Major international art exhibitions coming to Sydney’s MCA and Art Gallery of NSW

The Art Gallery of NSW and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia have secured major international exhibitions for next summer as part of the Sydney International Art Series 2023/24.

Works of internationally acclaimed artists Tacita Dean, Louise Bourgeois and Wassily Kandinsky have been secured exclusively for Sydney.

The Art Gallery of NSW will feature the largest exhibition of artist Louise Bourgeois ever displayed in Australia and an exhibition comprehensively spanning the work of Wassily Kandinsky. This project is supported by the NSW Government’s Blockbusters Funding initiative.

NSW Minister for the Arts and Tourism Ben Franklin notes “it is estimated around 28,000 art lovers will visit Sydney to experience these incredible exhibitions, injecting more than $21 million of visitor expenditure into the NSW economy.

“Bringing the best international art to Sydney and delivering world-class cultural experiences is a key pillar of our commitment to make Sydney and NSW the major events capital and premier visitor economy of the Asia Pacific.”

Art Gallery of NSW Director Dr Michael Brand notes “with an expansion that has doubled our exhibition space we can now present major exhibitions in new and innovative ways. Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night, or Has the Night Invaded the Day? will make history as the first monographic exhibition to be presented in the Art Gallery’s new SANAA-designed building.

“Spanning seven decades, the exhibition is an unprecedented presentation of the French-American artist’s practice featuring more than 150 works that will inhabit not one but two major spaces: the crisp, white rooms of our major exhibition gallery, and the atmospheric Tank. Here is an extraordinary opportunity to dramatise the tensions, the contradictions, the powerful psychological oppositions, that drove Bourgeois’s art and formed its content.”  

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia will showcase an in-depth presentation by acclaimed artist Tacita Dean, which will premiere works never before seen in the Southern Hemisphere.

Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Suzanne Cotter added “Tacita Dean is undoubtedly one of today’s greatest living artists and truly an artist of our time. We are delighted to be presenting this major exhibition of her powerful and deeply human work to a broad audience in Australia.”

The Sydney International Art Series is an initiative of the NSW Government through Destination NSW, in collaboration with the Art Gallery of NSW and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, to bring the world’s most outstanding international artists and their works exclusively to Sydney.  For more information on the 2023-24 series visit www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au and www.mca.com.au.   

Sydney International Art Series 2023-24

Art Gallery of NSW:
Kandinsky – 4th November 2023 to 10th March 2024
Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night, or Has the Night Invaded the Day? – 25th November 2023 to 28th April 2024  

Museum of Contemporary Art Australia:
Tacita Dean – 8th December 2023 to 3rd March 2024

Image top: Louise Bourgeois, Crouching spider, 2003, bronze, brown and polished patina and stainless steel, 270.5 x 835.6 x 627.3 cm Photo: Ron Amstutz, © The Easton Foundation

Image centre: Wassily Kandinsky Improvisation 28 (second version) 1912 oil on canvas, 112.6 × 162.5 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By Gift 37.239 Photo courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

Image above: Tacita Dean, Paradise, (still), 2021, 35mm colour anamorphic film, with music, Paradiso by Thomas Adès image courtesy the artist; Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery New York/Paris, © the artist