Tacita Dean | Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, is presenting a large survey exhibition of the work of Tacita Dean, which features significant works made in the last five years.

It includes the film Geography Biography, which combines still images from postcards collected from around the world, overlayed with excerpts and outtakes of films she has produced, dating back to her student days in the late 1980s. The resulting diptych of two portrait format 35 mm films, acts as a moving image collage. It presents personal memories within global histories, which Dean calls an ‘accidental self-portrait.’

The exhibition also features the recent series of prints, Telomere 1-4 2023. These four, largely abstract, gestural prints, consist of many layers of accumulated marks that are visual and physical markers of the passage of time. The prints were developed over the course of more than two years with BORCH Editions.

A remarkable sensory experience, the exhibition features many other significant works that have never been exhibited in Australia, including monumental chalkboard drawings; important photographic and print series; and installations that have resulted from the artist’s designs for the highly acclaimed The Dante Project, a collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor and composer Thomas Adès for The Royal Ballet.

In this exhibition the evolution of Tacita Dean’s practice can be traced through the details, the outtakes and the anecdotes found within the works.

The exhibition ‘Tacita Dean’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia runs until 3 March 2024.