PUBL031978

NGV Magazine

NGV Magazine is a bi-monthly magazine featuring writing from NGV and around the world that considers the many ways and reasons that we create, design, speculate and investigate. Learn how artists and designers make things, sink deep into the lives, challenges and achievements of creative people throughout history, and consider the world anew through the many ideas and perspectives explored through art and design.

NGV Magazine print and digital editions are free for NGV Members. Become an NGV Member for exclusive online access to the current issue.

Print editions are available to purchase from the NGV design stores and online store.

Latest issue

Issue 52 May–Jun 2025

The May-June issue of NGV Magazine celebrates exhibitions launching this season and works by artists from the NGV Collection. We feature new exhibition, Kimono and preview the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces® 2025 exhibition French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ahead of its opening. We also take a deeper look at American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and celebrate the significant addition of Papa dingo near Kiwirrkurra, 1996, by the late Ronnie Tjampitjinpa and Other Answers, 1945, by Surrealist Kay Sage to the NGV Collection.

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Features in this issue

COVER STORY Kimono Through The Ages

‘While kimonos have remained consistent in form and tailoring over the centuries, it is the individual choices of fabric, colour, pattern and adornment that reveal the ever-changing story of Japan and its people.’

By Wayne Crothers

COLLECTION STORIES Johnson Eziefula: The Essence Of The Human Condition

‘My work is largely autobiographical – even when the figure represents someone else, it often speaks to a part of me or to shared. experiences that are deeply personal.’

By Sophie Oxenbridge with Johnson Eziefula

MELBOURNE WINTER MASTERPIECES® French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

‘This exhibition charts the trajectory of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in late nineteenth–century France, highlighting the contributions of those at the centre of this period of radical experimentation who boldly rejected the artistic conventions of their time.’

By Coral Guan, Michael Varcoe-Cocks and Dr Miranda Wallace

COLLECTION STORIES Robert Mapplethorpe

‘Taken in 1986, Irises is a beautifully composed image of irises arranged in a reflective Aurene glass vase from Mapplethorpe’s own collection of American iridescent vases.

By Maggie Finch

COLLECTION STORIES A Marriage of Styles

‘While many are familiar with Hockney’s sun-soaked series of Los Angeles paintings, The second marriage is noticeably absent of pools,parties and boys.’

By Sebastian Moore

ON DISPLAY Other Answers

‘Kay Sage always resisted requests to decipher the meaning of her complex paintings.’

By Dr Ted Gott