Throughout this summer, the MCA is exclusively presenting the first Australian large-scale exhibition of works by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, titled ‘Take your time: Olafur Eliasson’. On the hot afternoon prior the Sydney Festival First Night 2010, we decide to step inside the cool venue of the Museum of Contemporary Art at Circular Quay for some escapism. This is a cool place in many ways indeed, an outlet and canvas for creativity. Although this exhibition didn’t hit a strung in our hearts like for example Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years exhibited at MCA last year, this is in a different genre and as the title suggest you probably need to take your time…

Being among the most influential and widely acclaimed artists of his generation, Olafur Eliasson’s artwork from light-filled environments to walk-in kaleidoscopes are alluring spaces that examine the intersection of nature and science, explore the boundary between the organic and the artificial. We can tell some of Eliasson’s inspiration is taken from the Icelandic landscape and weather – he recontextualises elements such as light, water, ice, fog, arctic moss and lava rock to create new circumstances that shift the viewer’s consciousness and sense of place. Eliasson displays a diverse range of artistic production from 1993 to the present, including installations, large-scale environments, sculpture, and photography. Walking through the works from his major worldwide public and private collections, our own personal favourite is the fascinating One-way colour tunnel [2007] of stainless steel, colour effect acrylic and acrylic mirrors, pictured above.

The exhibition opened at SFMOMA in 2007 and has since toured the United States. Having recently visited San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) ourselves, it is great to see the collaboration between the artist and SFMOMA in this exhibition. Take your time: Olafur Eliasson exhibition runs at the MCA Sydney exclusively in Australia from 10 December 2009 to 11 April 2010. It is appropriately aligned with Sydney Festival 2010 and photography is not allowed. Admissions apply.

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