Yoko Ono, Tracey Emin, Sheila Hicks, David Shrigley and Maison Schiaparelli. Introducing: the all-star cast of the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) upcoming Triennial, which will see 100 works from 120 artists, designers and collectives flood all four floors of Melbourne’s preeminent museum.
“In the three years since the last NGV Triennial, the world has experienced a great many structural shifts, including a global pandemic,” says Tony Ellwood, director of the NGV. “The artists, designers and architects of our time play an important role in helping us to understand, navigate and relate to the world around us. The 2023 NGV Triennial offers audiences a valuable opportunity to experience new and surprising forms of creative expression from around the globe, which, together, present a compelling snapshot of the world as it is, while also asking how we would like it to be.”
Three years, and three pillars which comprise the thematic anchor of the 2023 Triennial, and inform its curatorial logic. The first, ‘Magic’, winds its way through the occult, unpicking belief systems and revealing the shape of spirituality in the world around us. ‘Matter’, on the other hand, runs its fingers along the tangible, tracing the outlines of nature and materials—the beauty of making. And finally, there is ‘Memory’, a tapestry of the past; here, you’ll find the artists who hold a torch to the margins, casting a light on the people and places sitting in the shadows of history.
Who then, are the creatives, both leading and emerging, that you can expect to discover whilst wandering the NGV this summer? Recently acquired works from the aforementioned Tracey Emin will be a particular highlight, including a five-metre-high neon light installation, bronze sculptures and a series of gestural paintings. So too will Yoko Ono take pride of place at the institution, with her large-scale work ‘I Love You Earth’ set to festoon the exterior of the NGV International. In collaboration with haute couture house Schiaparelli, attendees will also come face-to-face with eight looks courtesy of incumbent director Daniel Roseberry, alongside a collection of his signature anatomical jewellery and surrealist adornments.
Maurizio Cattelan’s infamous duct-taped banana, Agnieszka Pilat’s autonomously painting robot dogs, an eight-metre-long eel trap from Wurundjeri artist Aunty Kim Wandin, and photographs by Iranian-Australian artist Hoda Afshar, whose solo exhibition ‘A Curve Is A Broken Line’ graced the Art Gallery of New South Wales in September are other pieces in the kaleidoscopic ensemble that the NGV has gathered for your pleasure.
For exhibitors Azuma Makoto, Japan-based flower artist, and figurative painter Prudence Flint, the Triennial is an opportunity to both spread word, and admire the works of their contemporaries. “I am honoured to be invited to NGV, a renowned art museum recognised worldwide, and to participate in this Triennial that brings together exceptional artists from around the world,” Makoto tells us. “While I have exhibited my work in various locations globally, this will be my first time visiting Australia, so I am very excited to see the response and reception to my work.”
“Walking in and experiencing my paintings sitting alongside the historical Dutch Masters’ portraits of women, I see how haunted the women feel in this context,” adds Flint, whose paintings will be hung amongst the NGV’s 16th and 17th century European collection. “The continuum of time and theme caught and fixed in a way only a painting can do justice to.”
Thus ephemerality glimmers in Flint’s work ‘Hunting & Fishing’, which explores generational shifts in female identity. “We live in a time where women are faced with potential financial autonomy,” Flint elaborates. “I’m of a generation that has seen great change from my mother’s life, to my own. Growing up a girl in the sixties and seventies in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I was a witness to my mother’s life as a wife and mother of four. Unlike my mother, I had the luxury of an extended education and choices. I see these paintings as an amalgam of that paradox.”
“I see ‘Hunting & Fishing’ as an active question; to see a bridge from the past into a self-determined future.”
Makoto’s commissioned work for the Triennial on the other hand, titled ‘A Chaotic Garden’, is a hybrid of two pieces. “Flowers from various places around the world come together, and in the video, ‘Drop Time’, they sprout, wither, and create a harmony of flowers as one artwork,” he explains. “Additionally, the artwork ‘Block Flowers’ is arranged in an orderly manner, surrounding the space.”
“These flowers, which would never be found together in nature, quietly stand, silently conveying something to us. Through human intervention, a new ecosystem is born here, representing the diversity that coexists on this planet, even in a chaotic world.”
An apt allegory for the Triennial itself.
The NGV Triennial 2023 is on display from December 3 2023 to April 7 2024 at the NGV International, Melbourne. Entry is free. For more information, visit NGV.vic.gov.au.
In addition to presenting work in NGV Triennial, Azuma Makoto will be presenting his first live artwork, ‘Botanical Sculpture’, in Australia at Chadstone—The Fashion Capital from January 12 to 29 2024.
Credit: https://www.vogue.com.au