In December 2024, the National Gallery of Victoria celebrates the illustrious career of iconic contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama with a world-premiere blockbuster exhibition spanning her eight-decade practice, including the global unveiling of the artist’s most recent immersive infinity mirror room work.
Curated by the NGV, in collaboration with the artist, especially for Australian audiences, the exhibition Yayoi Kusama features more than 180 works, including many never-before-seen by local audiences and a diverse display of the artist’s showstopping immersive rooms.
Displayed across the entire ground floor of NGV International, Yayoi Kusama is one of the most comprehensive retrospective exhibitions of the artist’s work ever presented globally and the largest ever mounted in Australia.
The exhibition traces her entire career – from her childhood in the 1930s through to the present-day – through a rich selection of works drawn from the artist’s personal collection and premier institutions across Japan and Australia. Featuring painting, sculpture, collage, fashion, video and installation, the exhibition reveals the astonishing breadth of Kusama’s multidisciplinary practice.
Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts © YAYOI KUSAMA
Born in Japan in 1929, Kusama is one of the world’s most important and recognised practitioners working today. She 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. She has made indelible contributions to key art movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including minimalism, pop art and feminist art.
installation view
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.
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.
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.
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.
The NGV’s dedicated free children’s galleries will present Kusama for Kids which will feature a renowned Kusama artwork to create immersive experiences for kids. Alongside a suite of NGV-curated public programs presented throughout the exhibition, including NGV Friday Nights, NGV will partner with Asia TOPA, Australia’s major triennial festival of Asia Pacific performance, to co-present a series of events during the 2025 festival.
Yayoi Kusama will be on display from 15 December 2024 to 21 April 2025 at NGV International, St Kilda Road, Melbourne. Entry fees apply. For first access to tickets, sign up to the NGV eNews here: NGV.MELBOURNE. General sale tickets will be available from Monday 22 April via the NGV website.
The exhibition opening will coincide with the NGV Gala, an annual event, on Saturday 14 December 2024. NGV Gala information is available here.
