Celebrating our 6th year running with a lineup that blends returning favourites and exciting new talent

Gotham Studios Melbourne (GSM) Artists Collective is returning to the Affordable Art Fair, marking our 6th year with the fair and a homecoming to the city where it all began. This August, we’re bringing a refreshed stand, new perspectives, and a growing community of artists, anchored by a lineup that brings together returning favourites and a new wave of talent joining the Collective for the first time.

Returning artists Lisa Saad, Sebnem Gencer, Sheng Yi Lee, Luca Chiaravalle, and Francesca Laude are joined this year by Amanda Forsyth, broadening the range of work, perspective, and practice on show.

“Every year our stand evolves, and I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built together. Welcoming fresh voices alongside familiar ones is what keeps the Collective alive. It’s the best of both worlds for collectors and for us,” said Lisa Saad, lead of the Gotham Studios Melbourne Artists Collective.

Gotham Studios Melbourne has spent decades delivering standout visuals for global brands, but our Artists Collective is where we celebrate artistic exploration beyond the studio. It’s where personal expression takes centre stage, and where emerging and established artists share the same platform. Something this year’s blend of returning and new artists captures perfectly.

We can’t wait to connect, share our latest work, and bring art that sparks conversation long after the fair ends. Find us at Stand H1.

Lisa is the creative force behind Gotham Studios Collective. She’s been leading this collective to the Affordable Art Fair for five years straight, growing it into a space for fresh voices and bold ideas. She's a multidisciplinary photographic artist who builds layered worlds that sit somewhere between reality and imagination. Her practice is grounded in a deep interest in the human condition, exploring themes of identity, solitude, memory, and the push and pull between intimacy and distance. 

You’ll recognize her from her standout series, The Anonymous Man, which explores identity and place through cinematic digital art. She’s also bringing Quadrilateral Thoughts, a collection of layered photographic composites that read like small dreamscapes, and the latest 20¢ Bag of Lollies collection, a contemplative series of closed storefronts and lone figures that reflect on solitude and how much of life has shifted behind screens in the digital age.

Francesca’s paintings are a living archive of humanity’s enduring wisdom. Drawing on ancient philosophies, world affairs, and the timeless principles that have guided people through hardship, her work is both visually compelling and quietly instructive. Every canvas carries a message: that for every challenge we face, there is a path forward, illuminated by those who walked before us. Her art is an act of hope.

Sheng Yi’s journey began with a pencil and a growing obsession with black-and-white realism. When she picked up a brush, her world opened into colour. Working across large formats, she has since developed two celebrated collections: Food Portrait, which finds quiet beauty in the natural forms and personalities of fruits and vegetables; and Life According to George, a joyful return to the playful imagination of childhood. For Sheng Yi, art should delight. It should draw you in and hold you in its story.

For Şebnem, painting a cityscape is never simply an exercise in observation. It’s an act of memory. Her canvases hold moments, loves, losses, and the quiet experiences that leave a permanent mark. Through richly layered cityscapes, she creates spaces where viewers can find their own stories reflected back, wrapped in the same embrace that art has always offered her.

Melbourne-based artist Luca Chiaravalle creates intricate miniature galleries and contemporary mosaics that explore scale, perception, and the art of looking. His signature Miniature Gallery series places tiny figures within meticulously constructed worlds inside clear acrylic cubes, each piece entirely one-of-a-kind. Intimate in scale yet expansive in feeling, Luca’s work invites you to pause, lean in, and see the world a little differently.

For Amanda, every vintage object carries a story waiting to be rediscovered. Drawing on her background in fashion and a lifelong love of beautiful things, she transforms forgotten treasures through intricate hand embroidery. Each piece honours history while inviting viewers to see familiar objects in a new, contemporary light.

If you love art, slow moments, and the feeling of discovering something before everyone else does, this is your kind of weekend.

Grab your tickets below:

• Brisbane - 7-10 May 2026
• Melbourne - 27-30 August 2026
• Sydney - 5-8 November 2026