A Bundjalung artist of the Djanbun clan, Bronwyn Bancroft has been making her distinctive mark on the Australian arts for over 30 years. A practising artist, she works across a wide range of mediums, from painting and collage to literature and textile and fashion designs. After establishing her fashion outlet Designer Aboriginals in 1985, Bancroft became the first Australian designer to be invited to show her work in Paris. Not content with success in the fashion and art worlds (her paintings are held by the National Gallery, AGNSW and Art Gallery of WA), Bancroft went on to become a founding member of the Boomali’s Aboriginal Artist Co-Op, a watershed organisation in the contemporary urban Indigenous art movement.

Throughout her career, she has continued to produce a well-regarded body of artworks and fashion, as well as remained passionate and active in community activism (particularly about the rights of Aboriginal artists) and as an arts administrator, sitting on and directing countless Indigenous and non-Indigenous art boards over the last three decades. Power, Passion, Politics, currently showing at CarriageWorks, is a retrospective of Bancroft’s work, and the first in-depth examination of this extraordinary artist. Mainly featuring her paintings, the collection also has examples of her designs, and archival footage and photographs.

Until Mar 17, CarriageWorks, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh, free, 8571 9099, carriageworks.com.au

It may seem like an unlikely source of inspiration for a new suite of works – but for inner-city Sydney artist Patrick Dagg it was his ‘Damascus moment.’

“I had a car accident last July where I had been drinking and ran up the back of a taxi. I wrote my car off but luckily nobody was hurt … I decided I had get a grip and focus my energy into something positive. Hence Crash Paintings.”

From his ten-year career in disabilities, specifically working with those suffering from brain injuries, Dagg has an acute sense of how fragile life can be. “As a society we often take our health for granted and we should celebrate what we have more often. The crash has kind of opened me back up and given me the courage to paint freely again.”

Writhing with untangled knots of vibrant colour and a consistent use of fluid, linear movement, the paintings (and complementary ceramic pieces) impart a deliberate sense of ‘contained chaos.’ Nods to influences Jean Dubuffet and Emily Kngwarreye are also clearly evident.

“There is a journey in the gestures of the work,” says Dagg, “and as you view them more as a whole you can see this.” A journey that has evidently been somewhat difficult – but at least to some extent, cathartic.

Feb 10-11, (opening night Feb 10, 6-8pm), Gallery 583, 583 Elizabeth St, Redfern, patrickdagg.com

Watching the red ‘sold’ dots breaking out on the walls of Alaska Projects like chicken pox, one could be left in little doubt that Samuel Hodge is fast becoming a very collectible artist. Within 30 minutes of its opening, the single print photographs were all but gone, as hipsters from all walks of life jostled to get a look at what was left. This latest show is a robust collection of Hodge’s work – from dreamy landscapes to whimsical still life, Sydney to Berlin. The artist, who moves between the gallery context and print and online publishing (he has published four monographs to date), is recognised for his lo-fi aesthetic – light leaks, blurring and over- or under-exposure often playing a central role in the works. There is a sense of disorienting nostalgia and intimacy in the images; they evoke a yearning not for the past as such, but for a different present, or a moment of timelessness, as though we have been plunged into someone else’s memory. Hodge’s subtle and well-honed eye has demonstrably matured in this show, his framing, light and subjects all reflective of a artistic process belied by the seeming spontaneity and even idleness of the images’ composition.

Until Jan 22, Alaska Projects, Level 2, Kings Cross Car Park, 9a Elizabeth Bay Rd, Elizabeth Bay, alaskaprojects.com

More Than All The Little Pearly Shells features the work of Adolf Gustav Plate, a late 19^th Century European painter and Phillip Juster, a Brisbane born artist influenced by the Pop Art of the seventies.

Together they provide approximately 76 artworks, which are set in a yin-and-yang like juxtaposition around the walls as the sounds of waves and wind swish in the background. Additionally, a small collection of shells and stamps circles the middle of the gallery, while Pacific traditional headdresses, made by self-taught artist Tito Schmidt-Stowers, loom above various parts of the exhibition.

Plate’s work, done mostly in watercolour and oil, depict ocean harbours, landscapes, people and sometimes, the daily rituals of Fiji, New Zealand and Indonesia in the late 1800s. While his technique seems crude and rustic, somehow Plate’s scenes are intricate and lively; his muted yet natural tones reflecting the major hallmarks of realism.

Philip Juster untitled (quotation Series) 1995 & 2002 collage on paper

The pieces by Juster were created in the late 90s in a series of works, which all utilise an acrylic and collage ensemble. In each work, a patchwork story is told, a mishmash of drawings or photos, and then set against brash reds, baby blues and bright oranges. The result is loud, asymmetrical and provocative; a postmodernist pastiche against the inner workings of colonialism.

At first glance, it’s not clear what these two artists, separated by 100 years and differing mediums and aesthetics, have in common? And furthermore, why they’ve been placed in an exhibition together? But it is no accident. In fact, combined they create a dialogue between colonialism and post-colonialism, revealing the legacy of the former on the latter and how these differing perspectives were shaped by the dominant modes of thought at the time.

While the work of both artists is visually pleasing and overall, the exhibition is polished and thought-provoking due its design and political subject matter, I’m not sure it is that interesting enough to warrant the trip. It’s a planes, trains and automobiles (well ok, minus the planes) adventure to get to this gallery and if you’re not up to scratch on the tenets of post-colonialism or interested in realism or the Pacific region, it might be all a bit lost on you.

Until Jan 29, Penrith Regional Gallery, 86 River Rd, Emu Plains, free, 4735 1100, penrithregionalgallery.org

The last few years have been kind to Brook Andrew. Although the Melbourne-based artist of the Wiradjuri nation has been exhibiting to critical success since finishing his degree in visual arts in 1993, it seems people have seriously begun to stand up and pay attention. Twenty twelve will see him branching out once more to exhibit as part of CarrigeWorks’ Sydney Festival events.

Travelling Colony represents a major new work by Andrew, whose interdisciplinary arts practice travels internationally. For two decades this celebrated artist has worked to create interventions into history through installation and interactive monuments, playfully seducing audiences into new ways of seeing compelling issues of race, consumerism and history. Travelling Colony is an exploration and an expansion of this practice, featuring a cavalcade of dazzling hand painted caravans in the huge industrial foyer of CarriageWorks, inspired by circus and pop culture. Contained inside each of the caravans are stories of Redfern, its personalities, struggles and community. In addition to the caravans, archival footage, reflections and projections, and storytelling will allow visitors to be inspired by the rich and still untapped histories of Redfern. Andrew will also appear in conversation with Caroline Baum on Sat Jan 14th from 12.30 in the Spiegeltent.

Jan 8-Mar 4, CarriageWorks foyer, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh, 8571 9099, carriageworks.com.au

Christmas has come a little early at the MCA this year, with the gallery opening the doors of its first refurbed exhibition space to showcase their astounding new show, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Recorders. Recorders is an absolute delight, comprising 12 works – including two new commissions – from the Mexican-Canadian artist, famous for his large scale public and interactive works. Although all the pieces on this occasion are contained in the gallery space, the show nonetheless captures the engaging, playful and intelligent tenor of Lozano-Hemmer’s oeuvre, which makes some very creative use of the surveillance technologies that have become so ubiquitous in our day-to-day lives. Here, these technologies are re-imagined, forced into an artistic production far removed from their somewhat sinister ‘security’ functions.

Instead, Recorders offers a collection of joyful experiments, interactive in the truest sense, relying entirely on traces of the audience to construct the works. Machines record audience heartbeats and pulse them out in rows of dazzling lights, scan their fingerprints to construct a wall of whorls, capture traces of their images to populate a room with their ghosts, and measure the time they spend looking at given works. The works are fun – bound to leave a smile on your face – but they’re also thought-provoking and complex, reminding us of the inevitable entanglement of our bodies, our memories, and our actions. Treat yourself to some holiday culture for all ages, and become part of the art at the MCA this summer.

Until Feb 12, Museum of Contemporary Art, George St, The Rocks, free, mca.com.au

If you’re planning on joining the throngs of people at the AGNSW this summer to catch Picasso, it’s almost inevitable that at some point you’ll find yourself in need of a bit of respite from the crowd. Thankfully, the gallery has you covered. Just a couple of floors below Pablo fever, nestled snugly at the rear of the vast Kaldor collection, is a small space devoted to a rotating display of contemporary living artists, currently displaying an intriguing work from collaborative duo Ms&Mr. Ms&Mr create video installations, drawings and ‘altered artefacts’ exploring ideas they draw from theoretical physics, neuroscience and science fiction. The current show at AGNSW, XEROX MISSIVE 1977/2011, deals with the latter, creating an eerie and captivating series of videos around infamous science fiction writer Phillip K Dick and his one-time muse and fifth wife Tessa, whom the artists interviewed for the work. Layering this interview over a 1977 interview with Dick, the artists create a distorted and surreal encounter between the two. XEROX MISSIVE 1977/2011 is a fascinating take on the blurring of fact and fiction, memory, perception, and the disorienting experience of being both within and beyond time, in a strange and fanciful temporal-space created by the artists as they push their video works to the limits of possibility.

Until Feb 5, AGNSW, Art Gallery Rd, The Domain, free, 1800 679 278, artgallery.nsw.gov.au

Conor O’Brien’s Photographs 2003 – 2011 (as the name suggests) surveys eight years of the Melbourne-based photographer’s work, and represents his first major survey exhibition. Spread across several rooms at the Australian Centre for Photography, Photographs offers a carefully selected glimpse into the career of O’Brien, who has exhibited regularly since his first solo show in Vancouver in 2003. The collection spans numerous environments, subjects and tones, giving the audience a satisfying insight into O’Brien’s artistic maturation from an almost anti-aesthetic to a more structured and formal framing. What remains common through the images, however, is the artist’s ongoing concern with isolation, nostalgia and a vague sense of anxiety. Perhaps the most striking element of the show is its total absence of subjects’ faces. O’Brien’s figures are turned away, always moving towards the horizon and obscured by hair, blankets and hands. This evasive and understated aesthetic pervades the show, giving it a sense of distance that somehow serves to draw us further into the image as we search for insight into the oblique figures. Photographs is a wonderful collection – expressive of an artistic journey, subtly evocative, and always drawing you further into its images, searching for missing clues.

Until Feb 5, Australian Centre of Photography, 257 Oxford St, Paddington, 9332 1455, acp.org.au

Lake Eyre, Australia’s largest lake, is nestled some 700km north of Adelaide. When full, its waters appear so flat that it becomes impossible to distinguish the surface and horizon from the sky, rendering a startling phenomenon of being able to sail in the sky. It’s little wonder that artists have oft been drawn to Eyre’s shores, seeking to capture some of its stark and elusive beauty.

Sydney artist Robyn Stuart’s latest exhibition Breathing Room explores the landscape up close and personal, attempting to draw out the emotional and psychological landscapes contained in the seemingly motionless waters. “I wanted to invoke the feeling of this enormous ancient, timeless landscape being simultaneously vast and crushing. So I built two rooms, 3×3 metres, and projected the landscapes onto them. The idea is that you end up standing a lot closer than you normally would to such a big image, and it feels kind of like it’s closing in on you.”

The landscape projected in these rooms is surely one of Australia’s most striking and mythologised. Stuart describes the experience of being there as disorienting, contradictory and yet stunningly beautiful. “It was an incredible landscape. I love the idea of the early explorers travelling out there hoping to find a magical inland water source, and then this is what they got: a great big f*ck-you, a cavalcade of contradictions. It’s a giant inland lake and yet it’s the most arid landscape imaginable. It’s a desert but it’s 15m below sea level. And best of all, it’s covered in a salt crust up to a metre thick, which is lying on the ground like snow.”

This latest project forms a key part of Stuart’s postgraduate research into the intersection of conceptual practices and theory in art, mathematics and philosophy, particularly chaos theory and dynamical systems. A key theorem in dynamical systems, known as the Poincare Recurrence Theorem, states that certain volume-preserving physical systems will, after a sufficient length of time, return to a state very close to the initial state. For Stuart, Lake Eyre represents such a system, a landscape with “infinite memory.” “I wanted to explore a landscape that seemed to me to embody the idea of return and repetition. Being in the desert plays havoc with people’s time-perception abilities – there’s an absence of the any of the features that we would normally use to judge how much time had elapsed. It’s a timeless landscape, and that makes it very disorientating.”

Breathing Room utilises this notion of distorted time, plunging audiences into a strange and liminal space in which time seems to pass relentlessly and obliterate itself in the same movement. “With these video works, the idea is that you have no way of knowing whether the videos last for an hour or a day or a minute; the landscapes follow their own self-intersecting time-trajectory. The emotional effect of this is, actually, a bit ambiguous. It’s boring at first, because it seems like nothing’s happening. But it’s unsettling when you realise that you’ve returned back to a point where you’ve been before, without having noticed how you got there,” Stuart says, reflecting on the emotion that plays out in our physical world. “People know that the law of physics dictate the way that we experience the world, but they tend to think that the extent of that effect is just physical, not emotional.”

Until Dec 3, Kudos Gallery, 6 Napier St, Paddington, cofa.unsw.edu.au/galleries/campus-galleries/kudos-gallery

Harry Potter’s wand, glasses, Hogwarts™ acceptance letter, Marauder’s Map™ and other personal effects. TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Harry Potter Publishing Rights © JKR.

For the many Harry Potter fans still mourning the completion of the beloved movie series earlier this year, the news of Harry Potter: The Exhibition’s opening last week must have warmed the cockles of their hearts. Walking into the Powerhouse Museum to check the much-lauded exhibition out, I wasn’t sure what to expect – would it be worth all the fuss, or was it an unnecessary swan song of a franchise that should have ended with the movies? As an unabashed fan of both the books and the movies, I am pleased to say I left convinced that it is indeed worth all the fuss (and not just because the Weasley twins were there to launch it).

Featuring hundreds of props, costumes and set pieces from the film series, and ephemera like quidditch goals, the Powerhouse anticipates the exhibition will attract some 300,000 visitors during its run. What really stays with you after wandering through the new Powerhouse space (now the largest temporary exhibition space in Australia) is the craftsmanship and artistry that has gone into the films. From the ornately carved wands to Voldemort’s horcruxes, the exquisite costumes to the recreation of Hagrid’s Hut, the exhibition truly evokes the magic and imagination of the films. Fans are sure to get a kick out of the chance to see some of Harry Potter’s world up close.

Until Mar 18 2012, Powerhouse Museum, 500 Harris St, Ultimo, $24-95 (family), 9217 0111, powerhousemuseum.com