By Helen Musa

From its inception in 2017 under the name Contour556, named for the height above sea level of Lake Burley Griffin, the Canberra Art Biennial has been driven by place. 

Originally conceived by landscape architects Neil Hobbs and Karina Harris, it brought artists into direct conversation with the National Capital’s landscape, commissioning site-specific works that have drawn on sculpture, architecture, horticulture, recycling and contemporary art.

Now in its sixth edition, the biennial has expanded far beyond its original lakeside focus. From September 11 to October 31, more than 50 Australian and international artists will present work across 20 venues and public spaces, many responding to Canberra’s gardens, lakes, buildings and pathways in a city that was itself designed as a landscape.

Among the most intriguing locations this year is the Botanic Gardens, where Canberra artist Jac Bradley and Sydney artist Anna May Kirk have each developed new projects after extensive collaboration with gardens staff, researchers and each other.

Bradley says neither artist arrived with a fully formed concept. Instead, they spent days exploring the gardens before developing their proposals. For Bradley, whose childhood memories include visits to the rainforest gully, the experience became a deeply personal investigation of place and memory.

A natural magpie, she collected things with her two-year-old son Rory as they walked around the gardens, ending up with a wildly eclectic assortment of found objects including an old face washer, a Jatz cracker, sticks, stones and a cupcake.

After discussions with gardens’ staff, Bradley cast the objects in bronze at Nick Shrank’s foundry in Carwoola and incorporated them into two separate sculptural benches.

Of the two, the curved bench, built with the assistance of her father Kevin Bradley at Thor’s Hammer in Fyshwick, fits precisely into a wall in the rainforest gully, embedding traces of the landscape and its visitors into the work itself.

“People won’t sit on the objects,” Bradley says. “They’ll sit alongside them.”

Alas, these artworks will not stay there forever. Just like the megafauna installed recently, they’ll move on. 

Kirk’s project also draws inspiration from the Botanic Gardens, but from a scientific perspective. Installed in the Banksia Garden, her large seed-like sculptural forms explore seed preservation and climate resilience through a collaboration with the Botanic Gardens and the National Seed Bank, and with public art company Urban Art Projects.

The resulting large-scale bronze and aluminium sculptures are modelled on native millet seeds. Some of the sculptures are waist-high and to Kirk, there’s a nice irony in the fact that although bronze is associated with permanency, “it is a living metal”.

Plants selected by garden staff will be placed inside the works and installed in the garden.

Kirk likes to work with recycled materials such as waste glass and plastic, but in this instance she has chosen bronze, which though it has a reputation for permanence, is to her a living material.

The sculptures relate to Kirk’s participation in a seed deposit at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the Arctic during 2025 under the Christine and Stephen Procter Fellowship through the ANU School of Art & Design. 

While the Botanic Gardens projects highlight the Biennial’s engagement with landscape and science, the festival spreads across the city in unexpected ways. 

Opening weekend will see Canberra’s first art fair at the Hyatt Hotel Canberra, ARI BANAL(E), bringing together Artist Run Initiatives (ARI) from six independent galleries from Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne.

Other highlights include Takeaway: Tales from the Flavour Superhighway at Canberra Contemporary; a major new installation by Golden Lion winner Archie Moore at Reconciliation Place; Mia Boe’s glass commission The Aboriginal Robot; Jason Phu’s Dreams of a cicada, waking in the summer heat at ANCA Gallery; and The Landscapes of Andrew Sayers at Barton ArtBox.

The Canberra Art Biennial, September 11-October 31. Entry is free. Information at canberraartbiennial.com

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