Sydney's private gallery sector has, over the past decade, grown considerably in confidence and international ambition. While the city's publicly funded institutions — the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), continue to set the broader cultural tone, it is the commercial and independent spaces that drive much of the day-to-day activity in the primary market, shape emerging artistic careers, and sustain Sydney's relationship with the global art fair circuit. What follows is a considered overview of the key players, their programs, and relevant 2026 exhibition activity.
The Established Commercial Galleries
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
Founded in March 1982 by Roslyn Oxley and her husband Tony Oxley, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery is among the longest-standing and most internationally active commercial spaces in Australia. The gallery opened its first exhibition at Macdonald Street, Paddington, before relocating in 1990 to its current premises at Soudan Lane, Paddington — a location that has become one of the more distinctive addresses in Australian contemporary art. The gallery represents over 40 artists and artist estates, including Tracey Moffatt, Bill Henson, Fiona Hall, Patricia Piccinini, Dale Frank, Daniel Boyd, David Noonan, Kaylene Whiskey, and the estates of Rosalie Gascoigne and Bronwyn Oliver.
Over more than four decades, Roslyn Oxley9 has appeared at Art Basel, Art Cologne, Art Basel Hong Kong, The Armory Show, Frieze New York, Art Forum Berlin, and ARCO, making it one of the most globally visible Australian commercial galleries. Thirteen gallery artists have represented their respective countries at the Venice Biennale, and four have been included in documenta. In 2024, to mark its fortieth anniversary, the gallery published Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery: The First 40 Years, written and edited by Felicity Fenner and published by Formist Editions.
Recent exhibitions have included solo presentations by Bill Henson, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Dhambit Mununggurr, James Angus, Hilarie Mais, and Mia Boe. The gallery is open Tuesday to Friday 10am–6pm and Saturday 11am–6pm.
Works currently listed through the gallery on the secondary market include Jim Lambie's May 1993, Petrichor Rising (2025), a resin and mixed media work, and Del Kathryn Barton's to cool my core (2025), an acrylic and oil work on French linen. Both are available upon request for pricing.
8 Soudan Lane, Paddington NSW 2021 https://www.roslynoxley9.com.au
Martin Browne Contemporary
Martin Browne Contemporary was established in 1991 by Martin Browne, formerly Head of the Australian Art Department at Sotheby's Australia. The gallery operates from two light-filled spaces at 15 Hampden Street in the Paddington Arts Precinct and is dedicated to showing Australian and international modern and contemporary works, combining a program of new work with selected secondary market presentations. The gallery also maintains a comprehensive publications program and a mailing database that reaches major public museums and private institutions across Australia and New Zealand, as well as a significant number of private collectors internationally.
Recent works available through the gallery include Sam Michelle's Wisteria (2025), oil on canvas (29 x 25 cm), and Ebony Russell's Polychrome loopy urn with rainbow arches (2025), a porcelain and stain sculpture. Charlotte Le Brocque's Come closer my dear (2023), a ceramic work with glaze and enamel, is also listed as available. The gallery's Summer Group Exhibition ran from 4 December through 31 January.
The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10:30am to 6:00pm.
15 Hampden Street, Paddington NSW 2021 https://www.martinbrownecontemporary.com
Sullivan+Strumpf
Founded in 2005 by co-directors Ursula Sullivan and Joanna Strumpf, Sullivan+Strumpf is one of the region's more substantial commercial operations, with spaces in Sydney, Melbourne (opened 2022), and Singapore. The Sydney gallery is located in Zetland. The gallery represents over 45 artists and estates across its three locations and presents more than 30 exhibitions annually, alongside a bi-monthly magazine, public talks, and advisory services to public and private collections globally.
The gallery's stable includes Lindy Lee, Sam Jinks, Alex Seton, Yvette Coppersmith, Dawn Ng, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Glenn Barkley, Julia Gutman, Angela Tiatia, Jemima Wyman, Lynda Draper, and Marrnyula Munuŋgurr, among many others. Sullivan+Strumpf participates regularly in major international fairs including Frieze, Art Basel Hong Kong, and Melbourne Art Fair. The gallery has a record of advisory work with major institutional clients and is regarded as one of the more rigorous commercial voices in the region on matters of Southeast Asian and Australian contemporary practice.
799 Elizabeth Street, Zetland NSW 2017 https://www.sullivanstrumpf.com
1301SW
1301SW was founded in 2022 in Melbourne's inner south and expanded to Sydney in late 2024, opening a second gallery space in Gadigal/Sydney. The gallery's director, Jack Willet, has described the expansion as underpinned by a collaborative working model that allows for an ambitious program across two cities. The Sydney space adds to a growing set of Melbourne-origin galleries establishing footholds in Sydney's commercial market.
The gallery represents a number of painters whose work operates across figuration and abstraction, including Adrian Hobbs, whose new works Hello Earth (2026) and The Red Shoes (2026) are among the recent listings available through the gallery. Hobbs's Deep Deposits (2024) is also listed. All are available upon request for pricing.
STATION
STATION is a Sydney-originated gallery with a program focused on Australian contemporary practice. The gallery has established a strong record at Sydney Contemporary and has participated at Melbourne Art Fair and other regional events. Recent Sydney programming has included Adam Lee's solo exhibition I am the Hermit, You Are the Cave / You Are the Wind, I am the Song, which ran at the gallery's Sydney space from 22 November through 20 December 2025.
https://www.stationgallery.com.au
Notable Independent and Experimental Spaces
COMA Gallery
COMA was founded in late 2016 by Sotiris Sotiriou as a project-based contemporary art space with an explicit ambition to introduce international artists — many of them previously unseen in Australia — to Australian and Asia-Pacific audiences. Beginning in 2022, COMA began operating a formal artist representation model alongside an advisory service for private and public collections.
In January 2025, the gallery opened a flagship space in Marrickville's Inner West, transforming a former coffee manufacturing warehouse on Chapel Street into a 490-square-metre gallery with exhibition areas, private viewing rooms, on-site storage, and a merchandise space. The Marrickville location has quickly become one of the more discussed gallery spaces in Sydney, partly for its scale and partly for the ambition of its international programming. The gallery also previously operated a second space at Chippendale's Abercrombie Street site, long established as an arts venue.
COMA's artist roster includes Justin Williams, Renée Estée, Nick Modrzewski, Mia Middleton, Kansas Smeaton, Kieren Karritpul, and Puuni Brown Nungarrayi. The gallery regularly hosts moderated talks, walk-throughs, readings, and private artist meetings. An inaugural solo exhibition at the Marrickville space, Justin Williams' Waiting for Lavender, addressed themes of migration, belonging, and the search for home.
37 Chapel Street, Marrickville NSW 2204 https://www.comagallery.com
Cement Fondu
Cement Fondu is an independent arts space in Paddington, co-founded and directed by Megan Monte and Josephine Skinner, that has operated since March 2018. The space takes an unusually broad view of what constitutes an exhibition program, regularly incorporating live performance, dance, music, film, and workshops alongside more conventional visual arts presentations. The gallery occupies the former premises of STILLS, a well-regarded photography gallery, at Gosbell Street, Paddington.
Cement Fondu does not represent artists in the traditional commercial sense but instead functions as a platform for experimental and non-traditional art-making. It includes a Project Space that supports artist residencies and collaborative programming, and it has maintained a particular commitment to artists with specific needs through partnerships such as with Studio A. The gallery's program is directed by Josephine Skinner, whose curatorial background spans biennales, public programs, and gallery contexts.
36 Gosbell Street, Paddington NSW 2021 https://www.cementfondu.org
Privately Held Collections Open to the Public
White Rabbit Gallery
White Rabbit Gallery occupies a category distinct from the commercial gallery model but is relevant to any professional survey of Sydney's private art landscape. Founded in 2009 by Judith Neilson through the Neilson Foundation family charitable trust, the gallery is housed in a former Rolls-Royce service depot in Chippendale and holds what is considered one of the world's largest privately assembled collections of Chinese contemporary art, with a strict focus on works produced after 2000.
The gallery presents two exhibitions per year, with free admission, and includes a four-storey exhibition space, theatrette, library, and the White Rabbit Tea House. The current exhibition, The Hooligans, runs from 19 December 2025 through 17 May 2026. It draws on the Mao-era Chinese legal category of "hooliganism" — used historically to police dissent, sexuality, and social nonconformity — and presents work by artists who engaged with resistance and defiance under systems of political control. The exhibition is open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm.
30 Balfour Street, Chippendale NSW 2008 https://www.whiterabbitcollection.org
Rochfort Gallery
Rochfort Gallery in North Sydney returned to by-appointment-only visits from 26 October 2025 following a private period, with public exhibitions scheduled to resume in March 2026.
https://www.rochfortgallery.com
The Fair and Biennale Context
Sydney's private galleries operate within a calendar shaped significantly by Sydney Contemporary, which is Australasia's largest international art fair, held annually at Carriageworks, the multi-arts cultural precinct at the former Eveleigh Railway Workshops in Redfern. Founded in 2013 by Tim Etchells and moving to an annual cycle from 2017, the fair brings together Australian and international galleries and is a key commercial and networking event for the sector.
The 25th Biennale of Sydney, titled Rememory, runs from 14 March to 14 June 2026, presented free across five major venues: White Bay Power Station, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Campbelltown Arts Centre, the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney, and Penrith Regional Gallery. Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, the exhibition brings together 83 artists and collectives from 37 countries, with particular attention to First Nations and diasporic perspectives. Several commercial galleries — including Ames Yavuz and others in the sector — have aligned exhibition programming with the Biennale. Abdul Abdullah's Soft Power at Ames Yavuz is a direct example of this synchronisation between commercial program and public festival.
The Archibald Prize, Australia's most publicly visible portrait prize, is expected to return to the AGNSW in 2026, as it does annually (typically September through January), with a national tour following the close of the Sydney showing.
Melbourne Art Fair, which remains a key event for Sydney-based galleries operating across both cities, is scheduled for 19–22 February 2026 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
General Observations
The Paddington and Woollahra precincts remain the traditional centre of gravity for Sydney's established commercial galleries, with Martin Browne Contemporary, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, and Cement Fondu all located there. The Inner West — particularly Marrickville and Chippendale — has emerged in recent years as an alternative cluster, with COMA's Marrickville expansion the most visible recent development in that direction.
Sydney's commercial galleries continue to build international connections through art fair participation, with the Asia-Pacific circuit — particularly Art Basel Hong Kong, Frieze, and various Singapore fairs — being the primary vector for international reach. The presence of Ames Yavuz and Sullivan+Strumpf, both of which operate meaningfully in Singapore, reflects a broader strategic orientation toward Southeast Asian collecting markets.
For professionals visiting Sydney, the Paddington Arts Precinct (walking distance between Roslyn Oxley9, Martin Browne Contemporary, and Cement Fondu) remains the most concentrated gallery destination, while COMA in Marrickville and White Rabbit in Chippendale reward the additional travel.
All gallery details were current at the time of writing, February 2026. Professionals are advised to confirm opening hours and exhibition dates directly with individual galleries before visiting.