The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) have recently introduced another impressive Australian work to the MCA Collection, acquiring Square Cloud Compound (2010) by Sydney artist Mikala Dwyer, who also has gifted the museum with Spell for a Corner, a new multi-coloured wall painting.
Mysterious and experimental with an imposing form, Square Cloud Compound is an enclosure made from brightly coloured fabric cubes sewn into a huge canopy, held up by painted posts adorned with lights, bird boxes, ornaments, plants, mirrors, charms, and trinkets. The structure is held down by tersely stretched stockings attached both to the ceiling and the floor. The posts, painted in constructivist-style black, white, and red, stand like mythic sentinels.
The work is said to play on the permeable and changeable nature of objects and our relationship with them.
Said MCA Director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE: “We are thrilled to enrich the MCA Collection with Square Cloud Compound. This addition will deepen the engagement of those already familiar with Dwyer’s work while introducing it to new audiences visiting the MCA during the summer months.”
Dwyer has a long history with the MCA, stemming from her 1992 exhibition and a major solo show in 2000. She also served as a guest curator for Primavera 2014: Young Australian Artists.
MCA Senior Curator Natasha Bullock, said: “The historical associations and darker undertones of Dwyer’s enclosure are offset by its exuberant and playful materiality. The installation is made from fabric squares that float like the clouds – a square cloud compound.”
Mikala Dwyer: MCA Collection
21 December 2015 – 21 February 2016
Level 1, FREE entry
#MikalaDwyer
Since 1989 the MCA Collection has acquired more than 4,000 works by Australian artists. For more information, including current exhibitions, head to mca.com.au
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