We’re reading the floor at Melbourne Art Fair with a 2026 guide to the trusted institution in the Australian arts calendar.
The Melbourne Art Fair (MAF) encourages galleries to speak precisely, presenting positions that reflect the ecosystems and attitudes of the artists they represent. This year, that trust is extended further, and with the introduction of FUTUREOBJEKT, art and design are brought into direct conversation to shift how material thinking, authorship and purpose are read across the floor.
To navigate multiple sectors, an abundance of public programs and commissions, we’ve curated a series of works that we’re eager to encounter in person and invite you to use them as your own unofficial guide to between booths, sectors, and bars.
Photography courtesy of Joris Poggioli
Joris Poggioli
Twenty Twenty, FUTUREOBJEKT
At FUTUREOBJEKT, the presentation from Twenty Twenty offers an early indication of the gallery’s forthcoming direction. Introduced through Mobilia, the booth positions furniture as a site of considered experimentation, where functional objects operate within a collectable design register. At its centre is a focused solo presentation by Paris-based designer and architect Joris Poggioli, featuring his iconic Rose sofa. Read as an ecosystem, the booth draws a straight line between contemporary practice and historical reference points, from Michael Anastassiades to Gio Ponti, while marking a measured lead-in to the gallery’s formal unveiling.
Photography courtesy of Joris Poggioli
Photography by Kristy Leslie
The Bollinger Bar
Brahman Perera
Brahman Perera’s work consistently operates through atmospheric dream-states and a sort of feminine disarmament, attentive to warmth and intuition which, as we’ve heard, is exactly what to expect from the Bollinger Bar. Hospitality spaces at the Fair have long offered a necessary pause within the visual density of the floor, and Perera’s aesthetic approach suggests a bar built to beckon those with tired eyes.
Draped fabrics and softened interiors balance theatricality with function, while works by Australian designers, including Anna Varendorff’s vases, are integrated throughout the space, functioning as part of the cultural experience and programming.
Photography courtesy of Annika Kafcaloudis
Volker Haug Studio
Booth E12, FUTUREOBJEKT
At FUTUREOBJEKT, Volker Haug Studio presents a new, one-of-a-kind series of Murano glass table lamps developed through direct collaboration with Venetian artisans. Each piece is mouth-blown in Murano and finished with a distinctive mix of classic and contemporary murrine patterns that are almost charmed in nature.
Long regarded as a steady presence within the Australian design community, Haug’s practice continues to shape how contemporary objects are made and celebrated, making this new body of work a considered and highly anticipated outcome.
Photography courtesy of Don Cameron
Don Cameron
FUTUREOBJEKT
Don Cameron brings a distinctly cinematic sensibility to FUTUREOBJEKT, shaped by a career that moves fluently between film, interiors and collectable design. Cameron is known for his early work directing rock and pop music videos and approaches objects with the same attentiveness to mood and composition. This sensibility translates to a presentation that combines rare vintage collectable design from his personal collection with new works from his studio, including a series of lamps and nesting seating concepts. Genres are pressed up against one another, encouraging engagement on their own terms and we are eager to lay our eyes on it.
Photography courtesy of Jessica Murtagh
Jessica Murtagh
Booth J4
Jessica Murtagh’s work often acts as an anchor within group exhibitions and fairs alike and her presentation with Martin Browne Contemporary’s will be no different. Masterful in her practice, she brings illustration and surface narrative into dialogue with form, using engraving and sandcarving to build layered imagery that unfolds in a distinct language of her own. These new vessels draw on botany and classical artefacts and we are especially interested in how new stories are being asked to surface through the material.
Photography courtesy of Hannah Kuhlmann
Hannah Kuhlmann
Booth E9, FUTUREOBJEKT
Oigall Projects is a gallery that we have all come to expect consistently varied and unguarded programming from. The works are often deeply exploratory, collaborative and come with an unabashed enthusiasm for distinction. This year, Oigall presents a series of makers, both local and international, and we are particularly excited to see the inclusion of Studio Kuhlmann’s Hannah Kuhlmann. Included in her offering is a series of lights from her Lady Glove collection, and as Andy Kelly observes, the works register as “a bodily experience, almost like the lamp could be one of your friends”, a description that captures their physical immediacy.
Photography by Bettina Pittaluga
Video 2026
Booth E9
Shifting the object-based pace, we are very eager to encounter VIDEO 2026. Curated by Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel and informed by the writing of Octavia E. Butler, the program examines how individuals locate themselves within social, political and technological systems that shape contemporary life. Works by Neil Beloufa, Meriem Bennani, Mohamed Bourouissa, Cecile B. Evans and David Noonan consider agency, constraint and lived experience. Together, the films operate as propositions, using uncertainty, imagination and empathy as frameworks for thinking through a world in ongoing transition.
Photography courtesy of Gallery Sally Dan Cuthbert
Presented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Ruben de la Rive Box and Golnar Roshan, (working under Rive Roshan), present The Sky We Share, a solo installation which debuts 10 works that expand on the ongoing exploration of ordinary miracles. Alongside a series of glass works, the presentations includes a collection of four new, sculptural Voices Vessels, 3D-printed in sand and painstakingly hand-painted by the artists. These pieces take their form from a woman’s pleated dress in motion, and are conceived as part of a universal ‘pursuit of freedom’ recalling the Woman, Life, Freedom movement that was ignited in 2022.
Photography courtesy of Gallery Sally Dan Cuthbert
Photography courtesy of Gallery Sally Dan Cuthbert