12-5pm.
New South Wales: free exhibitions
Sydney
New Romantics at nanda/hobbs (3-19 September)
NEW ROMANTICS urges viewers to look beyond the screen – beyond the rationality of algorithms that increasingly define the course of our lives. It is an invitation to reclaim what has been lost or overlooked in our relentless pursuit of an idealised digital utopia. Featuring artists Lottie Consalvo, Yoshio Honjo, Tim Maguire, Dee Smart, Brett Whiteley and more.
Opening event 6 September 2-4pm; exhibition open Monday to Friday 9am-5pm and Saturday 11am-4pm.
All That is Alive at UTS Gallery (16 September to 12 December)
Drawing on ancient kinships and ancestral knowledge, mycelial intelligence and fermentation, non-hierarchical and interspecies relations, machine desire and collective agency, All That is Alive brings together 12 Australian artists and collectives working with living systems. The artworks in the exhibition engage with the interconnected practices that sustain and define life – human and otherwise. A two-day symposium and a dedicated online program will be held in conjunction with the exhibition (16-18 September), offering insights into designing with biological processes, material kinships and more-than-human ecologies.
Opening night 16 September 6-7.30pm; exhibition open Monday to Friday 11am-4pm.
Natasha Walsh: The Window and Savannah Jarvis: The Sword Doesn’t Drop. at N.Smith Gallery (until 20 September)
Natasha Walsh: The Window presents her most ambitious series to date – intimate, luminous works that capture the stillness of time and the quiet tension between interior life and the world outside. Meanwhile, Savannah Jarvis: The sword doesn’t drop marks her debut exhibition with the gallery. Through suspended sculptures and evocative paintings, Jarvis transforms the language of chronic pain into a striking visual vocabulary that is both vulnerable and defiant.
Open Tuesday to Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday 10am-4pm.
The trace is not a presence… at Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney (until 14 September 2026)
Through the hands of five Australian artists from different Chinese diasporic communities, The trace is not a presence … highlights both the active process of making, and the experience of transcending the past towards a present that is not immediately identifiable and complete.
Open Monday to Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday to Sunday 12-4pm.
Sydney Contemporary art fair takes place from 11-14 September at Carriageworks; ticketed.
Regional New South Wales
Moving and Zoe Brand IT COULD GO EITHER WAY at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery (5 September to 8 November)
Moving brings together works by Australian artists exploring the dynamic intersection of water, performance and the moving image. The exhibition considers water as subject, medium and metaphor. It celebrates durational works that observe water’s capacity to carry emotion, hold memory and reflect lived experience. Meanwhile, Zoe Brand’s work explores the performative nature of jewellery as a device for communication.
Opening night 5 September 6pm; exhibition open Monday to Friday 9am-5pm and Saturday 12-4pm.
Bush Lines at Tamworth Regional Gallery (12 September to 30 November)
Drawing from the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Tamworth Regional Gallery, Bush Lines features paintings, sculpture, video and photography by artists whose creativity takes viewers on journeys from places all over the nation and beyond, including Gundagai to Broken Hill, the Central Desert and the Torres Strait Islands.It’s a reminder of the importance of regional and remote narratives.
Open Tuesday to Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday to Sunday 10am-4pm.
Sanctuary: 25 Years of Hazelhurst Arts Centre at Hazelhurst Arts Centre (until 14 September)
Varied and captivating, Sanctuary showcases 25 artists who represent the strength and diversity of Hazelhurst’s storied history. The artworks included, ranging from vibrant paintings to thought-provoking sculptures, demonstrate the Centre’s history of excellence and signal a diverse and engaging future for the exhibition program.
Open Monday to Sunday 10am-4pm.
Calleen Art Award 2025 at Cowra Regional Art Gallery (until 5 October)
The Calleen Art Award is an annual acquisitive painting prize and exhibition. The Award was established in 1977 as an acquisitive art prize by Mrs Patricia Fagan OAM to encourage originality, creativity and excellence in the visual arts, and is made possible by the generous support of the Calleen Trust.
Opening night 30 August 6-8pm; exhibition open Tuesday to Saturday 10am-4pm and Sunday 10am-2pm.
2025 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize at Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre (until 11 October)
The Australian Photographic Society’s Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize is a national $30,000 acquisitive prize that seeks to find Australia’s best conceptual photographic works. Finalists of the prize are exhibited annually at Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre with the prize-winning work joining the Muswellbrook Shire Art Collection, and a collection of contemporary photographic works acquired through the Muswellbrook Photographic Award (1987 – 2014).
Open Monday to Saturday 10am-4pm.
