Yayoi Kusama, 2022. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: Yusuke Miyazaki.
Installation view of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity mirror room – Phall’s Field 1965 at the Castellane Gallery, New York. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and Victoria Miro © YAYOI KUSAMA
Portrait of Yayoi Kusama c. 1939 © YAYOI KUSAMA.
Installation view of Yayoi Kusama’s Chandelier of grief 2016/18 at Tate Modern, London. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts and Victoria Miro © YAYOI KUSAMA
Yayoi Kusama Traveling life 1964/ National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: Norihiro Ueno
Yayoi Kusama Pumpkin 1981. Collection of Daisuke Miyatsu © YAYOI KUSAMA
Installation view of Yayoi Kusama’s Flower Obsession 2017 on display in NGV Triennial f rom 15 December 2017 – 15 April 2018 at NGV International Melbourne. Image courtesy of NGV
The National Gallery of Victoria has announced their summer blockbuster exhibition for the 2024–2025 season: an ambitious retrospective of contemporary art icon Yayoi Kusama.
Born in Japan in 1929, Kusama’s career has been long and varied, spanning eight decades and multiple stylistic iterations. She is known for her immersive installations, infinity rooms, pumpkin sculptures, and commitment to the polka dot. She has made significant contributions to various artistic movements, including minimalism, pop art, and feminist art.
Yayoi Kusama has been curated by the NGV in collaboration with Kusama and is one of the most comprehensive retrospective exhibitions of the artist’s work ever presented globally. The show features over 180 works, many never seen before, including her most recent immersive infinity mirror room. Audiences can expect painting, sculpture, collage, fashion, video and installation, spanning work from her childhood to today.
Highlights will include Dancing Pumpkin, a towering 5-metre-tall bronze sculpture newly acquired by the NGV, the Australian premiere of the installation THE HOPE OF THE POLKA DOTS BURIED IN INFINITY WILL ETERNALLY COVER THE UNIVERSE, balloon installation Dots Obsession, and Narcissus Garden—a new iteration of the artist’s 1966 Venice Biennale installation.
“There are few artists working today with the global presence of Yayoi Kusama,” says NGV Director Tony Ellwood. “This world-premiere NGV-exclusive exhibition allows local audiences and visitors alike the chance to experience Kusama’s practice in deeper and more profound ways than ever before. We are indebted to Yayoi Kusama for her passion and collaboration on this special project. Without the artist’s personal dedication to this exhibition—and excitement to share her worldview with Australian audiences—none of this would be possible.”
Yayoi Kusama
National Gallery of Victoria
15 December 2024—21 April 2025
The paintings of Betty Kuntiwa Pumani form a part of a larger, living archive on Antaṟa, her mother’s Country. More than maps, they speak to ancestral songlines, place and ceremony.
A presentation of works by Robert Mapplethorpe curated by the British editor Edward Enninful, Enninful x Mapplethorpe, at the 2025 Ballarat International Foto Biennale, finds resonance in opposites while turning binary thinking on its head.
Auckland-born and raised artist Lisa Reihana is ever the optimist, creating two new works signifying social cohesion to hang outside two Australian arts venues—Ngununggula, and Sydney Contemporary at Carriageworks —just as dark divisions seek to undermine the value of migration and Indigenous sovereignty.
A new exhibition at Buxton Contemporary finds a rich complexity in the shadowy terrain between life and death.
Desert Mob is a critical platform for the cultural and creative authority of desert artists—with artists driving new ways of making, collaborating, and innovating on their own terms, ensuring cultural knowledge is not just maintained but continually expanded through practice.
New South Wales-based artist Sophie Cape, has won the Hadley’s Art Prize for 2025. The winning piece, alongside the 28 finalists, will be on display at Hadley’s Orient Hotel, Hobart until 21 September.
