Nolan: Origins reunites all 27 Ned Kelly paintings at the Art Gallery of NSW
The Art Gallery of NSW's summer exhibition surveys Sidney Nolan's early career in more than 150 works, including the full Ned Kelly series, from 3 October 2026.
Sydney's big summer art exhibition is a homegrown one. Nolan: Origins opens at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on 3 October 2026 and runs until 7 February 2027, surveying the early career of Sidney Nolan, from the late 1930s until he moved to the UK in 1953. The centrepiece is his Ned Kelly series, with all 27 paintings, according to Time Out, reunited in Sydney for the first time in more than 60 years.
What is in the show
The exhibition brings together more than 150 works from public and private collections, installed on Lower level 2 of the gallery's Naala Nura building. Alongside the Kelly paintings of 1946 and 1947, it follows Nolan's engagement with Australian places and stories: the modernist work he made in Melbourne around Heide, paintings of St Kilda, the Wimmera, K'gari (Fraser Island), outback Queensland and Central Australia, and his depictions of the Burke and Wills expedition. Time Out notes that works dealing with drought and environmental destruction also feature.
The gallery's exhibition page quotes American critic Jerry Saltz, who called Nolan's achievement a "breakthrough of modernism, akin, in fact, to Picasso."
Why it matters
Nolan's Ned Kelly paintings are among the best-known images in Australian art, and the gallery's own hero image for the show, Ned Kelly (1946), is on loan from the National Gallery of Australia. By focusing on the years before 1953, Nolan: Origins concentrates on the period in which he developed the style and subjects that made his name. The exhibition is supported by major exhibition patron Liz Gibson and exhibition patrons Ian Dickson AM and Reg Holloway, with EY and J.P. Morgan as major sponsors.
It is one of two major openings in the gallery's 2026 program for the spring and summer, alongside the Dobell Australian Drawing Biennial 2026, which opened on 12 September with 11 Australian artists. It also overlaps briefly with Avatar: Forms of Vishnu, which closes on 5 October.
Dates and tickets
- Where: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Naala Nura building, Lower level 2, Sydney
- When: 3 October 2026 to 7 February 2027
- Adult: A$35 (A$37 on weekends and public holidays)
- Concession: A$32 (A$34)
- Members: A$30 (A$32)
- Youth (12 to 17): A$10
- Children under 12: free
- Family (two adults and up to three youth): A$80
- Flexi ticket (undated): A$45
Time Out reports two-for-one tickets on Wednesday evenings as part of the gallery's Art After Hours program.
Sources: Art Gallery of NSW, Time Out Sydney
