Art from the Heart: Colour, Courage & Community
Friday, 16 October, 2026
If you've ever visited an Art from the Heart exhibition, you'll know it isn't your usual polite charity show. The artworks are bright, funny, angry, tender and political. Some of them are painted with injecting equipment. A lot of it is about survival.
Each artwork is created by Sydney's Uniting Medically Supervised Injecting Centre service users, who every year, pick up a paintbrush and tell the city their story.
Art from the Heart 2026
2026 marks the exhibition's 16th iteration, also landing in MSIC's 25th anniversary year. The City of Sydney describes the show as a celebration of the "power of creativity, resilience and community."
This milestone anniversary is already marked on the walls. One 2026 piece, 'The Hearts of MSIC', is a collage of paper hearts with messages, made by artist Megan Moses together with service users, supporters and staff.
Megan says she'd been carrying the idea for a couple of years and saw the 25th birthday as the right moment to give it to the centre.
This year the exhibition moves to Paddington Town Hall, from Friday 16th to Monday 19th October, with the official launch celebrations taking place on Saturday 17th from 2pm-4pm. Entry is free, and everyone is welcome. The silent auction has already kicked off with bidding available online, and as always, 100% of each sale going directly to the artist.
The Beginning
MSIC opened its doors on Darlinghurst Road on 6 May 2001. It was the first supervised injecting centre in the Southern Hemisphere and the English-speaking world. Twenty-five years later it is still the only one in NSW.
The art project came ten years later, in 2011. It started as part of MSIC’s art therapy work, with a simple goal: build social inclusion and give people a way to tell their own stories.
The model hasn’t changed much since. Each year MSIC hands out canvases, paint, brushes and other materials. Artists get a few weeks to create. The centre then frames the work, hangs it in a public space and runs a silent auction. The artists keep all the money.
As the 2025 catalogue puts it, the public showing and sale of the work is fundamental to the project. It isn’t art made about people who use drugs. It’s art made by them themselves, priced, bought and taken home by the public.
Over 16 years the exhibition has moved around Sydney. Here are a few moments along the way:
Early years – shows were held close to home in Kings Cross, including at the Kings Cross Neighbourhood Centre on Darlinghurst Road.
2017 – the seventh exhibition showed more than 120 artworks across two city venues.
2018 – the show launched at Wayside Chapel in Potts Point, then moved to the ArtHouse Hotel in the CBD.
2019 – a move to 107 Projects in Redfern, with nearly 100 works in the silent auction.
2021 – COVID pushed the whole thing online. The theme was ‘Looking Forward’.
2022 – back on the walls at 107 Redfern with an incredible 148 works and the theme ‘Come as you are’.
2023 – the project chose examine the strength in our collective with the theme was ‘Solidarity’, again at 107 Redfern.
2025 – a new home at Tramsheds, opened by Archibald Prize winner Ben Quilty. The theme was ‘Policy and Paint: the art of reform’.
2026 – Paddington Town Hall, in MSIC’s 25th year with local celebrity and MSIC supporter Gretel Killeen.
In their own words
Over the years, the people behind the exhibition – artists, staff and supporters – have explained why it matters.
MSIC's Director Dr Marianne Jauncey has long framed the show as a reminder to the wider community.
Writing for an earlier exhibition, she said the artists are “people first and foremost, all with different skills, talents and a story to tell.”
She has added that there is far more to MSIC’s clients than the short time they spend inside the centre.
When the 2018 show launched at Wayside Chapel, CEO and pastor Jon Owen spoke about art as part of healing, both for the artist and for the community. He also didn’t pretend the work was always easy to look at.
“All art tells a story, sometimes brutal, sometimes confronting.”
Matt Dibbayawan, who managed MSIC’s health education team when the show moved to Redfern in 2019, said it had been “inspiring to see what happens when somebody has the opportunity to express themselves.”
The artists
The strongest voices, of course, are the artists’ own.
In 2022, artist Kimberly won the Sonia Edwards Award, named for a long-term MSIC service user who has since passed and wanted to leave something other artists could aim for.
Kimberly said painting had helped her through a very hard time, and that the reaction surprised people around her.
“Most people didn’t know that I could paint, they had no idea.”
She also said art had opened up a way to keep moving through recovery and focus on the present, rather than only on past trauma.
In the 2025 catalogue, an artist called Melsky painted a lion hiding beneath a colourful mane and called it 'No Judgement'. The statement next to it is one many in our community will recognise.
The lion, Melsky wrote, stands for “the courage, strength and bravery we as drug users have to maintain.”
Other 2025 artists brought the injecting centre straight onto the canvas.
One artist, DC, used injecting equipment and barrels to spread paint. Another, Kris, painted a reminder to dispose of fits safely.
Marley Fischer, alongside their artwork in the 2025 catalogue, wrote about painting from the heart, their Indigenous upbringing, and how life had turned around since their time on the streets. A house of his own, a cat, and a future that looks bright. He said he hoped his story could help someone else.
From the 2025 Art from the Heart catalogue
Art and advocacy
The exhibition has never been only about art. Its themes track the politics of drug use in NSW.
The 2025 theme, ‘Policy and Paint: the art of reform’, came out of the second NSW Drug Summit. In her welcome in the 2025 catalogue, Dr Jauncey pointed out that many MSIC artists are politically engaged and follow drug law reform closely. She argued that supervised injecting doesn’t need big purpose-built centres. Services that already hand out injecting equipment could let people use on site, if only the law allowed it.
She also wrote that, for staff, overdose figures are never just numbers. They are people the team works with, talks with and laughs with every day. Some of them have been Art from the Heart artists.
Back in 2023, the launch was described as “an open invitation to accept and be accepted, without expectation and without judgement.”
This sentiment ties in with what peer-led harm reduction is all about too. Show up as you are. Be treated with dignity. Have your voice heard.
Get involved
There are a few easy ways to support this year’s exhibition:
Visit – head to Stapleton Hall at Paddington Town Hall, 10am–4pm, from Friday 16th to Monday 19th October.
Come to the launch – Saturday 17 October, 2pm–4pm.
Bid – browse the works and place a bid on the Art from the Heart website before midnight on 28 October.
Spread the word – share the exhibition with friends, family and workmates.
Book a tour – MSIC runs free public tours of the centre. Booking details are on the Uniting website.
25 years on, MSIC is still the only supervised injecting service in NSW. The art on display is a reminder of progress made, what’s still at stake, and of the talent, humour and humanity ever present in our vibrant community.