PRIMAVERA

This year’s Primavera was always going to be a bit of a wild card. As the MCA undergoes its massive renovations, the show has gone maverick, spilling onto the streets of the Rocks area for lack of a true home. Thankfully, the young artists who’ve made the cut this year are more than up for the challenge, creating works that experiment and play with the setting. Always a fantastic insight into the contemporary Australian art world, this year’s show is no exception, featuring a diverse and engaging array of practices. The artists (or collectives) range from performance to living sculpture to gastronomic creation to installations – all working outside traditional ‘gallery-based’ mediums, toying with public spaces, interactivity, and experiential work. Often darkly humourous, the works explore notions of public and private selves, our emotional life, the role of the artist, the passing of embodied time, and heightened emotional experience. Featuring work from performance collective Brown Council, Rebecca Bauman, Eric Bridgeman, Tom O’Hern, Parachutes for Ladies, Keg de Souza, Hiromi Tango, and Tessa Zetel & Karl Khoe, the show offers an inspiring look into the lives of some of Australia’s most interesting young artists. (KB)

Until Nov 13, streets of the Rocks, visit pv11.com.au for more information