Getting to the art of the matter in 2008, Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com

David Jolly’s glass painting.

According to the Age.com, the prestigious Tolarno Galleries will reopen in a new space in Exhibition Street with a powerful body of work by up-and-comer Benjamin Armstrong. Featuring hand-printed works on paper and glass-blown sculptures, Armstrong's essentially surreal sensibility is a powerful start for the new space. Meanwhile the old Tolarno space in Flinders Lane is to be revamped for a move by the recently opened Block Projects. Moving from a tiny space upstairs in Block Arcade, the new gallery will feature such artists as Jeremy Kibel, Murray McKeich and Mira Gojak.

Also experiencing a radical shift will be Arc1 Gallery. Its next-door neighbour, the rental Span Galleries, has officially closed and Arc1 will take over the major space, opening with a new body of work by the winner of the 2000 Samstag scholarship, painter David Ralph.

Up the road, Silvershot Gallery will be closed from mid-January while Michelle Ussher prepares a major installation over a three-month period. She will create a church-like structure measuring 13 metres by 8.5 metres, with walls 2.4 metres high and two gables extending up to four metres high. Ussher will be drawing on and inside the structure until the show opens in March.

One of the art events of the year will be the launch of the massive tome on the work of Dale Frank published by Schwartz City. Conceived by Frank and publisher Morry Schwartz, this monograph is the most ambitious Australian art book to date. Coming in at 216 pages, So Far: The Art of Dale Frank 1980-2005 features a remarkable dye-cut cover, making the book a sculptural artwork in itself.

In Fitzroy, Sutton Gallery will kick off the year with David Jolly's paintings on glass. Jolly treats his chosen material as though it is a permeable membrane between artist and viewer. What we see may appear to be a literal rendering of the subject, but the slightly disconcerting element in his works comes largely from the simple fact that he has quite literally painted it from the 'other side'. While remarkably understated, it is an act of technical bravado. Over the years he has painted high-rise apartment buildings, deserted airports, graffiti in the streets of Barcelona and the detention centre at Woomera. These disparate subjects are linked via a strange sense of the surreal, an element that carries through to his latest body of work executed mostly during a 12-month Rimbun Dahan residency in Malaysia which he undertook in 2006.

Nellie Castan Gallery will open the year with the wonderfully unpredictable paintings of Megan Walch. While by and large these are clearly abstractions, one simultaneously detects a fascinating clash of cultural languages; hints of the East meeting the West in a remarkable cacophony. Only in Walch's world could one confuse a motorcycle decal with a foetal form or a moss garden with a solar storm. Her blasting palette balances these works with an almost 1950s sci-fi kitsch element - think Barbarella on acid.

Neon Parc in Bourke Street will start the year with work by Katherine Huang, who utilises an assortment of materials to make freestanding or wall-mounted sculptures that resemble scaffolding, furniture and buildings. It will be followed by Noel Skrzypczak's characteristic collaged abstractions in a show with the enticing title 12 Disasters. Scott Liversey gallery in Armadale will leap into the new year with powerful shows by Darren McDonald and Todd Hunter, both of whom mix figuration and abstraction in seductive ways.

Melbourne's public sculpture has also received a much needed boost with ConnectEast's $5.5 million artwork program. During 2008 sculptors Emily Floyd, Callum Morton, Simeon Nelson and James Angus will undertake projects along the new EastLink.

Aficionados will need to pencil in the key dates for the Melbourne Art Fair 2008 at the Royal Exhibition Building, from July 30 to August 3.

Interstate, the highlight of the year may be the major Fiona Hall survey exhibition at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art. Spanning a period from the 1970s to the present, and embracing the unique sculpture, installation and garden design that has made Hall a favourite of critics, curators and collectors, the show promises to be a tour de force. Hall is renowned for her intricate aluminium sardine can sculptures which sprout plant specimens from the top and hide erotic sexual scenes within. Hall's work tackles issues such as globalisation, colonialism, and environmental degradation.