Melbourne
National Gallery of Victoria: Yayoi Kusama
Singular Japanese artist and polka dot extraordinaire Yayoi Kusama takes over the NGV this summer with a blockbuster exhibition that is the largest-ever presentation of the artist in Australia. Featuring 180 works—including new pumpkin installations, her latest Infinity Room, and a newly staged version of her legendary 1966 installation Narcissus Garden—the immersive experience she promises is expanding beyond the gallery walls and into the streets, which are lined with pink polka dot trees. We asked four local artists to reflect on what Yayoi’s work means to them, you can read their responses here.
Art Guide What’s On | National Gallery of Victoria
Sydney
Art Gallery of New South Wales: Magritte and Cao Fei
Sydney’s International Art Series has returned for the 2024-2025 season, with two very different international powerhouses occupying separate buildings at the AGNSW. One one side is beloved Belgian surrealist René Magritte, with his first large-scale retrospective in Australia. On the other side, Chinese multimedia pioneer Cao Fei converts the new Naala Badu north building into a cyber cityscape that feels both familiar and futuristic. Read our article on the two exhibitions here.
Art Guide What’s On: Magritte | AGNSW: Magritte
Art Guide What’s On: Cao Fei | AGNSW: Cao Fei
Sydney
Museum of Contemporary Art: Julie Mehretu
The other host of the International Art Series is the MCA, which this year presents the first major survey in the Southern Hemisphere of Ethiopian-born New Yorker, Julie Mehretu. A significant figure in contemporary abstraction, Mehretu is making waves internationally with her monumental, gestural paintings, and Australian audiences are getting a broad overview of her oeuvre with A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory. Read Courtney Kidd’s preview on the show here.
Art Guide What’s On | Museum of Contemporary Art
Brisbane
Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art: The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art
The eleventh iteration of QAGOMA’s ground-breaking Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art is as comprehensive as ever. Seventy artists, collectives and projects from more than 30 countries have come together to represent the best of contemporary art in Australia, Asia and the Pacific. This Triennial includes creators from Saudi Arabia, Timor-Leste and Uzbekistan for the first time, while First Nations and diaspora communities continue to play a pivotal role in the display of multi-disciplinary practices. Read our article on the exhibition here.
Adelaide
Art Gallery of South Australia: Radical Textiles
Spanning couture fashion, handmade banners, quilts, soft sculpture, photography and large-scale textile-based art works, Radical Textiles showcases the breadth and diversity of textile art over 150 years, and through 150 pieces from 100 artists. The artists vary, spanning locals like Sarah Contos and Paul Yore, to international artists like Grayson Perry, as well as historic pieces from William Morris. Read Briony Downes’ feature on the exhibition here.
Art Guide What’s On | Art Gallery of South Australia
Canberra
National Gallery of Australia: Ethel Carrick and Anne Dangar
The NGA has two major exhibitions this summer, both part of the Know My Name initiative—a project that aims to shed light on the women artists often left out of the canonical narrative of art history. In Ethel Carrick—the first retrospective of the artist’s oeuvre held in Australia in over thirty years—we see the broad representation of Carrick’s significant contribution to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. In Anne Dangar, one of the few Australian artists to form part of the European avant-garde in the twentieth century is celebrated for her unique intersection of cubism and traditional French pottery.
Art Guide What’s On: Ethel Carrick | National Gallery of Australia: Ethel Carrick
Art Guide What’s On: Anne Dangar | National Gallery of Australia: Anne Dangar
Darwin
Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory: NATSIAAs
The Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAAs) celebrate the extraordinary breadth of First Nations art every year. This year you’ll see Noli Rictor’s winning painting Kamanti, alongside award winners in all categories and all finalist works, including Emerging Artist winner Josina Pumani’s Maralinga, which Jessica Alderton wrote about here.
Art Guide What’s On | Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory
Hobart
Museum of Old and New Art (Mona): Namedropping
From Darren Sylvester’s Filet-o-Fish chaise longue to an autographed cricket bat from the 80s, Mona’s Namdropping explores the pursuit of status, and how objects possess intrinsic qualities that render them desirable. Big names are included—Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol among them—but if it’s the big names that draw you in then it all gets a bit meta, with the very nature of the exhibition being to examine what the names mean and why they matter. Read Neha Kale’s take on it here.
Art Guide What’s On | Museum of Old and New Art
Perth
Art Gallery of Western Australia: Zheng Bo
There’s lots to choose from at AGWA this summer, including Julia Gutman’s life in third person, a survey of ceramicist Sandra Black, and an extended season of TIME • RONE. One not to be missed is Zheng Bo’s 舞草舞木 / Dance Grass Dance Tree, a performance held every Friday from 5pm that examines intimate human-plant relationships and kinship. It was commissioned by AGWA as part of the Simon Lee Foundation Institute of Contemporary Asian Art, and is presented in collaboration with OFF-base Dance.
Suggested Reading
From here to infinity with Yayoi Kusama
Ahead of the National Gallery of Victoria’s major retrospective on singular Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, we invited four artists to respond to the influence of Kusama on their own practice—and meditate on what her work means to them.
Art Guide Australia
Falling Better with Patrick Pound
For Patrick Pound, whose new installation The Museum of Falling is on show now at the City Gallery, the arrangement of objects and images has long blurred the line between fact and fiction, jolting our perception in surprising and unusual ways.
Peter Hill
Jonathan Jones on Country and kinship
bagan bariwariganyan: echoes of country, curated by Jonathan Jones and now showing at Bundanon, highlights a long history of Indigenous art on the New South Wales south coast, with works and installations from Jones, Aunty Julie Freeman, Aunty Cheryl Davison, and Mickey of Ulladulla.
Steve Dow
Speaking volumes: on our love affair with art books
The growing cultural interest in art books reflects the enduring power of the printed word. Jane O’Sullivan takes a closer look.
Jane O'Sullivan
Raining cats and dogs
Whether beloved pets or superstitious omens, animals have always existed in art. The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia’s latest exhibition is paying tribute to two of the most beloved animal figures: cats and dogs.
Art Guide Australia
Julie Mehretu and the new contemporary
Julie Mehretu’s first solo exhibition in the southern hemisphere, now showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, attempts to harness the urgency and energy of the Ethiopian-born New Yorker’s multilayered painting practice.