Emerging Galleries, Ambitious Practices: Spotlight on Melbourne Art Fair 2026
Melbourne Art Fair 2026 continues to position itself as more than a commercial platform. Increasingly, the fair has become a site for testing ideas, advancing critical conversations, and supporting artists at pivotal moments in their careers. We take a look at a collection of emerging and newly established galleries that demonstrate how thoughtful gallery practice can shape sustainable trajectories for artists while expanding the cultural stakes of the fair itself.
Image credit: Co-directors Viktor Kravchenko and James Stevens of Nasha Gallery. Photo: Simone Griffin
Nasha Gallery
For Nasha Gallery, Melbourne Art Fair is an extension of the gallery’s broader commitment to practices that are both intellectually rigorous and emotionally charged. Co-directors Viktor Kravchenko and James Stevens approach their work with clarity and conviction. Guided. Y their interest “in work that engages with contemporary life in a nuanced way, practices that are visually compelling but also intellectually and socially alert.”
Their MAF 2026 presentation takes the form of a solo booth by James Little, following his recent exhibition DRINK BLEACH at Nasha’s Haymarket space. Little’s work interrogates masculinity, vulnerability, and identity through internet culture, hobbyist communities, and pop-culture symbolism. For the fair, he leans further into these references, expanding his material language to include 3D printing, metal fabrication, watercolour, and drawing. The resulting works trace a tension between aggression and tenderness.
Nasha sees its role as building long-term, sustainable careers rather than chasing fleeting visibility. “For emerging artists, especially, we prioritise thoughtful presentation and context, helping their work be taken seriously by collectors, curators, and peers alike.” This philosophy extends to how they balance emerging and established artists. Career stage, they argue, matters less than clarity of vision. Emerging artists bring urgency and risk, while established artists offer continuity and depth. Both deserve the same level of professional care.
Little’s work is “deliberately intimate,” inviting viewers to slow down and sit with ambiguity. In an increasingly frantic media environment, the gallery positions its fair presentation as a counterpoint, one that asks audiences to reflect on how cultural ideals of masculinity are formed, inherited, and quietly internalised.
Image credit: Portrait of Tania Doropoulos & Matt Glenn. Photo: Josh Raymond Courtesy of PALAS, Sydney
PALAS
Founded by Tania Doropoulos and Matt Glenn, PALAS approaches Melbourne Art Fair as a site of exchange rather than a standalone commercial moment. “Our program is built around placing artists in dialogue with one another and within new contexts”, offers Doropoulos. This approach reflects the depth of experience behind the gallery, with both directors bringing long-standing international relationships to their program.
Their Melbourne Art Fair presentation brings together a diverse group of artists, and “every artist in the PALAS program occupies a unique position that becomes coherent when
the strength of each individual practice is placed in the context of a group exhibition.” In some instances, conceptual or material intersections are immediate; in others, resonances unfold more subtly through close viewing.
International collaboration is central to PALAS’s model. Through co-representation with partner galleries abroad, artists are introduced to new institutional, curatorial, and collector networks through sustained relationships rather than one-off exposure. Striving to create long-term visibility that supports deeper engagement over time.
Supporting artists across generations is key to this philosophy. For PALAS, emerging and established practices enrich one another when placed in conversation, offering audiences a more layered reading of contemporary art. This commitment to dialogue extends beyond the fair itself. Concurrent with Melbourne Art Fair, PALAS is hosting a group exhibition in Sydney curated in partnership with Misako & Rosen, Tokyo, marking the first time the gallery has invited an international gallery to develop an exhibition in its space. It is a format they intend to continue, reinforcing their commitment to cross-border exchange and curatorial experimentation.
Image credit: Ruth O’Leary in studio. Photo: Maddy Maeve. Courtesy Mary Cherry Contemporary: Ruth O’Leary, Bodywork. Courtesy the artist and Mary Cherry Contemporary.
Mary Cherry Contemporary
For Mary Cherry Contemporary and its director Helen Newton-Brown, Melbourne Art Fair 2026 marks a decisive moment to support an artist at a pivotal stage of her career. The gallery’s inaugural booth centres on Ruth O’Leary, presented at a point where institutional recognition and commercial visibility meaningfully converge. Following the National Gallery of Victoria’s acquisition of her work and forthcoming exhibitions, including Mother: Stories from the NGV Collection and GROUNDSWELL at Castlemaine Art Museum, O’Leary is entering a new phase in which strategic gallery advocacy is essential.
The presentation focuses on The Sitters, a new photographic series that interrogates how women have been rendered visible in art history, not as autonomous subjects but as muses defined by canonical male artists. Figures such as Marguerite Matisse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, and Jeanne Hébuterne remain legible primarily through these inherited frames. O’Leary’s work poses pointed questions about representation and power: whose stories are told, whose labour is erased, and who controls the gaze?
Mary Cherry Contemporary sees its role as undertaking the practical work of career-building: facilitating institutional relationships, navigating the commercial landscape, and removing obstacles so artists can focus on making work. Rather than adhering to rigid distinctions between emerging and established practices, the gallery prioritises responding to artists at critical moments. Presented as a solo booth, The Sitters unfolds as a cohesive investigation, conceptually rigorous and visually compelling, ideally suited to the art fair context. It asks viewers to stop, look, and reconsider the terms of representation itself.
Collectively Nasha Gallery, PALAS, and Mary Cherry Contemporary demonstrate how emerging galleries are reshaping the role of Melbourne Art Fair. Their presentations foreground dialogue over spectacle, context over novelty, and long-term vision over short-term gain. For audiences, collectors, and curators, these galleries offer work that is visually compelling, intellectually rigorous, and socially engaged, art that rewards sustained attention and reflects the evolving ambitions of Australia’s contemporary art landscape.
