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Firstdraft is where the future of contemporary art emerges, through a program that is critical, ambitious and experimental.
current exhibitions
Using remnants of the world that her Mum, Aunties, and Nan lived in, Jasmine Miikika Craciun celebrates the love, life and strength they embody. Like the beautiful coloured glass and crockery that has stood the test of time on the sandy flats of Wilcannia long after the humpies have gone, the matriarchs of her lineage do the same.
still waters run deep brings together the work of five artists who live or have lived on Wilyakali and Barkindji / Barkandji Country in Far West NSW: Barbara Quayle, Blake Griffiths, Dan Schulz, Tannya Quayle, and Verity Nunan.
un/conscious is a large-scale artwork that features a collection of sixteen brightly coloured tactile canvases, creating a kaleidoscopic wall of colour. The textiles featured are recycled offcuts of vintage towels from Re/lax Remade, a sustainably focused, Sydney-based fashion label.
There is a red chair that once existed in an adoption agency in Seoul between 1983-1989 that was sat on by every adoptee for their 'first photo'. This year, 36 years after the artist’s ‘red chair photo’ was taken, she contacted the agency to enquire about this red chair and if it might still be there. The social worker’s only response––‘The red chair in your picture does not exist’. In the potent slippage of translation, correspondence and negation, this exhibition is a performative affirmation that, ‘yes, it does!’
news
The team at Firstdraft are delighted to announce Firstdraft’s new Chair Augusta Supple and Treasurer Dominic Kavanagh.
We are thrilled to announce the appointment of Caity Reynolds as Firstdraft's new General Manager.
Firstdraft is now seeking proposals from artists, curators and writers for consideration in our 2023–24 Program. We invite ideas that champion experimentation, risk and inclusion.
interviews
“These spaces of imaginative and creative wildness are rare in a world that wants to compartmentalise and control all forms of cultural production.”
“We all have our own experiences of moving toward or away from connection, and for me, part of navigating these experiences necessarily involves a questioning of where I begin and end, what or who I consist of, and how the impacts of mutuality and difference influence how I move through the world.”
“I’m working mostly within the scope of documentary and experimental eco-cinema practices, utilising the principles of slow cinema and cinéma vérité.”
“The sun's pervasive presence allows it to be the subject, whether direct or not, for a lot of artistic practices and creative investigations.”
The Firstdraft Census is Firstdraft’s annual stakeholder survey for 2024. Firstdraft is growing and we want to hear from you during this period of change.