Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory at MCA Australia charts an explosively experimental period in Mehretu’s art and includes more than 80 works by the artist, including significant loans from public and private collections. The exhibition features 36 paintings completed by the artist between 2017 and 2024 alongside several major new painting cycles completed in 2023 and 2024. Many works are presented to the public for the first time, including Mehretu’s most recent TRANSpaintings (2023–2024), while over 50 etchings, drawings and works on paper, from the mid-1990s to now, offer a retrospective of the foundational role of drawing and printmaking in the artist’s practice.

Curated by Suzanne Cotter, MCA Australia Director, with Jane Devery, MCA Australia Senior Curator, Exhibitions, Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory charts the artist’s continually evolving investigations into the possibilities of abstraction and its vocabulary of mark-making, from her earliest works on paper to her experimental printmaking, and most recently, the TRANSpaintings series which encourages visitors to experience painting in an entirely new way.

Among the exhibition’s highlights are Femenine in nine (2023–2024), a cycle of exuberant black paintings inscribed with iridescent gestural marks. Named after the 1974 musical composition by Julius Eastman, they offer a visual and sonic meditation on conditions of darkness and instability that define the contemporary moment.

Also featured are the TRANSpaintings, seven of which are presented for the first time. Supported by the sculptures Upright Brackets by Berlin-based sculptor Nairy Baghramian, these freestanding paintings are physically and visually dynamic and propose an experience of painting as both embodied and participatory.

www.mca.com.au/exhibitions/julie-mehretu-a-transcore-of-the-radical-imaginatory