Tacita Dean at the Museum of Contemporary Arts

Arts & Entertainment Scene Scene What's On

Jasmine Simmons
January 16, 2024

Image: Tacita Dean, Chalk Fall, 2018, chalk on blackboard. Photo: Zan Winberley

The Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MCA) summer exhibition, Tacita Dean, is currently on display, featuring the work of one of the most important living artists of our time. The exhibition is presented as part of the Sydney International Art Series and is a Sydney-exclusive curation, bringing together the significant works by Dean over the last decade.

Tacita Dean, Geography Biography, 2023, installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2023, 35 mm portrait format anamorphic film diptych, colour with black and white, silent, image courtesy the artist, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Paris and Los Angeles © the artist, photograph: Hamish McIntosh

Born in the United Kingdom, Tacita Dean is based between Berlin and Los Angeles, and is renowned for her wide-ranging art specialties. Her mediums include film, photography, sound, installation, collage, drawing, and printmaking, all used to express her sensitivity to natural phenomena and empathy for a world in flux. Dean’s process of art-making heavily engages with themes of landscape, history, entropy, mortality, and passage of time.

Tacita Dean, Sakura (Jindai II), 2023, installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2023, coloured pencil on hand-printed Foma matte silver gelatin paper mounted on paper, image courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London © the artist, photograph: Zan Wimberley

One of Dean’s principal mediums is photochemical film, which has become extremely relevant in this digital age. She has expressed that her “relationship to film begins at that moment of shooting and ends in the moment of projection” with several stages of magical transformation along the way. Dean has stated that film image is different from digital image, and extends beyond pixels and electronics into poetry.

Tacita Dean, LA Exuberance (detail), 2016, installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2023, 15 hand-drawn, 3-colour blend lithographs, published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles
Courtesy the artist and Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles © the artist, photograph: Zan Wimberley

The Tacita Dean exhibition is composed of bodies of work made around the world, including Berlin, Los Angeles, Japan, and Australia. A wide variety of works are on offer for all audiences, including new and recent films, monumental chalkboard drawings, sensuous photography and print series, and early ephemera works.

The artist Tacita Dean at the cutting room of her studio in Berlin. Photo: Thomas Meyer Ostkreuz

Throughout the exhibition are a range of highlights to be explored and viewed up-close. These include Australia’s new film installation Geography Biography (2023), Dean’s new film Claes Oldenburg draws Blueberry Pie (2023), chalk series The Wreck of Hope (2022) and Chalk Fall (2018), and a large scale photograph titled Sakura (Jindai II) (2023).

Tacita Dean is an amazing opportunity for local and visiting art enthusiasts to engage with the works of a trailblazing figure right here in Sydney.