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Wednesday 11am - 8pm Thursday 11am - 5pm Friday 11am - 5pm Saturday 11am - 5pm

Firstdraft

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Firstdraft

Where the future of contemporary art emerges. Firstdraft is located in the heart of Sydney and is Australia’s
longest running Artist-Run-Initiative.

Firstdraft has been
facilitating the development and exhibition of experimental artistic practice since 1986.

01/09/2026

This Friday, the 4th of September, we’re celebrating the opening of ‘Riverscope’— a solo exhibition from Kuweni Dias Mendis ().

Guided by conversations with research participants, Riverscope follows three interconnected threads: Dugulumba (Logan River), sovereignty and homelessness.

Riverscope is an offering of slow, relational art. It is an ode to those who walk with dignity despite remaining unseen, and a gesture towards a future shaped by radical care.

The artist extends her heartfelt thanks to Manunjali Elder Aunty Lavinia Page and ceramic artist Kavitha Gobinathan for their generous contributions to this project.

Kuweni Dias Mendis is a Sri Lankan-born, Australian-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans movement, sound, film, installation, mark-making, and sculptural ritual objects. Through immersive and participatory works, she cultivates ecologies of relationship between body, land, memory, community, and the more-than-human world.

Her practice investigates ritual as a relational practice through which these relationships are cultivated and belonging becomes an embodied experience rather than an abstract idea. Through contemporary art, she preserves, honours, transmits, reimagines, and reclaims living, vanishing, and lost intangible cultural heritage.

As a migrant woman of colour living and working on unceded lands, she works with communities to amplify marginalised voices while creating spaces for collective remembrance, reciprocity, and regeneration.

Portrait of the artist courtesy Lizzie Walker.

27/08/2026

Join us on Friday, the 4th of September, to celebrate the opening of ‘Hard Drive Soft Core / Wetware Utopias’— a solo exhibition from the performance and interdisciplinary artist Amit German (.baby).

Hard Drive Soft Core / Wetware Utopias slips between flesh and machine, following the trans body through glitches, feedback loops and unruly technologies. Using video synthesis, sound, performance and installation, the exhibition explores q***r and neurodivergent ways of learning, desiring and becoming. What strange knowledges emerge in refusing to function “correctly”?

Amit German (they/she) is a neurodivergent interdisciplinary artist working across video, performance, installation and experimental technologies. Their practice follows slippery bodies through circuits, glitches, feedback loops, DIY electronics, video synthesis and obsolete media, where trans becoming, desire and memory are repeatedly copied, corrupted and reassembled. Their work is driven by an interest in q***r pedagogies, technologies that leak, bodies that refuse categorisation and optimisation, and creative processes developed through curiosity, collaboration and running without instructions.

Working largely outside formal technical training, Amit approaches technology as something to learn with rather than master. They build custom systems, modify found objects and treat mistakes as collaborators, drawing as much from reverse engineering as artistic research. Their practice is shaped by movement approaches including Butoh and Body Weather, alongside experience in disability and trans community care and formal training in linguistics, psychology and speech pathology.

Recent projects include a residency and performance at PACT Centre for Emerging Artists (2026) and ritual-based performance work developed through Performance Space's Q***r Development Program and presented at Q***r Nu Werk (2023). Their writing has also been published in un Magazine (Issue 20.1, 2026)

26/08/2026

Join us on Friday, the 4th of September, to celebrate the opening of Andrea Illés’ and Grace Marlow’s ‘butterflies 88’. Register at the link in our bio. ⁠
⁠
ur headlights lick my limbs and pupils wide i will gy-rate for u 5 stars think u might run me down but maybe u just Watch and stare a while cause when those panels finally wrap around me i bend on my will⁠
Try kiss me up again⁠
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The artists will be performing on the opening evening— be sure not to miss it! Please be advised the performance will include nudity and loud noises. ⁠
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Andrea Illés () is a performance artist working with movement, sound, installation, duration, and images with a focus on repetition and transformation through the logic of the feedback loop. Favouring atmospheres of awe and overwhelm, her hyper-personal and collaborative works explore sisterhood, love, surveillance, fetishisation, and cruelty and have been presented in varying contexts such as West Space, Dark M**o, Soft Centre, Miscellania, The Lab, Blindside, Te Uru, and Mona. Her print works have been published in e-flux and Texte zur Kunst.⁠
⁠
Grace Marlow (.disgrace____) works across performance and installation. He is concerned with power and authority with a focus on silencing as a force for control and subjugation. The work is often engaged with the structures that disempower minority subjects; through order and disorder, materialisation and dematerialisation, he draws on practices of vocalisation, representation, and improvisation. Grace has exhibited and performed in numerous contexts including Ancient World, Sauerbier House, Sister Gallery, fine print Magazine, FELTspace, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, The Lab , Format, Vitalstatistix and Sawtooth.

19/08/2026

We’re still working through your applications and we’re happy (but certainly not surprised) to say that the quality of work is phenomenal this year.

While you wait for us to finish assessing your application, why not send the application over to some of our friends as well?

A few of the callouts that are open right now:

Photo Access () - 30 August
Woollahra Gallery () - 6 September
KINGS Artist Run () - 6 September
Blindside - () 13 September
Outer Space (.brisbane)- 25 September

City of Sydney Artist Support Grants () - 1 September
NSW Visual Arts Fellowship () - 14 September

18/08/2026

It's the last week to see this round of exhibitions!

Don't miss exhibitions of new work from DEF collective, Minh-An Pham, Nina Apolonia Dorabialski, and Richard Trang;

And be sure to catch our last two micro-commissioned works from Kyla Bosque and Bonnie Huang.

Open tomorrow 11-8 and then through Saturday 11-5.

See you soon!

All images courtesy Jessica Maurer.

13/08/2026

The bathroom has been looking a little different recently…

Come check out Bonnie Huang’s () ‘Thirst Trap’ during this current round of exhibitions, open until the 22nd of August, as part of our Micro-commission program.

‘Thirst Trap’ imagines the public bathroom as a space where architecture performs the work of the body, and the body is disciplined into architecture– both extending from and collapsing into one another.

Open 11-8 on Wednesdays and 11-5 Thursday-Saturday.

Images courtesy Jessica Maurer.

12/08/2026

Join us this week to see Richard Trang’s () ‘You wouldn't remember him (2026)’, a solo presentation of work .

‘You wouldn't remember him (2026)’ considers the family album and its role in portraying a nuclear family. Though never physically present nor its contents, it is referenced through a series of like imagery. How might this exchange destabilise narratives perpetuated in family albums?

The exhibition continues until August 22, 11-8 on Wednesdays and 11-5, Thursday through Saturday.

Richard Trang, ‘(Un)familiar Photos’, 2024. Mixed media, installation, voile sublimation prints. Dimensions variable.

Images 1-3 courtesy the artist; Image 4 courtesy Jessica Maurer.

07/08/2026

Kyla Bosque’s ‘Wetland’ has been bringing the atmosphere to the Firstdraft courtyard as part of our Microcommissions program.

‘Wetland’ considers humidity and wetness as both a climatic condition and a form of infrastructure. Through a constructed wetland composed of native plants, water, fog, and salvaged building materials, the installation produces its own atmosphere—one that exists somewhere between the artificial and the organic.

Come hang out and enjoy as part of our current round of exhibitions— open through August 22!

All images courtesy Jessica Maurer.

06/08/2026

Nina Apolonia Dorabialski’s ‘Dear Babcia, Poo Wee Neigh’, a solo exhibition , continues through August 22. Don’t miss out! this Friday, the 17th of July, from 6—8 pm.

After seven years in Berlin, the artist returns to Sydney at thirty-one, suspended in a teenage time warp—caught between political awakening, immigrant dislocation, and the sacred and profane rituals of survival.

Through large-scale felt paintings and participatory ritual, she interrogates abjection, shame, and the alchemy of disgust.

The "horse girl" archetype—often dismissed as a symbol of escapism—becomes a vessel for examining neurodivergence, arrested development, and the immigrant's fractured sense of home.

Can the horse girl be reimagined not as a figure of escape, but as one who confronts reality's terrifying flux—bridging disgust and transcendence?

The exhibition continues until August 22, 11-8 on Wednesdays and 11-5, Thursday through Saturday.

1 and 2. ‘Dear Babcia, Poo Wee Neigh’, installation view.
3. Każik And The Brick, 185x226cm, Acrylic and marker on felt. N.D.
4. ‘Dear Babcia, Poo Wee Neigh’, installation view.

All images courtesy Jessica Maurer.

05/08/2026

Don’t miss your chance to see ‘Gửi mẹ (To my mother)’, Minh-An Pham’s solo exhibition at Firstdraft.

‘Gửi mẹ (To My Mother)’ emerges from a larger body of work reflecting on childhood and family history, where loss has occurred and will continue to occur in the future. The exhibition is an expression of the artist’s love and gratitude toward his mother, who has always loved and cared for him.

The exhibition continues until August 22, 11-8 on Wednesdays and 11-5, Thursday through Saturday.

1 and 2. Gửi mẹ (To my mother), installation view.
3. Detail from ‘Con ngựa con gửi con ngựa cha - Dear Father Horse’, single-channel video, 2025.
4. Detail from ‘Someday I will lose you’, photographic series, 2023-ongoing.

All images courtesy Jessica Maurer.

Address

13–17 Riley Street
Sydney, NSW
2011

Opening Hours

Wednesday	11am - 8pm
Thursday	11am - 5pm
Friday	11am - 5pm
Saturday	11am - 5pm

Website

http://firstdraft.org.au/

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