Awkward Visions: Melbourne Now
Ten years ago, the National Gallery of Victoria presented the first iteration of Melbourne Now: a “blockbuster” summer show featuring over 250 works across the NGV’s two venues. The exhibition aimed to affirm the city’s status as one of the cultural capitals of the world, demonstrating to a broad public the ways in which Melbourne […]
NGV Architecture Commission: Temple of Boom
I am discussing Temple of Boom, this year’s NGV Architecture Commission, with Moore – who is the NGV Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture. The seventh annual commission since 2015 – skipping a year in 2020, when it was especially difficult to exist or create in public space in Melbourne – Temple of Boom is the work of […]
New Australian Printmaking
Comprising sixty-eight works by four artists in the heights of their careers, New Australian Printmaking encapsulates senses of both resolution and revolution. Revolving, the show explores a turn in each artist’s practice, as they experiment with a medium for which they’re not most known, or in which they’re not (or, now, in which they weren’t) most practiced. […]
Book Review: NGV Triennial
Big. Bigger. Biggest. I remember learning by rote these comparative adjectives back in primary school in Glasgow in the 1960s. Everything about the NGV Triennial fits into the third category, not least the five kilogram catalogue that arrives in a box and unfolds into five volumes. Try putting that on a library shelf without it […]
Louise Zhang
The visceral artworks of Louise Zhang are animated by a dynamic tension between desire and repulsion. Through lurid, eye-catching paintings, blobby, bodily sculptures, and, more recently, VR and immersive technological works, her practice navigates a complex interplay of histories, forms, and cultural references. Rich in both Chinese and Western symbolism, Zhang’s art expresses a curious […]
Dhambit Mununggurr
All too few white Australians are aware of the cornucopia of cultural complexities that flourish in the Top End of their country. Despite the best efforts of Anglo settlers and maniacal missionaries to eradicate the languages, beliefs and natural creativity of such peoples as the Yolngu, who hail from north-eastern Arnhem Land, the culture(s) have […]
Exhibition: Wade Marynowsky – Nostalgia for Obsolete Futures
Visitors to the National Gallery of Victoria in August will be met with the autonomous force of Dr Wade Marynowksy’s interactive robotic sculptures.
Melbourne Now
A new exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) is a snapshot of Melbourne’s cultural identity. Artist Profile spoke to NGV Director Tony Ellwood about this ambitious project.