Art exhibitions to see in Sydney today

Descend down the escalators in the Art Gallery of NSW’s ultra-chic modern north building, and you’ll see an enormous octopus perched above the entrance to one of the most anticipated exhibitions of the Sydney summer – step inside a futuristic cyber cityscape with Cao Fei: My City is Yours. An unfurling of purple tentacles beckons you to step into the multidimensional world of this influential Chinese contemporary artist, and become totally immersed in playful and inventive multimedia installations. Cao Fei (pronounced ‘tsow fay’) encourages you to jump into an inviting pit of foam cubes, walk through installations embedded with found objects, perch on a yoga chair to watch a short doco, lay down to watch another video projected onto the ceiling, sit in an original 1960s cinema chair from Beijing to watch a sci-fi film, and even strap in for a VR experience.  The exhibition offers a unique blend of virtual worlds and cutting-edge technology, as well as tributes to fallen city haunts both here and abroad. But for many Sydneysiders, the most remarkable sight will perhaps be the pitch-perfect recreation of the Marigold, the much-loved yum cha institution from Sydney’s Chinatown, which sadly closed for good in December 2021. Inspired by the restaurant’s 1990s Canto-decor, original furnishings have been salvaged for this uncanny installation – including the chandeliers and light fixtures, tables and chairs, regal red carpeting, and gold signage. All of this is juxtaposed by some...

There’s something so intriguing about exploring the depths of the ocean, because we don't get many chances to check out what's down there. If you’re not a diver but you’ve always wanted to see what happens underneath the ripples of the water's surface, check out this ocean photography exhibition that's returning to the Australian National Maritime Museum.From November 28, the Ocean Photographer of the Year 2024 exhibition will feature all of the winners and finalists of the prestigious prize, which is led by the London-based Oceanographic Magazine.  The exhibition will display 118 of the most awe-inspiring wildlife shots ever snapped, immersing you in the otherworldly magic of the ocean and bringing you face-to-face with some of the sea's most majestic creatures. Particular highlights will no doubt be getting your peepers on the winning image from photographer Rafael Fernández Caballero. His incredible photo of a Bryde whale feeding on a heart-shaped baitball was taken in Baja California Sur, Mexico during the Mexican sardine run. The stunning shot was chosen from more than 15,000 images by a panel of expert judges.  There are plenty of other award-winning photos on display across 10 categories, including the Ocean Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Ocean Adventure Photographer of the Year and the Ocean Fine Art Photographer of the Year.   Tickets are on sale now with discounts available for concessions and children and family passes on offer. All tickets include access to...

Julie Mehretu is widely regarded as one of the most significant painters of her generation, acclaimed for her large-scale paintings which erupt with colour, line, energy and movement. This summer, the first major survey of the New York-based artist’s work ever exhibited in Australia is coming exclusively to the MCA Australia on Sydney's Circular Quay.  Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and now based in New York City, Mehretu has exhibited extensively at major institutions across the US, UK and Europe. Most recently, Mehretu was commissioned to create an 83-foot tall glass mural for the Obama Presidential Centre in Chicago. She was named one of the “100 most influential people in 2020” by Time magazine; and in 2024, The New York Times described her as “one of today's most original and thought-provoking painters.”   Opening on November 29 and running until April 27, the much-anticipated Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory addresses urgent concerns of our globalised world including revolution, migration and climate change. Featuring 13 new works created especially for the exhibition, the presentation will include more than 80 powerful abstract paintings, prints and drawings dating from 1995 to the present. The exhibition will also feature a series of talks and tours, with extended hours for Art Up Late for Sydney Festival on Wednesdays, January 8, 15 and 22 until 9pm.  Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory is part of the Sydney International...

Jaws were on the floor earlier this year when the Art Gallery of New South Wales announced that it had secured Australia’s biggest and first-ever retrospective exhibition dedicated to the one and only René Magritte. Opening at the end of October, and sticking around until February 2025, consider Sydney art fiends' summer plans settled.  The exhibition titled ‘Magritte’ is part of Sydney’s International Art Series spanning 2024 and 2025. Getting in on the action are the state gallery’s Cao Fei: My City is Yours, and the MCA's Julie Mehretu exhibitions.  You could consider Magritte the master of symbols, and you’ve likely seen his plastered all over the place: clouds, bowler hats, pipes… well, *not* pipes, to be precise. The exhibition takes art lovers and history fanatics through 20 years worth of Magritte’s paintings, starting from the 1920s in the height of the surrealist movement. More than 100 works make up the showing, and they’ve been flown in from all over the world including from the MoMA in New York, the Musée Magritte in Brussels, Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art, plus other museums and even some private collections too.  Magritte opens at the Art Gallery of NSW in the South Building’s Lower Level 2 on October 26 and will be there until February 9, 2025. The exhibition is a ticketed event, and prices start from, $30 for members and $35 for adults, or you can save some pennies by purchasing two for one tickets on Wednesday nights or this ultra pass to all...

In its 33rd year, the MCA’s Primavera is back in Circular Quay to showcase the brilliance of young artists under 35. This year’s exhibition, curated by Lucy Latella, revolves around the generational struggle Australians face to maintain their diverse cultures.  Two of the selected artists hail from Victoria, one from each of NSW, the ACT and SA, but their backgrounds, and the cultural stories they have to share, extend well beyond (colonial) Australian borderlines. Here’s a rundown of the art on offer... Chun Yin Rainbow Chan is a Hong Kongese-Australian artist from. Her background in music bleeds into her art, where she explores the mistranslation of women’s folk songs from the Weitou people.  Walgalu and Wiradjuri man Aiden Hartshorn hails from Wagga Wagga and Canberra. He works with modern materials like aluminium to reference the man-made industries that play havoc with his peoples’ ancestral connections to the river systems.  Teresa Busuttil splits her time between Adelaide and Malta, where she salvages materials like seashells to pay homage to her father’s migration from Malta to Australia. Her other works traverse the experience of young people under various colonial and contemporary powers in Malta. Sarah Ujmaia draws on her family’s experience of migrating to Melbourne from northern Iraq. Her interactive piece And thank you to my baba for laying the timber floor is an array of pavers that represent both the marketplace back home, and the evolution of oral...

If you’ve ever heard the words “feminist” and “Australian contemporary artist” in the same sentence, then you’ve probably also heard the name Julie Rrap. With a career spanning more than 40 years, she’s a major figure in the art world who is known for stripping down and incorporating her own body into her multidisciplinary art practice – in which she examines representations of the female nude in art and popular culture over time. You have the chance to have an intimate encounter with Rrap’s work at the the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) with Past Continuous, a new exhibition featuring both new and past work.  “When I looked in art history books, particularly, there were lots of pictures of women – nude women mostly – and not a lot of women artists,” said Rrap, when speaking with Time Out Sydney’s Alannah Le Cross.  “At the same time I was reading people like Simone de Beauvoir, and I was just beginning that little journey of my own about what it is to be a woman in the world,” she said, also adding that at the time she was studying literature and was quite active in the anti-Vietnam War protest movement. “So I guess this show, for me, represents that back history for me… there was always this way in which the female body was always the subject, but they were never themselves a subject.” Rrap’s landmark 1982 installation work – ‘Disclosures: A Photographic Construct’ – has been drawn from the MCA Collection for the exhibition, and this is where your journey begins. The...