SYDNEY.- The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia announced an exciting new addition to the MCA Collection with the acquisition of Sydney artist Mikala Dwyer’s installation Square Cloud Compound (2010).

Square Cloud Compound is a mysterious enclosure made from brightly coloured fabric cubes sewn into a huge canopy. This extraordinary structure is held up by painted posts adorned with lights, bird boxes, ornaments, plants, mirrors, charms and trinkets; and held down by tersely stretched stockings attached to the ceiling and floor. The posts, painted in constructivist-style black, white and red, stand like mythic sentinels.

Square Cloud Compound is presented alongside a gift from the artist to the MCA: a new multi-coloured wall painting, Spell for a Corner, that references a bird, moth, bat or phoenix rising.

MCA Director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE, said: “We are thrilled to enrich the MCA Collection with Square Cloud Compound. This addition will deepen the engagement of those already familiar with Dwyer’s work while introducing it to new audiences visiting the MCA during the summer months.”

“Contemporary artists like Dwyer continually challenge us to think and see the world differently. Her works asks us to question ourselves and our outlook on life and society.”

Dwyer has a long association with the MCA since exhibiting in the inaugural Primavera exhibition in 1992, including a major solo show in 2000 and guest-curating Primavera 2014: Young Australian Artists.

Square Cloud Compound is characteristic of Dwyer’s experimental and experiential architectures, which play on the permeable and changeable nature of objects and our relationship with them.

MCA Senior Curator Natasha Bullock, said: “The historical associations and darker undertones of Dwyer’s enclosure are offset by its exuberant and playful materiality. The installation is made from fabric squares that float like the clouds – a square cloud compound.”

Since 1989 the MCA Collection has acquired more than 4,000 works by Australian artists.