SYDNEY.- The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia announced today the artist line-up for Primavera 2026: Young Australian Artists showcasing emerging artistic talent from across the country. This year’s exhibition features new work by Mark Maurangi Carrol (NSW), Stanton Cornish-Ward & Trent Crawford (WA/VIC), Callum McGrath (QLD/VIC), Jahkarli Romanis (VIC), Linda Sok (NSW), Jack Wansbrough (WA) and Rudi Williams (VIC).

Featuring photography, film, installation, textiles and painting, this year’s Primavera exhibition presents work by artists preoccupied by the legacies of the past in the present. Opening on 27 June 2026, Primavera 2026: Young Australian Artists is curated by MCA Australia Curator, Antares Wells.

Wells said: ‘Since the sweeping cultural and political shifts of 2020, from the global Covid-19 pandemic to Black Lives Matter and MeToo, there has been an international resurgence of practices that explore history, memory and the archive. Over the course of over 60 studio visits I conducted across Australia, I saw the diverse ways these shifts have registered locally in the work of young artists. This exhibition surveys these practices in Australia.’

Primavera is the MCA Australia’s annual exhibition showcasing the work of Australian artists aged 35 years and under. Since 1992, Primavera: Young Australian Artists has featured the work of over 250 artists and 30 curators and launched the careers of many of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. It continues to be a significant platform for early-career Australian artists and curators to present exciting new work to a broad audience.

The artists

Mark Maurangi Carrol 
Born 1995, Gadigal Country/Sydney. Lives and works Gadigal Country/Sydney

Mark Maurangi Carrol is a Sydney-based artist who explores the entanglements of memory, identity, and diasporic experience through expanded modes of painting. Rooted in his upbringing between Australia and the Cook Islands (Rarotonga), Carrol interrogates the slippage between place and belonging, using personal and familial history as a lens to examine cultural narratives shaped by colonialism, migration, and dislocation. Central to Carrol’s practice is a distinctive reverse-painting technique, informed by his background in printmaking and traditional Cook Islander textile practices, including Tīvaevae and Pāreu. Carrol holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National Art School. He is a recipient of the Mosman Art Prize and the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, which included a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, and has been a finalist in major national awards, including the Sir John Sulman Prize, The Wynne Prize, the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, and the Bayside Painting Prize.

Stanton Cornish-Ward & Trent Crawford
Born 1993, Boorloo/Perth / Born 1995, Naarm/Melbourne. Live and work Hamburg, Germany 

Stanton Cornish-Ward and Trent Crawford are artists and filmmakers. Cornish-Ward’s work considers the ways advancing technologies mediate our understanding of history and shape collective memory and identity, while Crawford’s work investigates the impact of image-based technologies on notions of truth, belief and agency. As solo artists and as a collaborative duo, their work has been presented at the National Gallery of Victoria, Naarm/Melbourne; The Lock-Up, Muloobinba/Newcastle; Metro Arts, Meanjin/Brisbane; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Museum of Australian Photography, Naarm/Melbourne; Myojuji Sarue, Tokyo; Ace Open, Tarntanya/Adelaide; Apertura Institute, Lisbon; and Auto Studio, Beijing. Their collaborative films LOCK (2021) and In a World Full of Angels (2023) received Best Experimental Film at the Cologne International Film Festival (Cologne) and Best Experimental Short at Experimental Forum International Film and Video Art Festival (Los Angeles). They are the recipients of the 2026 Goolugatup Digital Art Program Commission, Goolugatup Heathcote, Boorloo/Perth.

Callum McGrath
Born 1995, Meanjin/Brisbane. Lives and works Naarm/Melbourne 

Callum McGrath examines the ways that history has been narrated and remembered in queer contexts, with a particular interest in systems of power. Working across installation, sculpture, photography and video, McGrath interrogates the conditions of knowledge and status of ‘truth’ in queer history. His work is often developed through an extensive process of collecting and organising found material. McGrath has exhibited across Australia, including at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Tarntanya/Adelaide; La Trobe Art Institute, Djaara/Bendigo; UNSW Galleries, Gadigal Country/Sydney; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Meanjin/Brisbane; Centre for Contemporary Photography, Naarm/Melbourne; Institute of Modern Art, Meanjin/Brisbane; and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boorloo/Perth. He is a founding contributor to KINK, a collective researching histories of queer Australian art. In 2025, McGrath co-curated with KINK You are Here Too at the Institute of Modern Art, Meanjin/Brisbane. McGrath holds a PhD in Fine Art from Monash University.

Jahkarli Romanis
Pitta Pitta peoples. Born 1998, Wadawurrung Country/Geelong. Lives and works Naarm/Melbourne

Jahkarli Felicitas Romanis works across photography, moving image and spoken word. Her practice is informed by family stories, histories and institutional archival research. Romanis’ work challenges colonial image-making practices and interrogates the biases embedded within different imaging technologies. She recently completed a PhD at Monash University through the Wominjeka Djeembana Indigenous Research Lab in the Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture. In 2025, she was the winner of the Multimedia Category at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (Telstra NATSIAA), held on Larrakia Country in Darwin. Her work has been presented at Firstdraft, Gadigal Country/Sydney; Museum of Australian Photography, Naarm/Melbourne; PhotoAccess, Kamberri/Canberra; Melbourne Documentary Film Festival; Naarm/Melbourne; and Hillvale Gallery, Naarm/Melbourne (as part of PHOTO2024 International Festival of Photography). Currently, she is working towards her first major acquisitive commission as part of the National Gallery of Victoria’s 2026 Country Road x First Nations Commissions.

Linda Sok
Born 1993, Dharug Country/Sydney. Lives and works Dharug Country, Sydney and Rhode Island, United States

Linda Sok’s practice is rooted in her Cambodian heritage and engages with distance and absence to unravel personal and historical traumas. Grounded in weaving, her practice spans sculpture, installation, and textiles. Sok has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including at Campbelltown Arts Centre, Dharug Country/Campbelltown; Artspace, Gadigal Country/Sydney; Institute of Modern Art, Meanjin/Brisbane; Gertrude Contemporary, Naarm/Melbourne; the Textile Art Center, New York, NY; Center for Craft, Asheville, NC; and Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Vermont, VT. In 2024, she was awarded the Monash Room Emerging Artist Prize from the Australian Consulate in New York and the Dorner Prize from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of New South Wales and recently received her Master of Fine Art (Sculpture) from the Rhode Island School of Design. Sok is represented by Eloise Cato Gallery.

Jack Wansbrough
Born 1994, Gadigal Country/Sydney. Lives and works Boorloo/Perth

Jack Wansbrough’s practice centres on sculpture and the archive. Processing archival material through replica, collage and play, his work is grounded in the idea that reenactment is a kind of learning. Found objects, texts and structures provide limits as well as permission. His work reflects an appetite for banality and excess and often draws out the expressive within the inexpressive. Wansbrough often works collaboratively, integrating elements of music and performance. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from Curtin University and has completed residencies at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland and Goolugatup Heathcote, Boorloo/Perth. Wansbrough has presented solo and collaborative projects in a variety of artist-run spaces and galleries, including Cool Change Contemporary, Boorloo/Perth; KINGS Artist-Run, Naarm/Melbourne; FeltSpace, Tarntanya/Adelaide; Old Customs House, Walyalup/Fremantle; Pig Melon Gallery, Boorloo/Perth; Audible Edge Festival, Boorloo/Perth; Success Arts, Walyalup/Fremantle; and Private Island, Boorloo/Perth.

Rudi Williams
Born 1993, Milan, Italy. Lives and works Naarm/Melbourne

Rudi Williams works with historical and contemporary photographic processes as sculptural forms. Her site-specific installations reflect on the present by creating a metaphoric thread between works from her archive, often featuring recurring motifs such as the echo, the stain, and the atmospheric conditions of image-making techniques. Williams’ works often pair and contrast photographs taken at different times and in disparate places to contemplate her own history and heritage in relation to concepts of memory, pace, the passing of time and the archive. Recent exhibitions and public commissions include In the air we breathe, Museum Folkwang, Essen; Mirror, Mirror (with Rosslynd Piggott), Sutton Gallery, Naarm/Melbourne; The National 4: Australian Art Now, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Gadigal Country/Sydney; Melbourne Now: Slippery Images, National Gallery of Victoria, Naarm/Melbourne; Vantage Point, Metro Tunnel, Naarm/Melbourne; and unfixed: σκιά σκιά σκιά ombra ombra ombra shadow shadow shadow, Sutton Gallery, Naarm/Melbourne.