29 Nov 2024

MCA Australia opens Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory for its Sydney International Art Series 2024-2025 exhibition

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA Australia), on Friday 29 November opened the first major survey in Australia and the Asia Pacific region of renowned Ethiopian American artist Julie Mehretu, presented for its Sydney International Art Series 2024-2025 summer exhibition.  

Julie Mehretu (b.Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1970) is one of today’s most acclaimed living painters. The New York artist’s first exhibition in Australia reveals her commitment to painting as a contemporary art form.  Described by The New York Times as 'one of today's most original and thought-provoking painters’, her works speak to the power of art to express the dynamic and intersecting movement of history, people and cultures that shape our understanding of the world. Using abstraction as a richly layered language her works are informed by the histories of art and mark making across millennia, from Chinese ink painting and Japanese manga to rock art, literature and music.

Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory at MCA Australia charts an explosively experimental period in Mehretu’s art and includes more than 80 works by the artist including significant loans from public and private collections. The exhibition features 36 paintings completed by the artist between 2018 and 2024 alongside several major new painting cycles completed in 2023 and 2024. Many works are presented to the public for the first time, including Mehretu’s most recent TRANSpaintings, while over 50 etchings, drawings and works on paper, from the mid 1990’s to now, offer a retrospective of the foundational role of drawing and printmaking in the artist’s practice.

Painting, for Mehretu, is the result of dynamic collaboration; from master printers and the assistants who work with her in her studio, to the artists, musicians, writers and poets that inspire her. Through her art, Mehretu challenges traditional ways of seeing, often blurring distinctions between abstraction and figuration. Her dynamic compositions are populated with brushed, spray-painted, screen-printed and drawn marks.

Curated by Suzanne Cotter, MCA Australia Director, with Jane Devery, MCA Australia Senior Curator Exhibitions, Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory charts Mehretu’s continually evolving investigations into the possibilities of abstraction and its vocabulary of mark making, from her earliest works on paper to her experimental printmaking, and most recently, the TRANSpaintings series which encourage visitors to experience painting in an entirely new way.

Among the exhibition’s highlights are Femenine in nine (2023-2024), a cycle of exuberant black paintings inscribed with iridescent gestural marks. Named after the 1974 musical composition by Julius Eastman, they offer a visual and sonic meditation on conditions of darkness and instability that define contemporary movement.

Also featured are the TRANSpaintings (2023–2024), seven of which are presented for the first time. Supported by the sculptures Upright Brackets by Berlin-based sculptor Nairy Baghramian, these freestanding paintings are physically and visually dynamic and propose an experience of painting as both embodied and participatory.

Julie Mehretu who is in Sydney for the opening of the MCA Australia exhibition spoke about her work, ‘There are myriad positive and negative aspects to the world we are living in. It’s overwhelming... the accelerated pace of information can feel difficult to negotiate. I am deeply committed to the language of abstraction as a place to negotiate these complexities and contradictions from a nuanced and subjective place.’  

MCA Australia Director, Suzanne Cotter said about the exhibition: ‘The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia is proud 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.’

Minister for the Arts, Music and the Night-time Economy, and Minister for Jobs and Tourism John Graham said: 'Julie Mehretu is one of the most recognised and influential artists of her generation. I’m pleased that art lovers will be able to enjoy this extraordinary exhibition in Sydney, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

The three exhibitions under the Sydney International Art Series 2024–25 program reflect 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.’

The exhibition title, A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory, is both an example of the artist’s approach to language as something to be sampled and reinvented – not unlike hip hop or poetry - moving beyond what we know, or think we know, to imagine a better world.  

Documentary

A new documentary Julie Mehretu: Palimpsest will be also screen as part of the exhibition. Co-organised by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Whitney Museum of American Art, the one-hour film traces the artist’s preparations for a 2020 exhibition at LACMA and includes extensive commentary by Mehretu on her work, process, and the evolution of her career, alongside interviews with art world friends and associates.

Publication

Published by MCA Australia to coincide with the exhibition, Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory (hardcover, 224pp, $95) features a comprehensive overview of works in the exhibition and contributions by American author and rock writer Erik Morse, Suzanne Cotter and a conversation between Julie Mehretu, Australian artist Daniel Boyd and Jane Devery. The catalogue is available to purchase from the MCA store and online.
Public Program

A series of talks, workshops, film screenings and performances will accompany the exhibition, including a free Family Space: Drawn Together which offers free hands-on artmaking activities, self-led Drop-in Drawing Sunday sessions accompanied by a musical playlist by Mehretu. There will also be free tours, live music, and a series of three Sydney Festival: Julie Mehretu Up Late events on Wednesday nights throughout the month of January 2025.  
A special in-conversation event between Julie Mehretu and MCA Director Suzanne Cotter, will be held on 29 November 2024 at 5pm – 6pm.

Tickets to the exhibition are available to purchase from mca.com.au. The exhibition is free for MCA members and people aged 17 and under.

MCA Australia would like to thank Strategic Sponsor of this exhibition Destination NSW. The Sydney International Arts Series was created in 2010 by the NSW Government’s tourism and major events agency, Destination NSW in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Art Gallery of New South Wales, to bring the world’s most outstanding exhibitions exclusively to Sydney.

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.

Media Enquiries
For more information, interviews and images, contact:
Charlotte Greig, MCA Australia PR Manager
Email: Charlotte.greig@mca.com.au | publicitypr@mca.com.au                                        Phone: + 61 404 111 919 | +61 2 9245 2417

About the artist

Julie Mehretu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1970 and lives in New York City. In 1977, she immigrated with her family from Ethiopia to East Lansing, Michigan, US. Since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the mid-1990s, where she studied painting and printmaking, Mehretu has exhibited extensively, including a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2024, the Pinault Collection presented her exhibition Ensemble at Palazzo Grassi, Venice. Mehretu has undertaken notable commissions for the Deutsche Guggenheim Museum, Berlin, Goldman Sachs, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She recently completed a major commission for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, which will open in 2025.