Rebecca Baumann's Manoeuvres at the MCA, Sydney

Rebecca Baumann's Manoeuvres (2015) is in the exhibition New Romance: art and the posthuman at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.  The show, which has been curated by Anna Davis (MCA, Sydney) and Houngcheoi Choi (MMCA, Seoul), runs to 4 September. Read more...
Image: Rebecca Baumann, Manoeuvres ((2015), flip-dot boards, control hardware, custom software, vinyl, steel. Software and control engineering by Future Perfect. This work was originally commissioned by the Fremantle Arts Centre

Sydney's MCA to become a 24-hour virtual gallery

The director of Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, has put a new management team in place to support a move toward digital technology and e-publications. The old management structure had not changed since she took up the reins 13 years ago and she now feels that rapid developments in digital technology require a rethink of how things are done. She cites the recent MCA e-publication, Anish Kapoor's living catalogue as a strong application of digital technology. As well as containing essays and photographs, the publication also included videos, curator and artist interviews, and allowed for audience interaction which was incorporated into a final edition. Read more...
Image: MCA director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor 

Blair French appointed to new position at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art

Blair French is stepping down from his current position as director of Sydney's Artspace to become the Assistant Director, Curatorial and Digital at the MCA Australia.
Image: Blair French

MCA curator talks about Marking Time and why some visitors will be disrobing for museum tours

The Wall Street Journal talks to Rachel Kent about her exhibition Marking Time at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, which includes 24 hour marathon viewings of Christian Marclay's The Clock and Stuart Ringholt's after hours nude gallery tours. Read more...

Image: A still from Christian Marclay's The Clock, 2010

Sydney's MCA reopens this week with a $53m extension

Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art reopens this week with a Sam Marshall-designed extension that adds more than 48,000 square feet of space, including three new galleries - one dedicated to Australian art collected since the museum's inception - and a rooftop sculpture terrace overlooking Circular Quay and the Sydney Opera House.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer to stage audience-sourced exhibition at the MCA, Sydney

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is about to stage his first solo show in Australia at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Recorders will be an audience-sourced exhibition with the content collected from visitors using technologies such as heart rate sensors, motion detectors, fingerprint scanners, microphones and face recognition software.

The artist is no stranger to Australia. He had a piece in the 2006 Sydney Biennale, gave a keynote address at the 2009 Adelaide Film Festival and, last year, projected solar animations on to a giant balloon tethered over Melbourne's Federation Square.

Recorders opens at the MCA on 16 December and runs to 12 February 2012

Image: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Room.

The art opening experience made over as art

Grant Stevens has been commissioned by Sydney's MCA to make a video work for the museum foyer to sit alongside the piece by Imants Tillers' featuring the names of the MCA's patrons. For between $1,000 and $20,000, a new generation of patrons can see their names in the video with its audio component echoing the conversations that might be heard at an opening.

Stevens says he is less interested in the politics of patronage than in drawing out the sometimes uncomfortable conversations between people in personal and social settings. "The starting point for the work is thinking about the experience of attending openings, specifically MCA openings, and my personal associations with the Imants Tillers painting in the foyer," he says. "Hovering above the crowds...the work has a slightly intimidating presence for me. It is a reminder that art's history is intrinsically linked with people and money."

Image: Grants Stevens, Crushing (2009), video still