22 Must-See Artists To Shop At Melbourne’s Affordable Art Fair 2026

In-land Gallery

In-land Gallery represents artists with practices rooted in a contemplative connection with the Australian landscape, including Melbourne-based photographic artist Christine Goerner. Her work lives in the space between memory and reality, translating nature’s intricate patterns, shifting textures, and moody palettes into evocative dreamscapes.

Ben Liney is another Melbourne-based In-land artist who works primarily with oil on canvas, using a restrained palette and detailed brushwork to explore the quiet presence of the landscape. His work invites viewers into a slower, more attentive way of seeing — one that mirrors the landscape’s quiet persistence and opens space for reflection.

Brunswick Street Gallery

Melbourne’s Brunswick Street Gallery has been consistently uncovering inspiring new talent since 2005.

Their artists on show at this year’s Affordable Art Fair include local contemporary oil painter and botanical artist Jessie Rose Ford, whose paintings distill moments of awe in the landscape through gesture, mark making, and a mesmerising use of golden colour.

Ruby Bovill’s paintings are likewise inspired by natural landscapes, encouraging quiet contemplation and reflection on connection to place, including memories growing up in Melbourne and regularly visiting the Great Ocean Road and Murray River.

Jules Bulleid is a contemporary landscape painter living in Western Australia. Her work draws on from her previous farming life and journeys through the outback, but will often develop into otherworldly interpretations.

Discover: Young Talent

Affordable Art Fair’s Discover: Young Talent platform celebrates the next generation of creative voices.

Among them is Anna Walsh, an emerging Australian artist based in Moama, NSW. Her work showcases detailed, hand-rendered designs that draw from the Australian landscape, particularly its unique flora, and highlight intricate patterns and textures referencing Anna’s background in textile design.

Ariella Weinmann is a Melbourne-based artist whose oil paintings quietly capture the beauty of everyday objects. Working primarily in still life, her compositions reference moments of familiarity, thoughtfully arranged to evoke a sense of stillness and balance.

Good Work Gallery

Sydney’s Good Work Gallery believe materials are more than just a means to an end — they’re storytellers in their own right. The gallery’s artists are therefore united by a shared passion for materiality and form, challenging traditional genres, and inviting audiences to engage with art on a tactile level.

Claire Mooney explores the metaphorical possibilities of geometric pattern and colour through paint and textiles. Using collage as a starting point, she fragments and realigns patterns intuitively, which are then translated into paint and thread, and unified through colour, where multiple layers of repetitive brushstrokes or threads are refined to create complex colour relationships.

Oddball Gallery

Oddball Gallery is an artist-led initiative representing contemporary female and gender diverse Australian artists.

Among them is Sydney-based ceramic artist Laura Braich of Mennt, who transforms clay into dynamic tiled canvases, inspired by the movement and textures found in nature. Through mark making, glazing and the application of oxides, Laura’s work invites viewers to experience the ephemeral movement of light across her ceramic surfaces.

Loam

The name of Loam refers to fertile soil — a meeting point of different elements that allow something new to grow. The gallery similarly brings together distinct artistic practices grounded in lived experience, material exploration, and cultural perspectives.

Sydney-based Loam artist Heidi Lai creates expressive oil paintings that capture the fleeting beauty of everyday life. Born in Hong Kong, she’s inspired by the vibrant connection between people and their surroundings depicted through bold brushstrokes and rich textures.

Stevens Street Gallery

Sunshine Coast-based Stevens Street Gallery is a roaming gallery dedicated to championing local artists through thoughtfully curated pop-up exhibitions, fairs and an online gallery.

Among their artists is Sunshine Coast-based painter Shane Hastings of Iluka Creative, who draws on his experience living between the forest and the beach. Rather than documenting specific views, Shane generally paints from memory, allowing colour, movement, and texture to carry the feeling of a place.

Fellow Sunshine Coast-artist Jasmine Veronique is best known for her oil painting, charcoal and coloured pencil works. She primarily focuses on florals and still life as a subject matter, delving into the symbolism and beauty of flowers — a subject often associated with strength and new beginnings.

M.A.C. Studio Gallery

M.A.C. Studio Gallery is a cohesive group of artists rooted in fine art led by Melbourne-based artists Yeonjoo Park and Amy Kim.

Yeonjoo’s own abstract, emotion-driven landscapes are an exploration of the beauty and presence found in nature’s most fleeting moments, from the soft glow of dawn, to the rich hues of dusk and intensity of sunlight at its peak. By simplifying the landscape through omission, she aims to convey inspiration in an abstract form, leaving space for the viewer to imagine freely and connect with the scene in their own way.

Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation

Founded in 1985, Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation is a 100% Aboriginal-owned, not-for-profit art centre in Yuendumu — a remote community located almost 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

The centre plays an important role in preserving and sharing Warlpiri culture through vibrant and meaningful artworks, including those by Alicka Napanangka Brown and Gisella Napaljarri Dickson.

Solenne Studio

Bringing together the practices of three artists, Solenne Studio explores the emotional and atmospheric relationship between landscape, memory and perception.

Tracy Strange’s work, in particular, is inspired by her childhood in the western district of Victoria, and her life now in Mosquito Point on the Gippsland Lakes, which is only accessible by boat. A romantic, instinctive and self-taught painter, she works quickly with a variety of techniques such as washing, rubbing, dragging and reworking. Tracy’s delicate oil works are both dreamy and temporal, often referencing cold and misty mornings.

Victorian Artists Society

Founded in 1870 by pioneering impressionist painters, the Victorian Artists Society (VAS) has been among Australia’s leading art institutions for over 150 years. As a registered charity, the organisation is dedicated to fostering artistic excellence and making art accessible to all through generous support of donors and volunteers.

TJ Murphy is a realist artist and tutor working primarily with oil paint. His artistic philosophy centres on observation and the understanding that visual perception is different from photographic reproduction.

Painter and teacher Gregory R Smith is a past president of VAS. The constant challenge to gain a greater understanding of how and what we see, is a driving force behind his work. As an artist and teacher, developing greater visual knowledge allows Gregory’s artwork to have a purpose — one of education. Every painting is a new lesson.

Salt Contemporary

Salt Contemporary exhibits a dynamic range of work from career painters, printmakers, and sculptors housed in a historically significant former drapery store in Queenscliff, on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula.

Artists showing at the Affordable Art Fair include painter Jill Noble who is inspired by landscape compositions — utilising shape, form and the spaces in between.

Kay Gibson draws on experiences bushwalking, sketching outdoors, and observing the natural environment across drawing, painting and printmaking. She often endeavours to marry materials with the subject, such as works created on paper that are blindly embossed with endemic plants, or paintings combined with traditional etching methods.

Natalie Anderson’s representational oil paintings are often framed around the horizon line where the ocean meets the land or the sky. Her focus shifts between the untamed beauty and strength of the ocean — its powerful waves, swirling tides, sea foam, and the sun reflecting off the surface — to inland landscapes depicting infinite skies above hills, rolling grassy plains, and crop fields.

Affordable Art Fair Melbourne
Thursday August 27 – Sunday August 30 2026
Royal Exhibition Building, Carlton VIC
Tickets on sale now