The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia announced today highlights of its 2023 exhibition program line-up, under the vision of MCA Director, Suzanne Cotter.
The MCA’s 2023 exhibition program delivers a dynamic year of contemporary art to Sydney, with international firsts, performances and new approaches to exhibition making.
In this new artistic program aligned with the seasons, performance will take centre stage along with a revitalised focus given to the MCA Collection through new displays. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and culture remain embedded in the program, along with increased opportunities for Australian artists to realise new work.
The MCA’s recently renamed Macgregor Gallery on Level 1 North, will be the Museum’s site for significant contemporary art works and projects.
A renewed public program will commence to connect contemporary art and ideas with an ever-growing and diverse public, expanding beyond the gallery experience with MCA Talk, MCA Live, MCA Screen, and MCA Late.
MCA Director, Suzanne Cotter said, “We are excited to bring to Sydney an exceptional program of exhibitions, commissions and special projects by artists from Australia and around the world. The program marks the beginning of a new decade for the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) reflecting the dynamism, diversity and expansive nature of contemporary art in Australia and beyond.
The 2023 program will activate both museum and site to generate new conversations, between artists, artworks and the public and reflects our commitment to position Australian art as part of world conversations.”
The new program opens in Autumn 2023 with the fourth iteration of The National curated by Jane Devery, the MCA’s new senior curator of exhibitions. A major installation as part The National 4: Australian Art Now will be the first of a series of new projects to be shown in Macgregor Gallery.
In Winter 2023, Australian-born choreographer Adam Linder presents his first major work for a museum in Australia conceived for the space of the Macgregor Gallery. Adam Linder is well known for making work for both stage and gallery spaces, responding to the histories and social codes that underpin these different contexts. This choreography as exhibition raises the MCA’s commitment to engaging with experimental art forms. Linder’s new work for the MCA will focus on the museum as a space in which visitors increasingly perform for the camera, using art as a backdrop for their own image making.
During Spring 2023, Lebanese artist and composer Tarek Atoui presents his first solo exhibition in Australia, Water’s Witness, a major new sonic installation. Atoui is known for his collaborative performances and multisensory sculptural environments that challenge conventional ways of perceiving sound. The exhibition emerges from Atoui’s ongoing I/E (Infinite Ears) project, a series of works featuring custom-built musical instruments and sounds recorded in port cities around the world, from Porto and Athens to Beirut, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Istanbul and now for this exhibition, several locations in Sydney. The work draws on research made in collaboration with sounds engineers and musicians Chris Watson and Eric La Casa capturing the sounds and vibrations of coastal cities and their underwater ecologies.
Primavera
2023 sees the return of the MCA’s annual exhibition Primavera dedicated to the work of artists in Australia under the age of 35. This year’s edition will be guest curated by New-Zealand born, Sydney-based curator and artist Talia Smith.
Major Exhibitions
The MCA’s Special Exhibition Galleries on Level 3 will host across the year a series of large-scale exhibitions dedicated to artists working in Australia and around the world.
The National 4: Australian Art Now will the first major exhibition for 2023 and features works by an intergenerational and culturally diverse group of Australian artists and artist collectives, based in Australia and abroad. The selection of works in the MCA exhibition respond to our time of unprecedented change, imagining new ways of seeing and being in the world. Partner venues for The National 4: Australian Art Now are Carriageworks, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and in 2023 for the first time, Campbelltown Arts Centre in Western Sydney.
In Winter 2023, acclaimed American artist Zoe Leonard presents her epic photographic work Al Rio/To the River in her debut Australian exhibition, organised in collaboration with the Musee d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg and the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris. Through more than 500 black and white, analogue images, Leonard’s nuanced and complex portrait of the river reflects its broader role as a site of agriculture, commerce, culture, policing, and surveillance.
The much-anticipated Summer 2023/2024 Sydney International Art Series exhibition, which brings to Australia a major exhibition by a renowned international artist, will be announced in the new year.
Commissions and Special Projects
In 2023, the MCA is working with Melbourne-based artist and Kamilaroi man, Reko Rennie to commission a new work for the Loti Smorgon Sculpture Terrace on Level 4.
Vincent Namatjira’s powerful Circular Quay foyer wall commission, P.P.F. (Past-Present-Future), 2021 will remain on display in 2023, to enable more people to view this important work. New commissions will be on display throughout the building including Daniel Boyd’s Untitled, 2014 new waterside corridor wall commission. The Bella Room commission and a new program of artists led special projects for the MCA Foundation Hall will be announced early in the new year.
MCA Collection
The MCA will present a new display opening Winter curated collaboratively by the MCA curatorial team – Anna Davis, Pedro de Almeida, Jane Devery, Anneke Jaspers, Keith Munro, Megan Robson, Manya Sellers, and Lara Strongman. The new display will feature a series of artists rooms showcasing artists whose work the Museum has collected in depth and has been rarely seen. The rooms will also feature recent acquisitions exhibited for the first time. Artists include Joan Brassil, Tracey Moffat, and major works from the Arnott’s Barks collection.
MCA Collection: Eight Artists, focuses on work that respond to notions of seriality, repetition and return in the collect. It will feature singular pieces by Sally Gabori, Raelene Kerinauia Amputate, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Naminapu Maymuru-
White, Esme Timbery, Judith Wright and Gulumbu Yunupiŋu, alongside a new commission by Sandra Seligt. The works draws upon depictions of cultural stories and practices, kinship relations, matrilineal lineages and compelling relationships to the body.
Beyond the Museum walls
The MCA’s long-standing C3West program will continue its groundbreaking artist-led social impact work in Western Sydney with three new projects to be announced in 2023. C3West will collaborate with multiple partner organisations to engage diverse communities across Western Sydney that will see contemporary art and artists bring value to a range of community needs such as improving health literacy among culturally and linguistically diverse women and promoting the importance of kinship to the wellbeing of Pasifika communities.
Expanded Public Engagement program
The MCA launches a new public program in 2023, delivered in strands: MCA Talk, MCA Live, MCA Screen, and MCA Late. The program will connect contemporary art and ideas that extend beyond the gallery experience and partner across the year with key cultural institutions including Sydney Festival, Sydney Mardi Gras World Pride, FAMBO, the French Embassy’s Night of Big Ideas, NAIDOC Week and Vivid Sydney.
The MCA’s National Centre for Creative Learning (NCCL) will continue its focus on inclusive creative learning programs adding even more resources for students and schools. A dedicated MCA Family space will be a new addition to the NCCL to cater for free drop-in creative intergenerational workshops that will accompany four of the 2023 exhibitions. More self-guided resources will be available for schools in the second half of 2023.
