Founded by a group of galleries in 1988, the Melbourne Art Fair will depart from its biennial model with the fair returning in 2024, and running annually from then on.
Melbourne Art Foundation CEO and Fair Director Maree Di Pasquale said in a media release, ‘Melbourne Art Fair continues to hold an essential role in growing the Australian art market, representing the most comprehensive and considered overview of the region’s thriving contemporary art scene for 35 years.
‘The now annual fair remains an exceptional showcase of the region’s most significant galleries and, since 2022, Indigenous-owned art centres, as a progressive forum for contemporary art and ideas. We look forward to welcoming collectors, industry and the art loving public to the 17th edition of Melbourne Art Fair as the cultural event of the Australian summer and the official launch of the annual arts calendar.’
The 2024 Fair will return to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from 22-25 February with 60 art galleries and Indigenous art centres participating. The 2024 theme is ‘ketherba’, a word of the Boon Wurrung expressing togetherness and embracing difference to give cause for hope.
Participating galleries in the 2024 Melbourne Art Fair include: 1301SW/Starkwhite, Alcaston Gallery, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Art Collective WA, Arthouse Gallery, Arts Projects Australia, Blackartprojects, CHALKHORSE, cbOne, Charles Nodrum Gallery, Daine Singer, Darren Knight Gallery, Despard Gallery, Fox Jensen, GAGPROJECTS, GALLERY 9, Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Jacob Hoerner Galleries, James Makin Gallery, Jan Murphy Gallery, Kalli Rolfe Contemporary Art, MARS Gallery, Martin Browne Contemporary, MOORE CONTEMPORARY, Nanda\Hobbs, Neon Parc, Niagara Galleries, Nicholas Thompson Gallery, OLSEN Gallery, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sophie Gannon Gallery, STATION, Sullivan+Strumpf, Sutton Gallery, The Commercial , Tolarno Galleries, Vermilion Art, Vivien Anderson Gallery, Wagner Contemporary, William Mora Galleries and Yavuz Gallery.
The Fair also presents 11 young galleries established after 2016 with spaces subsidised by the Melbourne Art Foundation. Galleries include: COMA, day01., Five Walls, FUTURES, Haydens, LON Gallery, N.Smith Gallery, Nasha Gallery, ReadingRoom, The Renshaws’ and Void_Melbourne.
Four Indigenous art centres are supported through the William Mora Indigenous Art Centre program in 2024, including Moa Arts (Mua, Mualgal Country/Moa Island), Munupi Arts & Crafts Association, (Pirlangimpi Community/Melville Island), Papunya Tjupi Arts (Papunya) and Wik & Kugu Arts Centre (Aurukun).
In conjunction with the gallery announcement, Julie Rrap has been awarded the Melbourne Art Foundation 2024 Commission. Represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Rrap is a highly established Australian female artist with over three decades of practice in a range of mediums. Her works often involve the artist’s own nude body, and go to challenge and subvert the definition of women and their image.
Rrap said in the media release: ‘SOMOS (Standing On My Own Shoulders) is a bronze life-size sculptural work that is a dynamic composition in which both casts of my body are caught in a moment of action as one figure appears to support the other on its shoulders. While SOMOS echoes the “heroic” tradition of bronze figurative sculpture, it subverts that history by representing an older female body traditionally rendered invisible.
‘This work strongly consolidates many of the concerns that have preoccupied me in my practice over the last 40 years and to have the opportunity to create SOMOS as a major work for this commission and the Art Gallery of Western Australia is a career highlight and one which will create an incredibly important conversation,’ Rrap added.
Commissioned in partnership with the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) and supported by Artwork Transport and Creative Australia, the major sculptural work will be unveiled at the Fair before moving to its permanent home in the AGWA collection.
The broader artistic programming of the Fair include four pillars, VIDEO, BEYOND, LIVE and PROJECT ROOMS. VIDEO is curated by Tamsin Hong, Exhibition Curator at Serpentine, London, while BEYOND will present four large-scale installations curated by Shelley McSpedden, Senior Curator, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA). LIVE is presented by Glenfiddich with a series of on-site performances curated by Anador Walsh, Director, Performance Review, while PROJECT ROOMS is a non-commercial platform for experimentation from Gertrude Contemporary and Firstdraft, presented by clothing brand Alpha60.
More details will be revealed for CONVERSATIONS, the Fair’s talks program, alongside the full 2024 program in January.
MAF Virtual will run in parallel with the fair with an expanded online program from 22 February to 8 March 2024.
