Now in its eighth year, the #Twitter Art Exhibit has raised more than $50,000 for charities and non-profit organisations around the world.

Artists donate postcard-sized, handmade original artwork to the #TAE – which are then showcased for purchase – with 100 per cent of the proceeds donated to charity. This year, Pegasus Riding for the Disabled ACT is the beneficiary charity.

The entire exhibit is delivered by a group of volunteer organisers and artists; there is no entry fee; and artists of all levels – from emerging talent to seasoned professionals – are showcased.

A spirit of generosity imbues this exhibition, as it has from its inception.

The exhibition's founder David Sandum, a Swedish-born artist and social media influencer in the field of fine arts, first conceived the open exhibition in 2010 as a vehicle for doing good through online community building.

The first exhibition hoped for 140 entries, symbolic of the 140 characters used on Twitter. The response was so enthusiastic that 260 cards were submitted from 24 countries.

This year more than 680 original art postcards have been received.

They'll go on display at Straithnairn Arts Gallery, 90 Stockdill Drive, Holt, until April 29.

Nationally acclaimed performer and traditional Chinese culture advocate Guo Degang will serve as a cultural ambassador in China for Canberra's National Museum of Australia. As the National Museum prepares to take Old Masters - a major exhibition of bark paintings - on tour in China, Guo has partnered with the cultural institution to promote Australian history and culture in that country.

Guo is a household name in China and has more than 68 million followers on the social media site Weibo. Guo came to Canberra last week to sign a letter of agreement under which he will promote the museum's programs in China. While here, he visited the museum's conservation laboratory to witness some of the barks being prepared for the tour.

NMA director Dr Mathew Trinca said he was delighted to have Guo on board as a cultural ambassador: "The National Museum is committed to taking the Australian story to the world and we're delighted to partner with Guo to help us reach Chinese audiences."

Guo said Australia was a bounteous country, rich in history and culture. "In recent years during my visits to Australia for business and personal interest, I have seen opportunities for greater cultural exchange between our two countries. I am honoured to be appointed as a cultural ambassador for the National Museum of Australia, and to make my contribution during the Old Masters exhibition tour of China."

The Old Masters exhibition, featuring more than 150 artworks and objects, opens at the National Museum of China in Beijing in July 2018, ahead of a 20-month tour. It will later open in cities including Shanghai, Chengdu and Shenzhen before going to Taiwan. The exhibition will feature master painters including Yirawala and Narritjin Maymuru, Mawalan Marika and David Malangi, who put Aboriginal bark painting firmly on the map.

The ACT's fastest growing festival, DESIGN Canberra 2018, will celebrate the strong geometry present throughout our city and the ways it creates human, creative and global connections from Australia's city of design.

Geometry is everywhere we look: inscribed on the earth, in our buildings and our city's plan. Geometry contrasts with and responds to the surrounding landscape by creating borders and forming spaces.

These spaces define Canberra: triangles, concentric circles and arcs connect major avenues and underpin the city's early planning.

Craft ACT artistic director and DESIGN Canberra presenter Rachael Coghlan said they were calling for design projects to feature during the festival that reference or respond to geometry, Canberra's distinctive form.

"While geometry is etched in the history of our city, it also establishes a blueprint for the shape of things to come and is rich with possibilities," she said.

Running from November 5-25, DESIGN Canberra 2018 will transform the nation's capital, hosting more than 100 events. Now in its fifth year, the festival increases its reach and engagement each year, linking makers and designers with new audiences and forging unexpected collaborations and marketplace connections.

Why Painting and Why Photorealism? at ANCA Gallery is an exhibition by Canberra artist Patrick Larmour that explores our various relationships to ephemeral consumer objects and the claims they lay on our time and bodies.

The exhibition presents a survey of recent work from Larmour that places painting with sculptural installation, video and commercially manufactured pieces. It explores the various relationships ourselves, as bodies, have to time and our environments through depictions of ephemeral, mundane consumer objects such as torches, medication, cutlery, gloves, and make-up.

These objects lay claims on our bodies through touch and our lives through extended use. Often, they are objects that are part of life despite ourselves, reflecting necessary and unavoidable needs outside of choice as much as the fulfilment of desires.

The exhibition does not seek to answer its titular questions. Rather, it plays with two methods of working that have been central to his public practice to date while introducing new more poetic explorations of subjective experience in other media.

Why Painting and Why Photorealism? by Patrick Larmour opens on April 11, at ANCA Gallery, 1 Rosevear Place, Dickson.