NSW Minister for Tourism and the Arts, John Graham today confirmed the Sydney International Art Series 2024–2025 will make a highly anticipated return this summer, bringing the works of three internationally renowned artists exclusively to Sydney. The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA Australia) will host a major exhibition by acclaimed American artist Julie Mehretu, the first exhibition of the artist's work to be shown in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region from 29 November 2024 – 27 April 2025. The Art Gallery of New South Wales will present the works of Magritte from 26 October 2024 – 9 February 2025 and of Cao Fei from 30 November 2024 – 13 April 2025.

Minister for the Arts, Music and the Night-time Economy, and Minister for Jobs and Tourism John Graham said: 'Julie Mehretu, René Magritte and Cao Fei are three of the most recognised and influential artists of their respective generations. I’m pleased that art lovers will be able to enjoy them in Sydney next summer.

'The three exhibitions under the Sydney International Art Series 2024–25 program reflects our ambition to ensure Sydney is a global cultural hub where art and creativity is celebrated, a place where locals and visitors can experience the most exciting and cutting-edge cultural offerings, from around Sydney, NSW, Australia and the world'.

Julie Mehretu: A transcore of the radical imaginatory at MCA Australia will present more than 80 paintings and works on paper dating from 1995 to the present and will include new works created especially for the exhibition.

Mehretu is widely regarded as one of the most significant painters of her generation. Named by Time magazine as one of the ‘100 most influential people in 2020’ her paintings have been lauded for their capacity to convey the interconnectedness, energy and urgencies of our globalised world. In 2024, The New York times described the artist as 'one of today's most original and thought-provoking painters'.

Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1970, and based in Harlem, New York, Mehretu is renowned for her powerful abstract paintings, layered with a variety of materials, marks and meanings. Often monumental in scale, her works reference the histories of painting, architecture and past civilisations while addressing some of the most immediate themes of our contemporary moment, including migration, revolution, climate change, global capitalismand our technological present.

MCA Australia Director, Suzanne Cotter said about the exhibition: ‘The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia is delighted to be presenting to audiences in Australia this remarkable exhibition by an artist who is undoubtedly one of today’s most exciting living painters and whose dynamic language of abstraction speaks so powerfully to the contemporary world in which we live. The experience of Mehretu’s paintings is nothing short of a visual and physical event. We are proud to present this year’s Sydney International Art Series with Julie Mehretu to build upon the MCA’s history of introducing to the public in Australia the work of today’s most influential artists.

Artist Julie Mehretu, who will be here in Sydney for the opening of the MCA Australia exhibition, has said about her work:

‘Abstraction is something that you cannot define, you cannot necessarily hold it. There is an opaqueness to how you think about and how one experiences the painting. My interests are not in trying to dictate, or determine, or explain, or try to give any information to anyone in that way. There aren’t any directives or proposals in these paintings. These paintings are experiential paintings that are informed by the time, by me, by this moment, by trying to digest that'.

Exhibition highlights:

Among the highlights of the exhibition are Mehretu’s major cycle of nine paintings, Femenine in nine (2023), exuberant black paintings inscribed with iridescent gestural marks which will have their first museum presentation at the MCA. Named after the 1974 musical composition by Julius Eastman, they offer a visual and sonic meditation on conditions of darkness and instability that define the contemporary era.

Also to be presented in the exhibition are the Transpaintings (2023–24); a luminous new series of translucent free-standing paintings which are framed in aluminum sculptural supports conceived by Berlin-based sculptor Nairy Baghramian, around which the audience is invited to move and become part of the work.

The exhibition also presents a survey of Mehretu’s drawings and works on paper dating from the mid-1990s that will offer a historical overview of her pictorial language, demonstrating the dynamic inter-relationships across media throughout her oeuvre.

A program of performances and invitations to artists, writers and thinkers to respond to Julie Mehretu’s work will accompany the exhibition.

An new publication on the artist will accompany the exhibition, which is curated by Suzanne Cotter, MCA Director, and Jane Devery, Senior Curator of Exhibitions.

Sydney International Art Series

The exhibition is part of the Sydney International Art Series which is now in its 15th edition. An initiative of the NSW Government via its tourism and major events agency Destination NSW, the Sydney International Art Series brings the works of internationally renowned artists exclusively to Sydney each summer.

Through this program, MCA Australia has presented major surveys of leading international artists in Sydney including Tacita Dean, Do Ho Suh, Doug Aitken, Cornelia Parker, Pipilotti Rist, Anish Kapoor, Yoko Ono, Grayson Perry and Tatsuo Miyajima.

Julie Mehretu is one of the most influential contemporary artists working today. Born in Addis Ababa in 1970 and currently living and working in New York, Mehretu has exhibited extensively internationally at major institutions across the US, UK and Europe since the 1990s, including recent major solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2021) and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2019). She is the subject of the exhibition Julie Mehretu: Ensemble currently on at Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection, Venice. Mehretu has participated in major group exhibitions including the 58th Venice Biennale (2019); Performa 17, New York (2017); 12th Sharjah Biennial (2015); 10th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2014); documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (2012); 15th Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2006); 26th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2004); 54th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2004); Whitney Biennial, New York (2004); and 8th Istanbul Biennial (2003).

Mehretu has undertaken significant commissions of monumental scale including Mural (2010) for Goldman Sachs, New York, and Howl, eon (I, II) (2017) for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2022, she collaborated with renowned American composer Tyshawn Sorey and director Peter Sellars to create Monochromatic Light (Afterlife), an immersive, spiritual meld of virtuosic music, art and dance that reflects on collective memory and ancestral trauma resonant today. In 2005 Mehretu was the recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Award and the American Art Award from the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2015 she was awarded the US Department of State Medal of Arts Award. Mehretu is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Design. In 2020, she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the arts.

Julie Mehretu: A transcore of the radical imaginatory will open at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia on 29 November 2024 until 27 April 2025.