ACCA is excited to announce an ambitious new exhibition series exploring the relationships between contemporary art and human emotion. The Art and Emotion series is an annual program that brings together bold new commissions with existing works by artists from Australia and around the world. The first three exhibitions in the series will explore distinct emotional states: Loneliness (2026), Rage (2027), and Joy (2028). Each exhibition offers audiences a powerful insight into how artists interrogate, express, and give shape to emotion through their work.
The first exhibition in the series, Are you lonely tonight? I’m so lonesome I could cry., borrows its title from lyrics popularised by Elvis Presley. Featuring works by artists from around the word, including Polly Borland, Seth Brown, Lucy Liu, Kayla Mattes, Martine Syms, among others, the exhibition is a raw and reflective meditation on loneliness and the human need for connection in an increasingly disconnected world. Spanning painting, sculpture, installation, and video, Are you lonely tonight? brings together diverse practices and voices in dialogue, offering moments of vulnerability, isolation, and longing.
Curated by: Sophie Prince & Myles Russell-Cook
About the series:
The Art and Emotion series offers a dynamic range of atmospheres and conceptual encounters through which audiences are invited to sit with, confront, and be moved by the emotional truths that shape our inner and outer worlds. A new scholarly publication series will accompany the exhibitions, with writers from diverse disciplines contributing original texts on each theme.
In 2027, ACCA will present All day long I felt like smashing my face in a clear glass window, an exhibition devoted to rage. Taking its name from Yoko Ono’s seminal 1973 song, the show will feature Ono herself as an exhibiting artist. She has selected three participatory works that explore rage as a generative force – particularly as an act of feminist resistance.
Curated by: Sophie Prince & Myles Russell-Cook
In 2028, the series continues with This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me, the world can’t take it away, a celebration of joy as both a deeply personal and profoundly communal state of being. Across each exhibition, daring new commissions are presented in dialogue with existing and historical works, affirming emotion as a universal language that binds us across cultures, geographies, and generations.
Curated by: Dr Shelley McSpedden & Myles Russell-Cook