Tacita Dean at MCA

Tacita Dean is considered by many to be one of the most significant artists of her generation. And this summer, the largest showcase of the UK-born artist’s work ever exhibited in the Southern Hemisphere is coming exclusively to Sydney’s MCA.

Opening on Friday December 8 and running until Sunday March 3, Tacita Dean brings together Dean’s key works capturing the artist’s poetic studies of chance, memory, entropy, history and time. Featuring a number of significant pieces never before exhibited on Australian shores, the exhibition includes recent film works, large-scale chalkboard drawings, and photographic and print series.

Geography Biography (2023) is a major new experimental film work, biographical in nature and drawing from past films and the artist’s personal archive. The ambitious work showcases Dean’s unique filmmaking techniques, including her signature ‘aperture gate masking system’, which enables the artist to collage Super-8 and 16mm film within a 35mm film.

Elsewhere, The Wreck of Hope (2022) is a monumental chalk on blackboard drawing, presenting a landscape under threat in the form of a melting ice cap. Paradise (2021) is a film that formed part of Dean’s contributions to The Dante Project, a new ballet inspired by The Divine Comedy (1321), which premiered at London’s Royal Opera House. And One Hundred and Fifty Years of Painting (2021) is a filmed conversation between the painters Luchita Hurtado and Julie Mehretu, who share a birthday 50 years apart and would collectively turn 150 years old in 2020. (With Hurtado passing away months before her birthday in 2020, the intimate and illuminating film holds extra weight and significance, even three years on.)

Tacita Dean is part of the Sydney International Art Series, a NSW Government and Destination NSW initiative bringing the works of internationally renowned artists exclusively to Sydney.

Tickets are on sale now, with free entry for MCA members and those aged 17 years and under. Art Passes are also available, covering single entry to all three exhibitions in the Sydney International Art Series.

This Wednesday 31 January, Entry to the Tacita Dean exhibition will be free, thanks to Telstra. Open from 9am - 5pm at the MCA.

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