Curated by Glenn Barkley

As mercilessly as Stevenson—part cultural historian, part paranoid conspiracy theorist—lampoons forgotten moments of artistic hubris, misjudgment, and parochialism, his nuanced pseudo-documentary installations and films belie a fascination with, even an empathy for, the romance of pretense and failure. Now the MCA Sydney has brought together some twenty of this New Zealand–born, Berlin-based artist’s works, including objects, drawings, installations, and films. Taken as a whole, despite shifts in medium and ambition, his career forms a consistent, if idiosyncratic, archive of subterranean currents of money and power as they have flowed through the art world over the past twenty years. Look elsewhere for cut-and-dried institutional critique, though. A catalogue with essays by anthropologist Michael Taussig and others accompanies the show.

— Reuben Keehan