Primavera 2025: Young Australian Artists
Five emerging Australian artists explore labour, production and the digital age at the MCA's annual survey of creatives aged 35 and under.
Overview
Now in its 34th year, Primavera 2025: Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia spotlights early-career Australian artists aged 35 and under whose works rethink production, labour and transformation in a rapidly changing era. Curated by the MCA's assistant curator Tim Riley Walsh, the exhibition invites visitors to consider what it means to continue making art in a digital and post-industrial world.
The five selected artists — Francis Carmody, Alexandra Peters, Augusta Vinall Richardson, Keemon Williams and Emmaline Zanelli — work across a wide palette of mediums, from boomerangs and birdcages to bronze, corten steel, video and enamel paint. The artworks engage with the fraught relationship between human creativity and machine manufacturing, exploring the pressures on the role of artists in a rapidly changing world.
Francis Carmody, 'Canine Trap I', 2025, installation view, image courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia © the artist, Photograph: Hamish McIntosh
Among the works: Carmody's narrative-laden installations that marry digital processes like 3D modelling with experimental materials that explore histories of ensnarement and trap-making as metaphors for capitalism; Zanelli's two-channel video and immersive installation that reimagine the subterranean spaces of mines as fantastical realms home to strange beasts; and Williams' sharp critique of cultural labour, featuring 999 outsourced aluminium boomerangs stacked into teetering towers that echo corporate skylines and the unsustainable pressures placed on artists.
Running through to Sunday, March 8, 2026, Primavera continues its annual legacy of providing an early-stage platform for emerging Australian artists and curators. With more than 250 artists and 30 curators among its alumni, the series has helped launch numerous artists onto national and international stages. For art lovers, this is an opportunity to engage with the cutting edge of contemporary art — whether you're already plugged into the local creative ecosystem, or looking for new points of entry.
Hamish McIntosh
Top image: Emmaline Zanelli, Magic Cave, 2024-2025, installation view, image courtesy the artist and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia © the artist. Photograph by Hamish McIntosh.
Information
- CP Picks: The Best Gifts for Arts Lovers — From Gallery Prints to Music Gigs
- CP Picks: The Best Gifts for People Who Are Never Home — According to Travel Writers
- CP Picks: From Hot Sauce to Handblown Glasses — Small-Batch Gifts for Big Foodies
- The Best Restaurants in Sydney to Take Your Dad This Father's Day (or Any Day)
- Twenty-Five Exceptional Films by Indigenous Australian Filmmakers That You Can Stream Right Now
- Where to Find the Best Steak in Sydney