A towering 5-metre-tall bronze pumpkin sculpture by Yayoi Kusama, weighing more than nine tonnes has been installed in NGV International’s Federation Court, marking the countdown to the major summer exhibition Yayoi Kusama, opening 15 December 2024.
The newly acquired Dancing Pumpkin, 2020, supported by the Loti & Victor Smorgon Fund, features eleven ‘dancing’ yellow-and-black polka-dotted legs.
Kusama first became fascinated with pumpkins as a young girl growing up on her family’s seed and plant farm in Matsumoto in regional Japan. The pumpkin motif has become an icon throughout Kusama’s vast career, appearing in drawings, paintings, sculptures and immersive mirror rooms created by the artist across her more than eight-decade-long career.
Dancing Pumpkin is one of Kusama’s largest and most ambitious imaginings of the pumpkin to date. Taking her iconic motif into new conceptual terrain, the larger-than-life legs appear to twist and hover in the air, suggesting joyous movement.
At NGV International, visitors can go underneath the sculpture and experience Kusama’s beloved pumpkin from a new perspective.
The Dancing Pumpkin makes its Australian debut as part of the world-premiere blockbuster exhibition Yayoi Kusama. Only two editions of the work have been shown previously around the world, at the New York Botanical Garden in 2021 and at the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar in 2022–3.
The work is one of many free-to-access artworks also on display at NGV International in celebration of the exhibition, including interactive work The Obliteration Room, 2002–present, in the NGV children’s gallery; Narcissus Garden, 1966/2024, a sprawling installation of 1,400 mirrored spheres in Federation Court; and a brand new pink-and-black polka dot artwork developed especially for the iconic NGV waterwall.
The Dancing Pumpkin sculpture is now on display at NGV International, St Kilda Road, Melbourne. FREE entry.
Yayoi Kusama will be on display from 15 December 2024 to 21 April 2025 at NGV International, St Kilda Road, Melbourne. Entry fees apply. Tickets and information are available via the NGV website: NGV.MELBOURNE
