India, 4th December 2024: Opening on 15 December, the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) world-premiere blockbuster exhibition Yayoi Kusama, and accompanying children’s exhibition Kusama for Kids, together feature ten of the artist’s signature immersive artworks – the most ever assembled in a single location anywhere in the world. This includes the global premiere of the artist’s most recent, never-before-seen infinity mirror room, which will be unveiled exclusively in Melbourne, Australia.
The world-premiere work, Infinity Mirrored Room–My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light, 2024, invites visitors into a spectacular space that opens into a seemingly infinite celestial universe. The new work is the latest in Kusama’s body of infinity mirror rooms, which ingeniously use mirrors to create the optical illusion of infinity within a confined space. Since debuting her first mirrored environments in the 1960s, Kusama has continued to craft immersive installations that invite visitors to experience her boundless vision. Kusama’s infinity mirror rooms have been staged the world over and are among the most instantly recognisable works in her oeuvre.
Another exhibition highlight will be the Australian premiere of The Hope of the Polka Dots Buried in Infinity Will Eternally Cover the Universe, 2019, a show-stopping immersive installation featuring six-metre-tall polka-dotted tendrils. As visitors move through the space, the towering yellow-and-black tentacular forms appear to writhe and intersect overhead. The work is a manifestation of the artist’s enduring affinity with the infinite quality of nature, which she has described as ‘a mysterious energy or feeling in the infinity’ that ‘comes up growing and growing, never stops’.
Also on display is an iteration of Dots Obsession, 1996/2024, a walk-through room featuring biomorphic inflatables. Dots Obsession uses mirrored walls to extend Kusama’s ongoing preoccupation with dots, which, for her, symbolise both the individual and, when presented in great numbers, the cosmos. Upon entering Dots Obsession, with its proliferation of mirrors and polka dots creating the illusion of endlessness, visitors are invited to contemplate their place within the universe.
Audiences will also have the opportunity to experience several of the artist’s more recent, celestial mirror rooms, including Chandelier of Grief, 2016, and Love is Calling, 2013. Chandelier of Grief features a single baroque-style chandelier gradually rotating inside a glass prism in the centre of a mirror-clad hexagonal space. Love is Calling, 2013, welcomes visitors into a space filled with multi coloured luminous, tentacle-like forms protruding from the floor and ceiling. Another exhibition highlight is The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended into the Heavens, 2017, which invites visitors to look through a small opening to see a hidden infinite landscape of glowing pumpkins.
The exhibition also includes a participatory artwork, which invite visitors to take part in their creation. Commissioned for the 2017 NGV Triennial, and supported by the NGVWA, Flower Obsession is brought to life through the application of red flowers to the walls, furniture and objects of a typical domestic interior.
Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the flowers will proliferate, gradually covering all surfaces to ‘obliterate’ and transform the space into a spectacular environment. A second participatory experience The Obliteration Room, 2002–present, on display in the NGV’s FREE children’s gallery as part of Kusama for Kids, invites participants to add their sticker to the hundreds and thousands that will eventually cover all surfaces in an entirely white apartment interior, ‘obliterating’ it with coloured dots.
Other important immersive environments include Invisible Life 2000/24, a twisting corridor with convex mirrors on every multi-coloured surface, and With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever, 2013, which houses three larger-than-life tulips that dwarf the visitor within a multi-coloured polka-dotted environment.
Steve Dimopoulos, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events said: “Having Yayoi Kusama’s works at the NGV is yet another example of how Melbourne’s blockbuster calendar of major events continues to drive tourism, boost local businesses and cement our reputation as Australia’s cultural capital. It adds to a fantastic pipeline of events which includes the Boxing Day Test, the Australian Open and Always Live – events deliver incredible experiences for visitors and locals alike.”
Colin Brooks, Minister for Creative Industries said: “The NGV’s world-premiere exhibition Yayoi Kusama will be one of the most ambitious presentations of the iconic Japanese artist’s work ever to be staged – and there is truly something for everyone. Whether you’re a Kusama fan or new to her work, it’s time to get excited – expect the global premiere of the artist’s latest infinity mirror room alongside extraordinary immersive works, awe-inspiring sculptures and a dedicated Kusama for Kids gallery. We’re proud to back this blockbuster NGV showcase which will wow and delight Victorian audiences of all ages and attract visitors from near and far to Melbourne this summer.”
Tony Ellwood AM, Director, NGV said: ‘To have assembled ten of Yayoi Kusama’s spectacular immersive environments in a single location is an ambitious and logistical feat never-before-attempted anywhere else in the world. These iconic installations are the culmination of more than eight decades of constant artistic innovation, creating new and never-before-seen ways to express Kusama’s unique perspective of the world around us. Only in Melbourne will audiences have the opportunity to experience so many of Kusama’s large-scale works in one place.’
Displayed across the entire ground floor of NGV International, Yayoi Kusama is one of the most comprehensive retrospective exhibitions of the artist’s work ever presented globally and the largest ever mounted in Australia. The exhibition traces her entire career – from her childhood in the 1930s through to the present-day – through a rich selection of works drawn from the artist’s personal collection and premier institutions across Japan and Australia. Featuring painting, sculpture, collage, fashion, film and installation, the exhibition reveals the astonishing breadth of Kusama’s multidisciplinary practice.
Born in Japan in 1929, Kusama is one of the world’s most important and recognised artists working today. She is renowned globally for her singular and idiosyncratic use of pattern, colour and symbols to create immersive, thought-provoking and intensely personal works of art that transcend language and borders. She has made indelible contributions to key art movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including minimalism, pop art and feminist art.
Yayoi Kusama will be on display from 15 December 2024 to 21 April 2025 at NGV International, St Kilda Road, Melbourne. Entry fees apply. Tickets and information are available via the NGV website: NGV.MELBOURNE
