The Art Gallery of South Australia has announced the twenty-four participating artists in the 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Yield Strength.
“As the country’s longest-running survey of contemporary Australian art, the Adelaide Biennial has continuously expanded its audience, garnered national and international attention, and offered a dynamic platform for artists during its 30-year history,” said AGSA Director, Jason Smith.
“The 2026 Adelaide Biennial will feature compelling new works that engage visitors with the materiality of artmaking, offering a captivating and thought-provoking Biennial that underscores the wonder of the ‘real’ in an increasingly virtual world.”
Curated by Ellie Buttrose, Yield Strength will be presented from 27 February to 8 June 2026 as part of the 2026 Adelaide Festival, and feature new works by artists from across the nation:
Robert Andrew, Nathan Beard, Lauren Burrow, Francis Carmody, Mark Maurangi Carrol, Milminyina Dhamarrandji, Matthew Teapot Djipurrtjun, George Egerton-Warburton, Prudence Flint, Brian Fuata, d harding, Matthew Harris, Helen Johnson, Kirtika Kain, Jennifer Mathews, Archie Moore, Josina Pumani, Julie Nangala Robertson, Erika Scott, Joel Sherwood Spring, Charlie Sofo, John Spiteri, Isadora Vaughan and Emmaline Zanelli.
Yield Strength will reveal how materials, selfhood and society are tested – and transformed – under pressure. Twenty-four artists will push the boundaries of their mediums to build visual complexity, or contort them to convey the curious side of existence.
Remaining attentive to aesthetic details and receptive to the intricacies of life, the exhibition will foster intimacy through layered viewing experiences across the Art Gallery of South Australia as well as partner venues Samstag Museum of Art and Adelaide Botanic Garden.
“The 2026 Adelaide Biennial foregrounds how bodily experience and intellectual wonder are intimately entwined in the experience of art. Yield Strength reflects the diversity of artistic practice across the continent, from finely layered paintings to delicately stratified sculptures and entangled relations compiled in videos,” said curator Ellie Buttrose.
“Their depictions range from intimate bonds between family to human-animal connections, and more complex, dynamic relations between people and the world they inhabit, to propose new ways of being. Artists in the exhibition seek to capture how these connections, regardless of scale, have the power to transform the self,” said Buttrose.
The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art remains the pre-eminent and longest-standing survey of contemporary Australian art. As a vital component of the Adelaide Festival since 1990, the 2026 Adelaide Biennial builds on its reputation and commitment to supporting and celebrating innovative and ambitious practices.
Each Biennial responds to a different theme or premise and features new and commissioned works by leading contemporary practitioners nationwide. It has created career defining opportunities for close to 500 artists and has been experienced by more than 1.8 million visitors.
The 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Yield Strength will be presented from 27 February to 8 June. For more information, visit:
Images: Brian Fuata, born Aotearoa New Zealand 1978, Errantucation (mist opportunities), 2021 / Performance improvisations commissioned for ‘The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT10). QAGOMA, Brisbane, 2021. © the artist courtesy of artist and Sumer; photo: C Callistemon, QAGOMA | Kirtika Kain, The illusion of your history, 2023, gold, gold leaf, wax, cotton wicks, human hair, wire, plastic, cow dung, chunni fabric, cotton, Rangoli pigment, Holi pigment, plasticine, coconut broom grass, acrylic paint, grains, copper leaf, coir rope, leather, wire, card- board, plaster, impasto, black lotus seeds, sindoor, turmeric, tar, 300.0 x 1000.0 cm; courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; photo: Hamish McIntosh