REVIEW: "Primavera 2014: Young Australian Artists" @ Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
"Primavera” is an annual exhibition for Australian artists under the age of 35, held at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) since 1992. It was established by Dr. Edward and Cynthia Jackson and their family, in memory of their daughter Belinda who died at the tragically young age of 29. Its 2014 edition features work by 13 artists, and is curated by Mikala Dwyer, who had previously shown in the inaugural Primavera exhibition. Dwyer is an established Australian artist, who has a well-known preoccupation with the paranormal, occult, rituals and challenging taboos—along with something she identifies as “alchemical transformation”—which has somewhat formed the conceptual underpinning to the current Primavera.
The works on display range from time-based video pieces to installations to two-dimensional wall pieces—which, on initial encounter, seem little more than loosely associated bits and pieces (until one reads the often-dense one sheets available in the exhibition rooms).
