Curated by the NGV in collaboration with the artist especially for Australian audiences, the exhibition Yayoi Kusama includes many works never-before-seen by local audiences as well as a diverse display of the artist’s popular immersive rooms, including the global unveiling of the artist’s most recent immersive infinity mirror room work.
About Yayoi Kusama
Born in Japan in 1929, Kusama is one of the world’s most important and recognised practitioners working today. Kusama is renowned globally for her singular and idiosyncratic use of pattern, colour and symbols to create immersive, thought-provoking and intensely personal works of art that transcend language and borders. The artist has made indelible contributions to key art movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including minimalism, pop art, performance and feminist art, and is celebrated today for her instantly recognisable works of art incorporating pumpkin and polka-dot motifs.
Yayoi Kusama - Image supplied by NGV International
Comprising more than 180 works, the exhibition is the largest ever exhibition of the artist’s work in Australia and one of the most comprehensive retrospectives of the artist ever presented globally. Featuring painting, sculpture, collage, fashion, video and installation, the exhibition reveals the astonishing breadth of Kusama’s multidisciplinary practice.
Yayoi Kusama will be displayed across the entire ground floor of NGV International and extend into NGV’s public spaces and the surrounding Melbourne Arts Precinct including NGV’s iconic Waterwall, Great Hall, and Federation Court.
A major highlight of the exhibition will be an impressive assembly of Kusama’s iconic immersive installations, including her infinity rooms that ingeniously use mirrors to create the visual illusion of infinite space. A new, never-before-seen kaleidoscopic infinity mirror room, currently in development especially for the exhibition, will make its global premiere in Melbourne.
Chandelier of Grief 2016/18, Tate Modern, London - Image supplied by the NGV International
The exhibition also includes the Australian debut of Dancing Pumpkin, a towering 5-metre-tall bronze sculpture newly acquired by the NGV. Conceived by the artist in 2020, Dancing Pumpkin takes her iconic motif into new and surprising conceptual terrain and allows audiences to walk under the towering sculpture. The exhibition also features the Australian premiere of THE HOPE OF THE POLKA DOTS BURIED IN INFINITY WILL ETERNALLY COVER THE UNIVERSE, 2019, which visually entangles viewers within 6 metre-high tentacular forms covered in yellow-and-black polka dots.
Dancing Pumpkin - Image supplied by the NGV International
The Hope of the Polka Dots Buried in Infinity Will Eternally Cover the Universe. Image supplied by NGV International
A further highlight will be the presentation of Narcissus Garden, a new iteration of the installation Kusama first presented unofficially at the Venice Biennale in 1966. This installation comprises more than 1400 stainless silver balls, each 30cm in diameter and presented en masse as visitors enter the Gallery. As the metallic spheres reflect one another, they create an infinitely recurring landscape that envelops the spectator. Referencing the Greek myth of Narcissus, who was so captivated by his own reflection in a body of water that he drowned in it, the installation offers the viewer a multitude of reflections in which to be visually absorbed. The NGV will have an opportunity to acquire this work for its Collection through the 2024 Annual Appeal, which invites philanthropic donations of any size.
NGV International’s public spaces will also be transformed by Kusama’s signature polka-dots, extending the sensory experience of Kusama's work beyond the exhibition galleries to include a site-specific artwork for the NGV’s iconic Waterwall and an installation of enormous balloons that will float playfully over visitors’ heads in NGV International’s Great Hall, titled Dots Obsession.
Dots Obsession 1996/2015 - Image supplied by NGV International
Through rarely seen materials drawn from the artist’s own archive, including photographs, film, letters, magazines, posters and other ephemera, the exhibition also emphasises Kusama’s radical performance art, fashion designs and activism of the late-1960s. In a space evoking Kusama’s New York studio, the exhibition will reveal how Kusama’s psychedelic parties and events – known as “happenings” – became vehicles for the exploration of radical ideas, such as sexual liberation. Also on display will be more than 20 experimental fashion designs first created by Kusama during this period.
KIDS & FAMILIES - A FREE Kids Installation called Kusama for Kids will open on 15th December to coincide with Yayoi Kusama’s main exhibition. More info here.
Event details:
Dates: 15th December to 21st April 10am to 5pm
Late Night Events will be available.
Age: Yayoi Kusama has been at the forefront of many radical and provocative art movements and ideas. Where appropriate, the exhibition will include signs alerting visitors to potentially sensitive or challenging content.
Tickets now available on the NGV Website.
Tickets age limit: Children’s tickets are available for ages 5–15.
Accessibility:
Pram Access: Yes, the Gallery is fully pram accessible and you are welcome to take your pram into the Gallery spaces. Any large bags that are not stored underneath prams will need to be cloaked, this is a free service.