As the Drill Hall Gallery enters its 30th year it's in need of an overhaul. Director Terence Maloon hopes a fundraising art auction will raise around $100,000 to help pay for state-of-the-art gallery lighting to replace the 1980s "garden lights" currently used. Artists, gallerists and well-wishers have donated 28 artworks to be auctioned by Bonhams in Sydney on December 1. Paintings by artists including Aida Tomescu, Tony Tuckson and Gareth Sansom will go under the hammer, alongside modernist sculptures by Paul Selwood, Campbell Robertson-Swann and Dave Teer. Also being auctioned is a portfolio of 12 artist's prints donated by Kay Lanceley, widow of artist Colin Lanceley, which includes works by Cressida Campbell, Arthur Boyd and Tim Storrier. "Our gallery is in urgent need of refurbishment to ensure that we can continue to provide high quality exhibitions of contemporary Australian art and support artists through mid-career surveys, retrospectives and thematic, ideas-based shows," Maloon says. "The Drill Hall Gallery is a unique space, built during the Second World War, and the refurbishment will ensure the natural light and beauty of the gallery is reinstated." Maloon says the gallery's owners the Australian National University will contribute "substantial funds" to the upgrade but more are needed. "It's a fact of life in both universities and the arts these days that budgets only stretch so far, so it was wonderful to get the green light to do an art fundraiser," he says. Bonhams' Drill Hall Gallery Fundraising Auction will be held in Sydney on December 1 at 6.30pm. More information is available at bonhams.com/auctions/22856.

Outsiders inside

For this year's annual exhibition the Marsden Arts Group visits the theme outsiders through a variety of mediums exploring boundaries, exclusion, fringe dwellers, difference, transcendence and more. Works from 13 artists showcase barriers and highlight aspects of outsider experiences. "Being an outsider can reap great rewards when linked with creativity, humour and mania or alternately it can hold great despair as with the case of refugees, depression and alienation," the organisers say. "It can be hard or it can be easy to become outsiders and can change so quickly between the extremes." Artists in the show include: Ian Baird, Julie Delves, Liz Dovey, Val Gee, Margaret Gordon, Susan Hey, Marilyn Hutchinson, Sally Jones, Margaret Kalms, Manuel Pfeiffer, Barbara van der Linden, Patricia Wheatstone and Delene White. The exhibition is on from November 26 to December 6 at Watson Art Gallery, 1 Aspinall Street, Watson. An afternoon tea to meet the artists will be held on Sunday December 6 from 1pm to 3pm.

Seeing the future

Works from Canberra's up-and-coming artists will be on show at the ANU School of Art Graduating Exhibition 2015 opening this week. The achievements of the graduates will be spread across the entire school and its galleries. The exhibition showcases the work of students completing awards in undergraduate programs including Bachelor of Visual Arts, Bachelor of Digital Arts and Bachelor of Design Arts degrees, and the Bachelor degrees with Honours. See the culmination of years of study in art practice, as well as art history and art theory, with the works representing the successful resolution of thought processes, skills and making, working in and across disciplines. The exhibition is on at the ANU School of Art from Friday November 27 to Sunday December 6.

Chair shared

Late last year the owner of Yarralumla wood-workshop Thor's Hammer Thor Diesendorf collaborated with one of Canberra's most respected long-time architects Enrico Taglietti to build a new version of Taglietti's iconic "polyhedral" lounge chair. And it seems the project to create a limited run of five polyhedrica chairs to celebrate the design's 60th birthday has paid off with one of the hand-crafted chairs purchased by the National Gallery of Australia. The chair will be on exhibition at the NGA in 2016 as part of its Australian Collection as an example of outstanding furniture design and craftsmanship. The original ply chair was designed in 1952 when Taglietti lived in Milan and was later exhibited in New York. The 2014 version was made in the Thor's Hammer workshop using spotted gum plywood and recycled red mahogany, with a stainless steel base crafted by local sculptor Geoff Farquhar-Still. "With over 16 different angles in the plywood enclosure alone, polyhedrica was a deceptively difficult to make," Diesendorf says. "Enrico loves to design and its always exciting and scary having him visit the workshop because he will come up with another refinement, it's been such a privilege to work with him."

Funding windfall

Five key arts organisations the ACT Writers Centre, Canberra Glassworks, Music for Canberra, PhotoAccess and Strathnairn Arts Association will share in more than $1.54 million from the ACT government for 2016. A further eight organisations – the Australian National Capital Artists , Ausdance ACT, ArtSound, Canberra International Film Festival, M16 Artspace, Pro Musica (Canberra International Music Festival), Screen ACT, and the You Are Here Festival – will share in more than $515,000 from the ACT Art Fund Program to provide a program of exhibitions, events and services over the next two years. The Canberra City Band will also receive one-year funding to further develop its activities. For more information about the 2016 ACT Arts Fund, visit arts.act.gov.au.