| [15 July 2026, Sydney]
What if the most ordinary objects in your life – a coat hanger, a broken polystyrene cup, a worn noticeboard – held unexpected wonder, and were worth a second look?
The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA Australia) presents Hany Armanious: The Planets is a major exhibition dedicated to the Sydney-based artist whose enigmatic sculptures invite us to slow down and see the everyday in a completely new way.
The Planets brings together a substantial body of recent work, including 19 new works made especially for the exhibition, alongside key sculptures from the MCA Collection made earlier in Hany Armanious’ career. It is the latest in a series of solo exhibitions at the MCA dedicated to the work of artists in the Collection.
Armanious’ hyperreal sculptures invite us to reconsider the world around us. Drawn to the overlooked and the discarded, he transforms ordinary objects into mysterious forms that exist somewhere between what they are and what they appear to be.
Born in Egypt and based in Sydney, Armanious rose to prominence in the 1990s and represented Australia at the 2011 Venice Biennale. With The Planets, he returns to a central idea that feels increasingly relevant: that nothing is ever simply ordinary – it depends on how we choose to see it.
Armanious’s process involves meticulously recreating found objects from everyday life using labour-intensive methods of fabrication, such as casting in coloured polyurethane resin. Every surface detail is fastidiously replicated so that the objects remain recognisable, yet subtly changed – inviting us to question how we perceive and assign value to things.
In The Planets, a constellation of sculptures is arranged throughout the gallery. Some occupy the floor; some are propped against walls while others appear to merge with the architecture itself.
For the artist, the spaces within and between objects are as important as the objects themselves. The relationships between individual parts – and what he describes as the ‘underlying push and pull of forces between bodies’ – are central to the work.
At a time when attention is increasingly fragmented, the exhibition encourages us to look slowly and closely. Rather than demanding attention, Armanious’s work rewards it, revealing quiet moments of beauty and meaning where we might least expect.
Hany Armanious: The Planets runs from 10 July – 26 October 2026, Level 1: Macgregor Gallery |
