Image: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney
The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia has opened ‘Primavera 2026: Young Australian Artists’, the latest edition of its annual series dedicated to artists aged 35 and under. The exhibition is presented in Sydney and runs from 27 June to 28 September 2026 in the Galleries on Level 1 South, with the MCA describing this year’s iteration as an opening toward new ways of working with history, memory and the archive.
According to the museum, the 2026 exhibition brings together artists from across the country whose work delves into the material and psychic traces of the past. The framing suggests a cohort focused less on fixed historical narration than on the afterlives of memory, evidence and inheritance, with archive-based thinking used as a point of departure rather than a closed set of references.
Curated by Antares Wells, the edition features Mark Maurangi Carrol, Stanton Cornish-Ward and Trent Crawford, Callum McGrath, Jahkarli Felicitas Romanis, Linda Sok, Jack Wansbrough and Rudi Williams.
‘Primavera’ is one of the MCA’s long-running presentation formats for emerging Australian artists, and the 2026 edition continues that institutional emphasis on younger practitioners at a formative stage in their careers. The museum’s announcement positions the show as an introduction to the next generation of Australian artistic talent, while keeping the focus on a nationwide spread of artists rather than a single city or school.
The exhibition opened on 27 June and is included with museum admission. MCA members and visitors under 18 receive free admission, according to the museum’s notice. The exhibition remains on view until 28 September, giving audiences a run of just over three months to encounter the works and the ideas that connect them.
The MCA also said various programs and artist talks will be scheduled throughout the exhibition period. Those public events are being presented alongside the exhibition itself, extending the series beyond the gallery floor and into live discussion around artistic process, context and interpretation. The presentation is supported by Major Patrons Chloe and Andrew Podgornik and by MCA Next.
The museum’s announcement was issued alongside its broader seasonal program, which also included other exhibitions and events in the building. Within that wider schedule, ‘Primavera 2026: Young Australian Artists’ stands out as the MCA’s major platform for emerging Australian artists this season, anchored by its focus on history, memory and the archive and by its run through late September at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney.
