Primavera 2026 and IMA Platform spotlight early-career Australian artists

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia's annual Primavera exhibition, now in its 34th year, features eight artists under 35, curated by MCA Assistant Curator Antares Wells. The show includes Jahkarli Felicitas Romanis, whose two-channel video Skin to Skin (2026) addresses her great-grandmother Dolly, a Stolen Generations survivor, and critiques institutional archives; Mark Maurangi Carrol, whose paintings depict a vanished horse race on Rarotonga, using a reverse-painting technique that enacts memory loss; and Linda Sok, whose Deities in Temples XXI continues her series based on a single museum registration card from Cambodia, exploring lost pidan textiles. Meanwhile, Brisbane's Institute of Modern Art has expanded its Platform series from three to five artists for 2027, with commissions by Daniel Sherington, Amanda Bennetts, Adam Cole, Savannah Jarvis, and Prita Tina Yeganeh. Sherington's practice humorously critiques art-world systems, while Jarvis uses painting to represent chronic pain through domestic and architectural metaphors. The article also notes that major pulse-check exhibitions like Melbourne Now and The National ended in 2023, reducing institutional opportunities for emerging artists. Primavera runs until 28 September 2026 at the MCA in Sydney; Platform 2027 opens January 2027 at the IMA in Brisbane.