Rememory unfolds across Sydney from 14 March to 14 June 2026 as the 25th Biennale of Sydney transforms cultural venues with art, performance and storytelling.
On a cool March evening, the harbour light shifts toward dusk and the city begins its slow transition into night. Ferries cross the water near Balmain, trains rumble quietly across the bridges, and inside cavernous industrial halls, gallery rooms and university museums, a different kind of movement begins.
Across multiple venues, Rememory unfolds across Sydney, opening the 25th edition of the Biennale of Sydney. For three months, art spreads through the city’s cultural landscape – inhabiting former power stations, museum galleries and unexpected corners where stories gather in unexpected ways.
The title itself carries a quiet tension. “Rememory” suggests the fragile space between remembering and forgetting – the places where personal histories, collective experience and imagination intersect. It is a theme that echoes across exhibitions, performances and gatherings taking place throughout Sydney from March to June.
For visitors, the experience is less like entering a single exhibition and more like following a thread that runs through the entire city.
Rememory Unfolds Across Sydney’s Cultural Landscape
The Biennale has always treated Sydney itself as part of the exhibition. In 2026, Rememory unfolds across Sydney through a network of venues that span harbour edges, university campuses and western suburbs.
One of the most striking locations is the vast interior of White Bay Power Station. Built between 1912 and 1917, the former industrial complex once powered Sydney’s tramways and trains. Today its towering brick walls and steel structures create a dramatic backdrop for contemporary art.
Visitors entering the hall encounter large-scale installations, live performances and sound works that resonate through the building’s open spaces. The industrial architecture amplifies the sense that memory itself can inhabit physical environments.
Elsewhere, exhibitions appear at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney, and Penrith Regional Gallery in the city’s west.
Through these spaces, Rememory unfolds across Sydney as a constellation of experiences rather than a single destination.
Opening Weekend As Rememory Unfolds Across Sydney
The opening weekend sets the tone for the months ahead. On the evening of 13 March, the Biennale launches with Lights On – a gathering that transforms White Bay Power Station into a living festival of art, music and conversation.
Across the building’s vast interior, visitors encounter installations while music drifts between rooms. Performances by artists including Hand to Earth and DJ Haram fill the space with a shifting soundtrack that blends Yol?u songlines, electronic rhythms and experimental sound.
Nearby, food stalls gather for the Memory Lane markets. The idea is simple but resonant: recipes and flavours carry stories of migration, family and cultural memory.
This blending of art, food and performance reflects the wider spirit of the Biennale itself. As Rememory unfolds across Sydney, audiences are invited not just to view artworks but to participate in a larger cultural exchange.
Artists And Stories Within Rememory
Within the galleries, artists explore memory in deeply personal ways.
At the Chau Chak Wing Museum, artist Ema Shin presents a monumental handwoven sculptural form shaped like a human heart. Its woven fibres hold the traces of labour and time – a quiet reflection on how memory is carried within the body.
At White Bay Power Station, Lebanese Australian artist Marian Abboud stages a collaborative performance titled Sister +++++ Familial Formations III. Working with members of her extended family, Abboud draws on Lebanese Maronite mourning gestures to explore how ritual movement can hold fragments of memory across generations.
Further west, artist Nora Adwan leads a participatory cooking event at Penrith Regional Gallery, inviting visitors to share food while discussing the generational knowledge embedded in recipes.
Each project forms part of a larger mosaic as Rememory unfolds across Sydney – revealing how memory travels through bodies, objects and landscapes.
Performance And Ceremony In Rememory
Performance plays a central role in the Biennale’s program.
At the Art Gallery of New South Wales, cultural leaders and artists connected to the monumental Ngurrara Canvas II present a performance that draws from Western Desert traditions. The event shares stories of ancestral journeys and rainmaking ceremonies that speak to the deep relationship between Country, water and community.
Elsewhere, artist Mike Parr revisits his own archive of performances at SYRUP Contemporary, reflecting on the passage of time and the way artistic gestures become part of history.
These moments remind visitors that memory is not static. As Rememory unfolds across Sydney, it becomes something active – shaped through performance, conversation and shared presence.
Following The Thread Of Rememory
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the Biennale is the way it encourages exploration.
Visitors might begin their day inside the cavernous spaces of White Bay Power Station, then travel across the harbour to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and later wander through a quiet museum gallery at the University of Sydney.
Each venue adds another perspective to the theme. Together, they create a citywide narrative where Rememory unfolds across Sydney through architecture, performance and the stories people carry with them.
Even the journey between locations becomes part of the experience: trains moving through suburbs, ferries crossing the harbour, streets leading from one cultural space to another.
The City As Archive
By the time winter approaches and the Biennale draws to a close, Sydney will have absorbed months of artistic conversation.
In the galleries, installations will be dismantled. Performances will fade into documentation and memory. Yet the ideas sparked during the event linger – in conversations, photographs, and the quiet awareness that art has briefly reshaped the city’s rhythms.
In this way, Rememory unfolds across Sydney not only in exhibitions but also in the minds of those who walk through them.
The city becomes an archive of experience, holding traces of stories long after the final artwork is packed away.
Event Details
Rememory – 25th Biennale of Sydney
Dates: 14 March – 14 June 2026
Key Venues Include:
- White Bay Power Station
- Art Gallery of New South Wales
- Chau Chak Wing Museum
- Penrith Regional Gallery
- SYRUP Contemporary
Admission: Many exhibitions are free
Official Website: https://www.biennaleofsydney.art