Sydney’s museums and art galleries are going through a period of upheaval. In August the Australian Museum, the oldest public museum in the country, closed for a year, principally to allow storage areas to be converted into new galleries for exhibitions. In early 2020 an even more venerable building, the convict barracks of 1811–19, which forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site on Macquarie Street, will reopen after a year’s closure during which the museum it houses is being transformed into ‘a new immersive visitor experience’.

Those unfamiliar with the breadth of Islamic art frequently assume that the importance of calligraphy derives from a broader prohibition against figural representation. However, as this remarkable exhibition shows, from the earliest Islamic period to the present, calligraphy has not replaced figures but operated alongside them and functioned as imagery.