Museum Of Contemporary Art 2007 Exhibition Program

Craigie Horsfield : Relation : 15 March - 3 June 2007

Born in England in 1949, Craigie Horsfield is an internationally renowned photographer and filmmaker. The MCA is working with the prestigious Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris on this major exhibition of Horsfield's work which covers all aspects of his practise from portraits of people, cities and the landscapes with which they interact; to film, photography, social projects and sound work.

Astoundingly beautiful and haunting, Horsfield presents us with a complex and integrated vision of humanity and art. He has been a radical proponent of ideas concerning art and community since the 1960s, exploring the central role of the audience in relation to a work of art, and how the individual relates to society. Duration and time often influence his work, challenging our inclination towards instantaneous
responses, and investigating the theory of "slow time". His work has anticipated much current thinking in art practice concerning the way in which art relates to the wider community.

Shortlisted for the Turner Prize 1996, Horsfield has said: "The work I make is intimate in scale but its ambition is, uncomfortable as I find it, towards an epic dimension, to describe the history of our century, and the centuries beyond, the seething extent of the human condition."

Stephen Birch : 15 March - 20 May 2007

This represents the first major solo exhibition by Stephen Birch, encompassing work from the last decade of practice. Birch was born in Melbourne in 1961 and currently lives and works in Sydney. The exhibition focuses on recent sculptures and large-scale installations, with negotiations underway to site a work on the front lawn of the MCA.

Over a ten year period, Birch's work has taken the form of subjects drawn from everyday life. Familiar yet disconcerting, the objects tease and play with the viewer's expectations. Forms including tyres, garbage bins and chandeliers take on human characteristics. Trees, long central to mythology and art history and a recurring element in Birch's practice, are often adorned with digital technology such as LCD screens that tantalisingly appear as windows to their thoughts and feelings.

The human figure also recurs in Birch's art, including recognisable identities from artist colleagues to comic book characters and political figures. Like the objects, these figures find themselves mute and inarticulate when faced with psychological dilemmas.

The process of construction is central to the experience of Birch's works. Created from various materials including fibreglass, papiermache, polyurethane and resin, they characteristically draw attention to their materials and methods. The material is similarly expressed whether in sculptural form or moving image technology, with wires and DVD players in full view. Birch's representations play with the language of artifice and illusion.

Highlights of the MCA Collection 7 April - 12 August 2007

The MCA is the only museum in Australia dedicated to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art. It holds a significant collection of over 5,000 Australian and international art works brought together since the late 1960s. Presenting the MCA's collection through a variety of engaging and thought-provoking exhibitions is a vital part of the MCA's annual program. Its dedicated Level 4 spaces are now in its 3rd year. The MCA regularly invites artists and cultural professionals to interpret its Collection in new and interesting ways, promoting the importance of Australian art and contributing to its understanding.

New Acquisitions 2007 28 April - 12 August 2007

Collecting is a vital part of the MCA's support for Australian artists, as crucial as exhibiting in terms of promoting the importance of Australian art for future generations. The MCA is the only museum in Australia dedicated to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art. It houses a significant collection of
over 5,000 Australian and international art works brought together since the late 1960s. This collection forms one of the core functions of the Museum's activities, playing a major role in the MCA's innovative exhibitions, touring projects, education and outreach programs, and high-quality publications.

Building on the exhibitions MCA Collection: New Acquisitions in Context (2005) and New Acquisitions 2006, this exhibition showcases work from the MCA collection, focussing on works recently acquired by Australian artists. Featured artists include Daniel Boyd and David Griggs with their bold, vibrant works on canvas; Louise Weaver with her delicately crocheted sculptural work Oracle Fox; and Todd McMillan and Kate Murphy with video-based installations.

Matthew Ngui : 1 June - 12 August 2007

This is a major exhibition of the work of Singapore-born, Perth-based artist Matthew Ngui. Born in 1962, Ngui is one of Singapore's most prominent artists, and has exhibited in solo and group projects around Australia and internationally, including the São Paulo and Venice Biennales and Documenta X. For almost two decades, Ngui has embraced the shifting point of view as a way of interrogating meaning and identity.

His drawings, installations, video works and performances fragment or transform images, objects and experiences from everyday life, calling attention to their cultural value as they move between contexts.
Each of Ngui's projects is developed in relation to its specific site and situation. This involves meticulous research and negotiation by the artist for each aspect of production, who considers these 'studio' processes as essential components of the final work. This exhibition will feature installation, sculpture and video spanning the past decade. A space presenting documentation and materials relating to Ngui's many public and site-specific projects and proposals is also planned to supplement the exhibition.

The Hours: Visual Arts of Contemporary Latin America : 21 June - 2 September 2007

A major exhibition of contemporary Latin American art comprising 121 works from the Daros-Latinamerican collection, one of the most important private collections of contemporary art in Europe.

It is organised by Daros-Latinamerica, Zürich, in co-operation with the Museum of Contemporary Art, and is curated by Sebastián López, former Director of the Gate Foundation, Amsterdam, and Curator of the Shanghai Biennale 2004. López has taken the concept of time as the perspective from which to explore and present the works. According to López, this "reveals some of their most significant traits and permits us to isolate them within a historical moment in the production of Latin American art. Many of the works reflect the social and political circumstances of particular countries or regions. Others deal with the past and the way it still plays a role in the present".

The Hours presents works by some of the most celebrated Latin American artists working today, including Guillermo Kuitca (Argentina), Doris Salcedo (Colombia), Los Carpinteros (Cuba) and Vik Muniz (Brazil). The work of rapidly-emerging younger artists, such as María Fernanda Cardoso (Colombia/Australia), Nicola Costantino (Argentina) and Dario Escobar (Guatemala), is also featured. Drawn from one of the world's foremost collections of Latin American art, this will be the largest exhibition of Latin American art ever staged in Australia.

Primavera 2007: Exhibition by young Australian artists 30 August- 11 November 2007

Now in its 16th year, Primavera is the MCA's annual exhibition of work by young Australian artists under the age of 35. This popular series was inaugurated in 1992 by Dr Edward and Mrs Cynthia Jackson, in memory of their talented daughter Belinda. Since its inauguration Primavera has become one of the longest running and most successful exhibitions on the MCA calendar.

Over its history this exhibition has profiled new generations of artists in fresh and innovative contexts. It has since come to play a significant role in profiling emerging artists from across the country, bringing their work to the attention of a broader public. Primavera 2007 will be curated by Russell Storer, who joined the MCA in 2001. He has organised a number of exhibitions, including Situation: Collaborations, collectives and artist networks from Sydney, Singapore and Berlin, Interesting Times: Focus on contemporary Australian art, and Mathew Jones/Simon Starling, as well as solo projects with Rodney Glick, Kathleen Petyarre, Ugo Rondinone, and Paddy Bedford (upcoming). He also writes regularly for various publications.

Julie Rrap 30 August - 4 November 2007

This major survey exhibition by Sydney artist Julie Rrap brings together key photographic series and installations, encompassing the past twenty-five years of her practice. Guest curated by Victoria Lynn, the exhibition examines the uncompromising way Rrap has used her own body in photography, video and sculpture to question representation, perception and power structures.

Drawing from a range of collections, the exhibition includes Rrap's first major work Disclosures: A Photographic Construct (1982), held in the MCA Collection, as well as the key installations Rise and Fall (1994), and Vital Statistics (1997). A component of new work produced especially for the exhibition will also be presented. Born in 1950, Julie Rrap is one of Australia's most prominent artists, with her work being held in most state and national collections. She has exhibited widely throughout Australia and
internationally, including the 1986, 1988 and 1992 Biennales of Sydney.

Victoria Lynn is an independent curator and writer based in Melbourne. Her extensive experience includes curating over 50 exhibitions of Australian and international art in her positions as Director, Creative Development at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne, and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Focus on Contemporary Australian Art III 13 September - 25 November 2007

The third instalment in an MCA series of major exhibitions showcasing the work of contemporary Australian artists, this exhibition features established artists who have a sustained exhibiting career of ten years or more, with each artist represented in some depth by a substantial work or body of works.

Guest curated by John Stringer, currently Curator of the Kerry Stokes Collection in Perth. John has extensive experience as a curator and an active interest in current practice. He is responsible for such significant exhibitions as the influential The Field that was opened at the inauguration of the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968 and more recently the innovative Seeking Transcendence that was on view at the Art Gallery of Western Australia during 2005.

'They Are Meditating' Bark paintings from the MCA Arnott's Collection 21 November 2007 - 17 February 2008

In June 1993 Arnott's Biscuits Limited donated a rare and significant collection of bark paintings to the Museum of Contemporary Art. The collection comprises 273 barks dating from the late 1960s through to the early 1980s, and includes 41 works by Yirawala (c.1897- 1976), the largest representation of work by this internationally renowned Aboriginal artist. Yirawala was a member of the Naborn clan of Gunwinggu language whose traditional lands lie in the Marugulidban (also called Morgaleetbah) region straddling the Liverpool River, south-west of Maningrida, NT. This region is also home to John Mawarndjurl, celebrated recently in Europe with a retrospective exhibition.

The artists represented in the Arnott's Collection are predominantly from Australia's north: Arnhem Land, Groote Eyelandt, Elcho Island, Milingimbi, Maningrida, Oenpelli, Cadell River, Croker Island, Melville and Bathurst Islands and Port Keats. Artists represented in the collection include Mawalan, Malangi, Nabarrayal, Djawa, Nanyin and Jimmy Ngamjmira. This collection of bark paintings extends a history of over 40,000 years of Aboriginal culture which still vigorously continues today. The post WWII decades were crucial to the practice of bark painting; a time when it would renew itself in a new context - to talk to the 'outside' world; and a time when the generation of painters most commonly known and admired would begin their careers. The exhibition will explore the richness of these early bark paintings alongside recent practice by subsequent generation of artists from those communities now again acclaimed.

Callum Innes : 27 November 2007 - 17 February 2008

This exhibition of new and recent paintings by Callum Innes brings together the themes and preoccupations of his practice over the last fifteen years. Examples from his series of 'identified form', 'isolated form', 'repetition', 'monologue', 'resonance' and shellac paintings join a substantial body of 'exposed' paintings, from the earliest to the most recent, in a stunning exploration of the development of the artist's visual vocabulary.

Callum Innes's paintings are rhythmically meditative, the result of a process that involves the repeated
removal as well as application of paint. Calm and authoritative, they nevertheless bear the traces of the controlled chaos of their production, the creative and destructive interaction of paint and turpentine.
Innes's paintings are sensuously and intellectually compelling. Working on several canvases at once, the regular unfolding of the 'exposed' group of paintings periodically interrupted by one from another series, the artist builds a complete language across all his work. The exhibition is organised by the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Tim Hawkinson : 15 December 2007 - 9 March 2008

Tim Hawkinson (born 1960) is a Los Angeles-based artist who works across a range of media, creating highly imaginative two- and three-dimensional assemblages from found and everyday materials that frequently incorporate kinetic and sound elements. Hawkinson's works vary in scale, from the small to the very large, and the enormous.

Using materials such as latex, plastic, cardboard, string and incorporating mechanical components, they expand and contract, rotate, and emit strange and wondrous sounds - intoning, singing, whistling and whining. Intricate and playful, Hawkinson's works engage with the human body, frequently incorporating elements of portraiture and the self-portrait as well as wider cultural and metaphysical references. For his MCA Sydney solo exhibition, Hawkinson will present a selection of sculptural, photographic and collaged works encompassing the early 1990s to the present, including new work made especially for the exhibition.

Tim Hawkinson was the subject of a major survey exhibition in 2004 coordinated by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles. His work has previously featured in the Whitney and Corcoran Biennales of 2002 and in a major survey exhibition at The Power Plant, Toronto in 2000. Hawkinson's MCA Sydney exhibition represents the first time that this significant artist has been seen in Australia, and he will come to Sydney to attend the opening events and give a public lecture on his art.

Shazia Sikander Summer 2007-2008 (exact dates TBC)

Shahzia Sikander was born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan where she studied painting in the Mughal miniaturist tradition. Since her relocation to New York in 1993 to undertake further studies, Sikander has developed a distinctive iconography built around the fusion of Eastern and Western imagery, mythology and popular cultural references. Sikander's art is characterised by its precision of line and delicacy of touch.

From tightly structured miniature paintings to larger, more loosely formed watercolours in which pigments stain and bleed into one another, creating impressionistic forms, her works incorporate both
figurative and abstract references. In these works Hindu and Muslim imagery co-exist as historical tradition meets contemporary interpretation.

Beauty, sensuality and a gently subversive humour underlies these works with their rounded female forms, mandalas, courtly interiors and dancing deities. Repetition of form and the overlaying of imagery is a recurrent feature of Sikander's paintings and watercolours. These themes are likewise illustrated in her recent three-dimensional installations which incorporate suspended veils of semi-transparent paper upon which forms merge in and out of one another. In 2003 Sikander produced her first projection-based work, an animated painting in which overlapping image fragments move in and out of one another to form a new whole.

By www.mca.com.au