Three young Australian gallerists will launch a new art fair in Melbourne this August as a direct rival to the long established Melbourne Art Fair (MAF), which will run concurrently during the same month.

Sydney’s 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art has elected Edmund Capon as its new chair of the board. A London native, Capon brings with him 33 years of arts experience gained while working at Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, where he was director and chief curator since 1978.

The future of the Biennale of Sydney (BoS) has been thrown into question after last Friday, when its board capitulated to pressure from participating artists to sever ties with its founding partner and major sponsor Transfield, the contractor which manages Australia’s immigration detention facilities, currently on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.

The Australia Council has announced that veteran Australian mixed media artist Fiona Hall will represent Australia at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.

Sydney-based artist Tony Albert will install Yininmadyemi–Thou Didst Let Fall, the first memorial sculpture in Australia to honor the military service of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women. The “long overdue and necessary” monument will be revealed on Anzac Day 2015 in Sydney’s Hyde Park South, coinciding with the centenary of Australia’s involvement in World War I.

Sydney artist, Nigel Milsom, has won the AUD150,000 acquisitive Doug Moran National Portrait Prize—now in its 25th year—from behind bars. Milsom’s works channel the condition of loneliness or the singularity of the human experience—a sensation that may be all too familiar for the artist, who is currently serving a six-year jail sentence for robbery and assault he committed while on a drug binge in 2012.

Outlining his vision for the future of Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Chris Saines, the museum’s director appointed six months ago, said he was ready “to set a new course for the gallery” in an effort to make it the world’s “leading museum for the contemporary art of Australia, Asia and the Pacific.” He then proceeded to outline some exciting prospects –namely, landmark exhibitions by living international artists, a shift in curatorial focus for the Asia Pacific Triennial (APT) and general gallery restructuring—that future visitors to the museum can anticipate.

Last week, The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) and Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) jointly launched the 2013–14 edition of The Sydney International Art Series (SIAS) with a “double header” that will bring a Yoko Ono show and a comprehensive survey of 200 years of American art to the two galleries this November.