Book Shop - Season 1, 2026

PICA’s exhibition program takes place over four seasons each year, with each season thematically focused to draw connections between disparate artists and practices and to encourage deeper audience engagement.

PICA works with artists at all stages of their careers, from recent graduates in our annual flagship Hatched: National Graduate Show to mid-career solo exhibitions, guest curated group exhibitions and major commissions. These exhibitions, along with moving image works shown in our dedicated Screen Space,  showcase the work of artists from Western Australia and across the globe, offering a range of narratives and perspectives.

As a site for the production of new art and ideas, PICA supports artists and curators to develop, produce and present work driven by the critical issues of our time. At PICA both artists and audiences are encouraged to take risks, explore new and emerging art forms, and experiment with ideas.

Season 1, 2026 exhibition period: 

Awakening Histories explores the deep and enduring connection between First Nations Peoples across the north of this continent (now known as Australia) and the Makassan seafarers of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Re-positioning Australia’s pre-colonial international relations from a global south perspective, this powerful exhibition reflects on the legacies of these early intercultural connections that were forged through reciprocity, respect and trade. 

Painting Itself/绘画本身 is an exhibition of five painters from Hong Kong, Malaysia, London, Shanghai and Singapore. The exhibition explores a new horizontal culture in painting, where fundamental ideas about its history and vitality—long the influence of European and American values—are being reshaped in East and Southeast Asia. 

A common understanding is that painters look for the ‘face’ of their work, that aspect of a painting that looks back at them. Each of the artists in the exhibition takes on this idea—they lean into the mood and character of their own painting, with its inner constraints and struggles. By introducing insightful and complex new painting practices and attitudes, Painting Itself/绘画本身 prompts us to reflect on how contemporary painting works to interlink and traverse geography and time, re-positioning the western art economy through an Asian lens.