The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) will present American artist Doug Aitken’s first major solo exhibition in the Southern Hemisphere. Exclusive to Sydney, the exhibition will now open in October 2021 as part of the Sydney International Art Series 2021–22.
The exhibition was originally scheduled to open in October 2020 and was postponed due to the Museum’s temporary closure in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. MCA Director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE said Doug Aitken’s exhibition will be a major highlight of the MCA’s 2021 exhibition program.
“We are absolutely delighted that the Sydney International Art Series will return in 2021 with the first Australian survey exhibition of leading contemporary artist Doug Aitken. Aitken’s multi-screen video works and large-scale installations will no doubt draw local and interstate audiences to the MCA next year,” added Macgregor.
Doug Aitken: New Era, the MCA’s exhibition for the Sydney International Art Series 2021–22 is curated by MCA Chief Curator, Rachel Kent. This comprehensive survey exhibition spans 25 years of the artist’s career including works from the late 1990s to more recent large-scale installations. Rachel Kent first worked with Aitken in 2002 and has worked in close collaboration with the artist on all aspects of the exhibition.
Aitken is internationally recognised for his ambitious practice that incorporates objects, installations, photographs and vast, multi-screen environments that envelop viewers within a kaleidoscope of moving imagery and sound. Based in Los Angeles, Aitken has realised museum projects around the world as well as monumental interventions within the natural landscape and below the ocean’s surface.
Speaking about his exhibition, Aitken says: “My MCA survey uses many mediums. It’s open and expansive, the kind of project I want the viewer to be immersed in. I see it as an exhibition that’s specific to Sydney and the harbour – but, once inside, it could be everywhere and anywhere. You could really fall into the works, get lost in them...’’
Exhibition highlights include Sonic Fountain II (2013/2015), a large-scale sound installation built into a rocky, earthen terrain situated within the gallery. As jets of water spill from a suspended ceiling grid onto a reservoir below, their sound is amplified to create a rhythmic drumming that swells and recedes in force according to computer algorithms.
Also featured is Aitken’s most recent video installation NEW ERA (2018), an immersive hexagonal structure encompassing screens and mirrors that viewers enter into through a tunnel like passageway. This work is inspired by the history of mobile phone technology and its pioneer, the American engineer Martin Cooper. From distant landscapes and satellite imagery to the repeated image of a ‘70s Motorola phone multiplying and reflecting around viewers, NEW ERA considers the power of communications technology both to unite and dislocate us.
On display in the MCA’s Level 1 North gallery will be one of Aitken’s largest moving image installations to date, SONG 1 (2012). Originally created to wrap around the circular exterior of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, as a 360-degree panorama where it played from sunset to sunrise over eight weeks, it has been reconfigured for display inside the museum. Harnessing a range of ordinary people and professional performers, the work features their varied renditions of a popular song, interspersed with urban and digital imagery on a constant cycle of play-and-repeat. SONG 1 forms a spectacular highlight of Aitken’s MCA survey and will be a major drawcard for audiences.
For more visit: mca.com.au
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