2012 

Contemporary Asian & Pacific Art

The NGV’s newly opened Contemporary Asian & Pacific Art gallery focusses on art practice that is part of a global art world, yet geographically closer to Australia than Europe or North America.

just sing what you feel

just sing what you feel is an exciting installation by Melbourne artist Jon Campbell, encouraging people of all ages to contribute to, and play with, contemporary art and music. Drawing inspiration from suburban life, everyday language, and rock ‘n’ roll, Jon Campbell takes motifs from Australian culture and represents them in a colourful, pop art style. His art encourages us to look closely at the world around us and to find meaning and beauty in the everyday.  Come to the exhibition to play, sing, and make art together.

Supported by Monica and Peter Edwards.

Jeff Wall Photographs

Jeff Wall is one of the most influential and outstanding contemporary photographers working today. He has frequently been called a modern storyteller, and his work is shaped by his profound awareness of Western art and literature. One strand of his practice is conceptual and involves small-scale, thoughtful observations of ‘things’ that appear to have been photographed in situ. The other strand comprises more complex activities, generally including people that are then meticulously re-enacted for the camera. This is a unique opportunity to see the Canadian-born artist’s work in Melbourne. Spanning 1978 to 2010, the exhibition features 26 photographs drawn from throughout his career including several large scale works and major light box transparency works such as After 'Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue 1999–2000 and the extraordinary, A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) 1993.

Organised by the Art Gallery of Western Australia in association with the National Gallery of Victoria

Thomas Demand

Organised with The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo

Thomas Demand is regarded as one of the world’s leading contemporary artists whose work in photography and, most recently stop-animation films, is at the forefront of contemporary art. 

Book online ngv.vic.gov.au/thomasdemand. Exhibition ticket will also provide entry to Jeff Wall Photographs

RadianceThe Neo-Impressionists

Be inspired by the vibrant beauty of the luminous landscapes, glittering Parisian cityscapes and stunning portraits in this survey of the Neo-Impressionist movement. Forging a new path in the mid 1880s, Georges Seurat moved away from the earlier style of the French Impressionists, who had favoured the capturing of natural light and the first impression brought by a particular scene.  Seurat preferred instead a more ordered and ‘scientific’ method of painting. This new method saw him place individual dabs of colour side by side on the canvas, rather than mixing colours together. When contrasting colours are placed side by side in this way, they oscillate against each other, creating an effect of shimmering light in the viewer’s eye.  This regular repetition of colour touches brought an almost abstract visual rhythm across the painted canvas. Rejecting naturalism and the illusion of perspective, Neo-Impressionism later evolved towards ever more striking colour harmonies. The exhibition features spectacular paintings by Seurat, Paul Signac, Maximilien Luce and Théo van Rysselberghe among others, and is the first of its kind to be staged in Australia.

Book now at http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/radiance

Ballet & Fashion

Ballet & Fashion is a joint project between The Australian Ballet and the NGV that showcases some of the most successful collaborations between fashion designers and dance companies over the past three decades. Designing for dance is a remarkably different process than creating for the runway. By embracing the tradition of the tutu or expanding a company’s repertoire with challenging styles, materials and forms, designers have reshaped the look of dance and ballet for the contemporary stage.

RALLY: Contemporary Indonesian ArtJompet Kuswidananto & Eko Nugroho

Jompet Kuswidananto and Eko Nugroho are members of the art community that centres on the vibrant central Java city of Yogyakarta in Indonesia. Jompet is an installation artist, while Nugroho works across diverse media; creating paintings, murals and handmade comic books, contemporary updates of the tradition of shadow puppet theatre, and collaborations with local craftspeople to produce embroideries. As a pairing, they shine light on the effervescent contemporary Indonesian art scene and present a wide-ranging, yet precise snapshot of this world.

DESTROYED WORD

Since 2010, Sierra's global art project has traversed the world, commissioning the construction of giant letters from materials of local importance, and then publicly – and dramatically – destroying them. Having built and torn down structures in cities around the world, the project now comes to Melbourne for the destruction of the tenth and final letter.

ConfoundingContemporary Photography

Photography has the uncanny ability to make the strange, uncomfortable and awkward seem plausible, to suggest a confounding alternative reality. The photographers in this exhibition use found objects in macabre still lives, propose perplexing narratives using models and dolls, employ a variety of techniques to create disturbing portraits and construct a fantastic reality based on art, science and imagination.

ExperimentaSpeak to Me Screening Program

Experimenta Speak to Me, 5th International Biennial of Media Art considers what it means, at this time, to be together. How do we consider our new relationships to the world, technology and each other? What does this connectedness offer us?

At the NGV, My voice would reach you by Japanese artist Meiro Koizumi will screen daily (excluding Tuesdays) until 17 November 2012.  

www.experimenta.org/

TEES: Exposing Melbourne’s T-shirt cultureNGV Studio

Eddie Zammit is something of a T-shirt hunter. He owns well over 4,000 of them. ‘I have enough tees to wear one a day for over a decade’, he proudly announces. A collaboration between Just Another, NGV Studio and T-world, TEES: Exposing Melbourne’s T-shirt culture examines and dissects the city’s passion for cotton through Zammit’s eyes. Featuring photography by Nicole Reed, TEES includes visual content on Melbourne’s influential artists, brands and designers. Visitors will also see some classic local tees and prominent Melbourne T-shirt souvenirs. Zammit has dug deep into his T-shirt collection to uncover influential items that demonstrate the power of the city’s T-shirt past.

Negotiating this worldContemporary Australian Art

This exhibition brings together a selection of contemporary art from the NGV Collection acquired through the Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists. Reflecting the breadth of artistic practice in Australia over the past decade, Negotiating this world: Contemporary Australian Art  includes more than 100 works by contemporary artists of diverse cultural backgrounds and practices.

The exhibition will coincide with the 10 year anniversary of the opening of The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia.

The Four HorsemenApocalypse, Death and Disaster

The Four Horsemen presents images of death and disaster in prints, illuminated manuscripts, illustrated books and paintings from the fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. This was a period of great turmoil in Europe, during which bitter religious conflict, war, famine and pestilence generated deep anxiety. Dramatic events and natural disasters were increasingly read as divine punishments or warnings that the Last Days were imminent.

NapoleonRevolution to Empire

Open 10am-5pm daily, until 9pm Wednesdays

Napoleon: Revolution to Empire is a panoramic exhibition examining French art, culture and life from the 1770s to the 1820s. Its story runs from the first French voyages of discovery to Australia during the reign of Louis XV to the end of Napoleon’s transforming leadership as first Emperor of France. Book now at http://www.ticketmaster.com.au/napoleon

UNEXPECTED PLEASURESThe Art and Design of Contemporary Jewellery

A Design Museum, London touring exhibition

Unexpected Pleasures looks at what we mean by jewellery from a number of different perspectives.  Taking as its starting point the radical experiments of the Contemporary Jewellery Movement that challenged a conventional understanding of the language of personal adornment, and looking instead at the essential meanings of jewellery, the exhibition brings together important work from around the world, and looks at it from the point of view of the wearer as well as the maker. Contemporary  Jewellery in this sense is at the intersection of art and design.

Curated by Dr. Susan Cohn for the Design Museum, London with exhibition design by Ab Rogers Design and graphics by Barnbrook.

Fred WilliamsInfinite Horizons

A National Gallery of Australia Exhibition

Fred Williams pioneered a new vision of the Australian landscape, and became one of the most important Australian artists of the twentieth century. This exhibition highlights Williams’ strength as a painter including important oil paintings and luminous gouaches to reveal his distinctive approach. He sought inspiration from the unique landscapes of places such Upwey in Victoria, Tasmania’s Bass Strait and the arid Pilbara region of Western Australia, drawing on the abstract qualities of the distant horizons of this vast country.

An Excellent Adventure

An Excellent Adventure invites children on a journey inspired by a time when sailing ships explored the seven seas. Climb aboard with our two intrepid young adventurers and along the way discover treasures, stories, myths and legends. Peek into the wonderful cabinets of curiosities to examine the intricacies of the ushabti figures from Egypt, ancient stories recorded on artworks from the Mediterranean and Asian symbols found throughout the NGV collection. Through hands on and multimedia experiences, children aged 0 - 8 and their families can journey together to explore the world through art. Excellent!

Light Works

The sun’s light is an elemental force of nature without which our planet would not exist. Light is also fundamental for the creation of photographs, indeed some of the first photographs were named ‘calotype’ meaning a ‘beautiful impression’ created by light. Light, and its absence, it still a source of inspiration for many contemporary photographers. In this exhibition drawn from the NGV Collection, artists including Mike and Doug Starn, David Stephenson, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Bill Henson, use the emotive potential and scientific capacities of light in their creative explorations of the world. Works included range from photograms (camera-less images); large scale installations and digital light-based technologies. 

Top Arts 2012

A major event in the annual school calendar, Top Arts 2012 again presents outstanding work completed by young student artists as part of their assessment for VCE Art and Studio Arts.

Brent Harris

Brent Harris is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists.  A prolific painter and printmaker, he is well known for haunting imagery that drifts between abstraction and figuration. Charged with a quiet emotional intensity, his paintings, prints and drawings are often motivated by an exploration of personal memories and the expression of psychological states. Sometimes humorous and often disturbing, they address a range of universal concerns relating to human experience: life, death, fear, doubt, spirituality and sexuality. Encompassing more than 70 works drawn predominantly from the NGV Collection, this exhibition looks at the development of Harris’s unique vision over a career of more than twenty years, exploring the ways that he has continually transformed his approach to image-making from his earliest prints and drawings to his most recent paintings.