Iconic surrealist paintings meet cyber futurism: major René Magritte and Cao Fei exhibitions to premiere exclusively in Sydney this summer
Two of art’s most important and influential figures – groundbreaking Belgian surrealist René Magritte and pioneering Chinese contemporary artist Cao Fei – will be the focus of two Sydney-exclusive blockbuster exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales this summer as part of the Sydney International Art Series 2024–25.
René Magritte (1898–1967) created some of the most iconic paintings of the 20th century’s surrealist movement, his art revealing the mystery and poetry of seemingly ordinary objects and places. A painter of ideas, he explored the relationship between reality and representation, between image and language, and his work continues to exert a profound influence on contemporary visual culture.
Opening on 26 October, Magritte will feature more than 100 works and will be the first retrospective ever dedicated to the artist in Australia. Presented in Naala Nura, the Art Gallery’s south building, the exhibition will take visitors on a journey from some of the artist’s earliest works, through to his landmark contributions to surrealism, and the renowned paintings of his final years before his death in 1967. In addition to more than 80 paintings, the exhibition includes rarely seen photography, film and archival materials that shine a light on lesser-known aspects of his practice, revealing his subversive humour and artistic independence.
The Art Gallery has developed the exhibition with the collaboration of the Magritte Foundation and in cooperation with the Menil Collection, home to the most comprehensive Magritte collection outside Europe. Magritte features major works loaned from collections in Australia, Belgium, Japan and the United States, the vast majority of which have never been seen in this country.
Opening on 30 November, Cao Fei: My City is Yours will introduce Australian audiences to the cyber futurism of Guangzhou-born, Beijing-based Cao Fei (b1978). Voted by ArtReview magazine in 2023 as one of the art world’s ten most influential people, Cao Fei has documented China’s rapid urbanisation, globalisation and digital revolution for more than two decades, interpreting the energy of the contemporary metropolis into mesmerising films, photography and large-scale interactive and immersive installations.
Cao Fei: My City is Yours heralds the artist’s first retrospective in Australia. The exhibition is designed by the artist and Beau Architects (Hong Kong) and will bring the energy of a buzzing megacity right into the heart of the Art Gallery.
Spanning an interactive 1300-square-metre space in Naala Badu, the Art Gallery’s north building, Cao Fei’s exhibition explores China’s rapid urban, technological, and social transformations from the Y2K period to today. The exhibition will also debut two major Sydney-specific commissions by the artist.
Exclusive to Sydney, Magritte and Cao Fei: My City is Yours are presented alongside the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia’s Julie Mehretu survey as part of the 2024–25 Sydney International Art Series, bringing the world’s most outstanding exhibitions to Australia. The exhibitions are made possible with the support of the NSW Government through its tourism and major events agency, Destination NSW. Magritte is also proudly supported through Create NSW’s Blockbusters Funding initiative.
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,’ said Minister Graham.
Art Gallery of New South Wales director Michael Brand said: ‘Magritte and Cao Fei are giants of their respective times and leading figures in both the modern and contemporary art worlds. Magritte will consider the Belgian artist’s groundbreaking contribution to surrealism in an exhibition that highlights the uniqueness and independence of his artistic vision. This Art Gallery–exclusive exhibition will give Australian audiences the chance to experience Magritte’s practice in deeper and more profound ways than ever before, providing a real glimpse into the evolution of his practice.
‘Naala Badu, our new SANAA-designed building, allows us to stage inventive kinds of exhibitions as never before, and the imaginative format of Cao Fei: My City is Yours befits the playfulness of one of the world’s most prominent and innovative living artists. This exhibition builds upon the Art Gallery’s proud history of staging exhibitions of Chinese art since the 1940s, and with this show we celebrate the pioneering creativity of this globally acclaimed artist, as well as the boundless possibilities that art offers for deeper understanding and connection. With both Cao Fei and Magritte on show this summer, we have an unmissable offering for visitors to Sydney and local art lovers alike,’ said Brand.
Magritte and Cao Fei: My City is Yours are both exclusively on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. Magritte will be on display from 26 October 2024 to 9 February 2025. Cao Fei: My City is Yours will be on display from 29 November 2024 to 13 April 2025. Entry fees apply and tickets go on sale later this year. Subscribe to the Art Gallery’s Artmail e-newsletter to find out when tickets will go on sale. Joint tickets providing entry to both exhibitions will be available, as will an Art Pass, which also grants entry to the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia’s Julie Mehretu exhibition.
The Sydney International Art Series is a NSW Government initiative through its tourism and major events agency, Destination NSW, in collaboration with the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia to bring the world’s most outstanding international artists and their works exclusively to Sydney.
Sydney International Art Series 2024–25 at the Art Gallery
Magritte
26 October 2024 – 9 February 2025
Naala Nura, our south building
Magritte’s paintings of clouds, bowler hats, pipes and green apples are among the most recognisable motifs of surrealism. Curated by Nicholas Chambers, Art Gallery of New South Wales senior curator of modern and contemporary international art, Magritte is an in-depth retrospective featuring more than 100 works loaned from the Menil Collection, Houston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Musée d’Ixelles, Brussels; Musée Magritte, Brussels; Kawamura DIC Museum of Art, Sakura; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria; and numerous private collections.
Organised chronologically, the exhibition takes visitors on a journey from the artist’s first avant-garde explorations and commercial works in the 1920s, to his groundbreaking contributions to surrealism, his surprising provocations of the 1940s, to the celebrated paintings of his final years. Audiences will encounter works that underscore Magritte’s profound influence on late-20th-century visual culture, while also discovering lesser-known aspects of his practice that reveal his subversive sense of humour and the fierce independence of his artistic vision.
The exhibition is presented in the centenary year of the Manifesto of surrealism (1924) and provides audiences with the opportunity to reflect on one of the most enduring art movements of the modern period.
Cao Fei: My City is Yours
30 November 2024 – 13 April 2025
Naala Badu, our north building
Recently voted one of the most influential artworld figures in ArtReview’s Power 100 for 2023, Cao Fei makes art for the 21st century city. For over two decades, she has documented China’s rapid urbanisation and digital revolutions. Born in Guangzhou in 1978 and based in Beijing, her acclaimed films, photography and large-scale installations offer thrilling encounters with the surreal, disorienting transformations of the new millennium.
In Cao Fei: My City is Yours – co-curated by Art Gallery of New South Wales’ curator of film, Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd, and curator of Chinese art, Yin Cao – visitors will enter a world of neon, street dance and pop music, a nocturnal city both familiar and warped, real and virtual. Designed by the artist and Beau Architects (Hong Kong), the exhibition takes the form of a cityscape. This is a space of play and self-reinvention, where cosplayers and hip-hop dancers take over sidewalks in Fukuoka and New York. It’s a city of screens and pixels, a cybercity mediated by technology, from the early gaming platform Second Life to VR and the present-day metaverse. It’s a city under construction, capturing the social costs of quick-fire change, where neighbourhoods are razed overnight, and workers compete for jobs with robots.
Visitors will enter the exhibition via a replica 1960s Beijing cinema foyer, and they will exit through a homage to the iconic, now-closed Sydney yum cha joint, the Marigold. My City is Yours: it’s an invitation to traverse the fantastic imaginaries of 21st-century China, an era of acceleration and hyperconnectivity, of slippages between the physical and the virtual, radiating from Beijing to Sydney, folding one city with another.
