The 2023-24 Sydney International Art Series will bring the works of three internationally renowned artists exclusively to Sydney next summer: the largest survey of pioneering artist Louise Bourgeois ever displayed in Australia and an exhibition comprehensively spanning the oeuvre of Wassily Kandinsky at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia will host the largest in-depth presentation of acclaimed artist Tacita Dean’s work in the Southern Hemisphere.
Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? and Kandinsky, from the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, will feature major works never seen before in Australia including Bourgeois’ Crouching spider 2003 and Destruction of the father 1974, and Kandinsky’s Landscape with rain 1913 and Circles on black 1921.
Other key works travelling to Sydney for these exhibitions include Bourgeois’ Arch of hysteria 1993 and The vow 2003 and Kandinsky’s Improvisation 28 (Second Version), 1912 and Composition 8, July 1923.
Minister for Tourism and the Arts Ben Franklin (Pictured with NSW Art gallery and MCA Staff)said the three landmark exhibitions were a major coup for Sydney that positioned the Harbour City as a global cultural destination.
‘Tacita Dean, Louise Bourgeois and Wassily Kandinsky are three of the biggest names in the art world and I am thrilled we will have them exclusively in Sydney,’ Mr Franklin said.
‘Securing these extraordinary, world-renowned artists for the Sydney International Arts Series reaffirms Sydney as Australia’s cultural capital and a global hub for the arts, where art and creativity are celebrated and nurtured. It is going to be a highlight for so many visitors from interstate and overseas next summer. Around 28,000 art lovers are estimated will visit Sydney to experience these incredible collections, 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 New South Wales director Dr Michael Brand said: ‘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 display 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, and the powerful psychological oppositions, that drove Bourgeois’ art and formed its content.
‘Kandinsky will showcase the work of one of the pioneers of European abstraction, Wassily Kandinsky, who lived and worked across Russia, Germany and France. Featuring works from the renowned Kandinsky collection of the Guggenheim in New York, this exhibition will be presented in the original building and expands on our history of exhibitions about modern art’s innovators such as that of Kandinsky’s contemporary, Hilma af Klint, in The Secret Paintings in 2021,’ Brand said.
Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? and Kandinsky at the Art Gallery of NSW, and Tacita Dean at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, are presented as part of the Sydney International Art Series. Kandinsky is proudly supported by the NSW Government through the Blockbusters Funding initiative.
Tickets for Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day? and Kandinsky will be on sale later this year. |
