Lane Cove Public School is turning Gallery Lane Cove into a showcase of young talent next week, with its annual Express Yourself exhibition returning for 2026. The exhibition brings together paintings, sculptures and prints from every class from Kindergarten to Year 6, giving the school’s youngest creatives the chance to display their work in a professional gallery setting. It is a Lane Cove tradition, running every August and drawing families, teachers and locals in to celebrate what the kids have made.

The work spans paintings, sculptures and prints, taking in playground adventures, imaginative dreamscapes, nocturnal animals and a whole flock of papier-mâché chickens. Each class studied real artists along the way, from Frederick McCubbin and Fred Williams to Brett Whiteley, Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali.

What each class has been making

Kindergarten: The Australian Bush
Kindergarten painted the Australian bush, comparing Mary Tonkin’s richly textured work with Fred Williams’ simplified landscapes and talking through Frederick McCubbin’s ‘Lost’. They mixed colours, dabbed and flicked paint straight from leaves, then drew native flowers from life to build their own bush scenes.

Year 1: Fish
Year 1 sculpted fish. After studying carved fish by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and Balinese artists, they drew in charcoal, watercolour and coloured pencil on black paper, then modelled clay fish and painted them in bright colours.

Year 2: Playgrounds
Year 2 created playground self-portraits in movement, taking cues from Charles Blackman and Jeffrey Smart. Working from photographs of themselves on the school play equipment, they made large-scale black ink drawings on coloured cardboard and blended oil pastel to build form.

Year 3: Moths and Butterflies
Year 3 headed into printmaking, inspired by David Bromley’s butterflies and Andy Warhol’s prints. Charcoal drawings became relief prints, which they ran off across different papers and arranged into overlapping collages exploring balance and repetition.

Year 4: Chickens
Year 4 built papier-mâché chicken sculptures, guided by the expressive paintings of William Robinson and Lucy Culliton. Charcoal drawings of the school chickens grew into sculptures finished with buttons, feathers and wire legs, each one full of character.

Year 5: Dreams
Year 5 explored dreams through Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall and Salvador Dali. They took turns posing as if asleep with a quilt and pillow, drew the scene in charcoal and developed it into a watercolour, then painted imaginative dream worlds of their own.

Year 6: Nocturnal Animals
Year 6 painted nocturnal animals, drawing on Brett Whiteley’s bird series. Using white soft pastel they transferred charcoal drawings onto black gessoed canvas, then painted in realistic colours with broken-colour brushwork and finished with a starry night sky for drama.

Opening night

The community is invited to the opening on Tuesday 4 August 2026 from 4.30pm to 6.30pm at Gallery Lane Cove. It is a lovely chance to see the exhibition come to life, catch up with other families and cheer on the young artists.

Exhibition hours

If you cannot make opening night, the exhibition is open to the public from Wednesday 5 August to Saturday 8 August: Wednesday to Friday: 10am to 4.30pm. Saturday: 10am to 2.30pm

Entry is free and everyone is welcome. Bring the family, invite the grandparents and come and support the creativity of our local kids.

Where: Gallery Lane Cove, 164 Longueville Road, Lane Cove

A tradition going back to 2012

The exhibition has deep roots at Lane Cove Public School. The art enrichment program began in 2012, after staff took part in a professional learning session with visual arts consultants Liz Dunn and Meredith Rasdall the year before.

That first exhibition was held in the school hall, and the Lane Cove Loop newsletter covered it at the time. The show moved to Gallery Lane Cove in 2018 and has been there ever since.

Liz Dunn, who has run the program in recent years, says the focus has always been on encouraging each child’s personal and individual creative response to the experiences the program sets up. She points to how the continuing program has let students build real skills, and how much it means to have a gallery that values children’s creativity.