While Australia is still a long flight to most international destinations, these five exhibitions bring the hottest talents in the art world to our doorstep in 2025.
Save the date for:
1. Théo Mercier: France to Hobart
French artist and stage director, Théo Mercier, has caught the eye of Mona – the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania. The edgy institution has commissioned Mercier to construct an immense sand sculpture that will inhabit Mona’s former library space.
Created in situ from sand and water, DARK TOURISM will depict a debris-strewn landscape evoking the aftermath of disaster. It opens for viewing in February 2025. It will be the first time his work is presented in Australia.
Mona curators explain: “It takes inspiration from the notion of ‘dark tourism’: our human propensity to seek out and travel to places associated with suffering and death. Tourists have long made visits to sites charged with history’s grim residue, from Pompeii to Auschwitz, the catacombs of Paris to the Cambodian killing fields, Hiroshima to Ground Zero, and Tasmania’s Port Arthur. DARK TOURISM is also a commentary on Earth’s changing climate and its impact on the environment and humanity.”
Mercier says of the commission: “What does it mean to sculpt catastrophe, or to construct collapse? Faced with this frozen landscape, humans find themselves at the heart of the devastation, as spectators and consumers. But there’s something contradictory about this project, something romantic and utopian at the same time. Because the sand allows the world to tremble and shuffle itself in infinite figures.”
The installation is curated by Sarah Wallace and Jarrod Rawlins, and was commissioned by Olivier Varenne, and you can see it at Mona from 15 February 2025 to 16 February 2026.
2. Cerith Wyn Evans: Wales to Sydney
Welsh conceptual artist, sculptor and filmmaker Cerith Wyn Evans (b 1958, Llanelli) is headed to Sydney for the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia’s (MCA) winter exhibition – a major survey of his work.
The exhibition is curated by Lara Strongman, MCA Director, Curatorial and Digital, who has been working in collaboration with the UK-based artist. The Gallery explains: “Conceived as if the audience were strolling through a Japanese garden, the exhibition will invite visitors to meditate and contemplate their own passage through space and time. Monumental light sculptures will occupy the MCA’s double-height exhibition galleries, including F=O=U=N=T=A=I=N (2020), an architectural wall of white neon three metres tall and 10 metres wide, which audiences are welcome to walk around and through.
“The exhibition includes a significant selection of major works, most of which have never been seen before in Australia,” says the MCA’s website.” Highlights include Composition for 37 Flutes (2018), a sculpture in which 37 glass pipes ‘inhale’ and breathe sound into the gallery, and the Neon Forms (After Noh) series, large-scale three-dimensional ‘drawings in space’ using neon light. Inspired by the choreography of traditional Japanese Noh theatre, this series maps the notation of Noh movements, as gestures suspended in space. Energetic and fluid, the works engage and transform the viewer’s perception.”
Put it in your diary for 6 June – 19 October.
3. Campbell Addy: Ghana to Ballarat
The Ballarat International Foto Biennale is headlining British-Ghanaian artist, filmmaker and photographer Campbell Addy in its 2025 festival edition. The I Love Campbell exhibition will feature new images , original paintings and a short film shot on location in Ghana.
Since graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2016, Addy’s striking imagery has garnered him international success and awards, including the 2021 Forbes 30 under 30 list, British Fashion Awards in both 2018 and 2019, The Isabella Blow award from Fashion Creator from the British Fashion Council in 2023 and this November 2024 the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain awarded Addy with the RPS Award for Fashion, Advertising and Commercial Photography.
He says: “I am honoured to present my work in Australia, where my practice converges as an intimate love letter to the world. I’m intrigued to see how the people of Australia will connect with and interpret my work. As a contemporary artist, I believe in the significance of forging meaningful connections with new communities, and I hope that through I Love Campbell, I can foster those bonds and inspire dialogue.”
Addy grew up in a hyper visible world, drawing inspiration from his culturally diverse upbringing. Faces such as Kendall Jenner, Tim Cook, FKA Twigs, Naomi Campbell, Tyler the Creator and more have appeared in front of Campbell’s lens, to be seen on magazine covers around the world.
Ballarat International Foto Biennale CEO Vanessa Gerrans has described the exhibition as “a major coup for Ballarat and regional Victoria”. Showing 23 August – 19 October.
4. Ron Mueck: London to Sydney
Melbourne-born, London-based Australian sculptor Ron Mueck (pictured top) is known the world over. This year, he will present his largest ever exhibition on home soil, at the Art Gallery of NSW for its summer 2025 blockbuster. Curated by Jackie Dunn, the exhibition will bring together his major sculptures from all over the world and will map out his career from the 1990s, through his captivating, hyper real sculptures. At the heart of the exhibition will be a new immersive work, with the working title Fighting Dogs.
Mueck hasn’t shown in Sydney since 2003. This exhibition will reflect on the sensitivity and significance of his work within our tense and anxious contemporary times. Plan your visit to the AGNSW, showing 6 December 2025 – 12 April 2026.
Read: 6 exhibitions by women that promise to open our eyes in 2025
5. Thomas J Price: London to Sydney
British artist Thomas J Price made an impact when his work was centre stage at the last NGV Triennial. He will return this year to deliver the inaugural the Neil Balnaves Tallawoladah Lawn Commission at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, overlooking Warrane/Sydney Harbour.
The gallery explains, “In contrast to traditional public monuments commemorating historical figures, Price’s sculptural works reframe the ordinary as extraordinary and celebrate individuals engaged in everyday activity – disrupting the ways in which we predetermine value. By using Western sculptural traditions to elevate the everyday lives of people of colour, Price’s brilliantly ‘ordinary’ sculptures prompt audiences to consider their own socially conditioned attitudes.”
Price says, “For me, sculpture is about understanding your environment and your place in space, your connection to others and capacity for empathy. My ambition has always been that these works would bring communities closer together and live in the public realm as silent totems for change.”
This is the first in a three-year series of sculptural commissions. Price’s newly created work will be unveiled in spring 2025 and remain on public display until autumn 2026.
