Art Lovers Film Night — Kusama: Infinity

Overview

Yayoi Kusama, now aged 89, is the world's top selling living female artist who has exhibited with the likes of Andy Warhol and Claus Oldenberg and gate crashed the Venice Biennale. From a young age, she has endured her family's disapproval, sexism, racism and disturbing hallucinations due to mental illness.

It was these crisis that became the source of her art and a way for her to work through and survive her trauma. They spill out of the Japanese artist in a series of hyperbolic spots, unnerving patterns and ethereal infinity rooms that resonates on both an individual and communal level. Her participatory art work Obliteration Room was Auckland Art Gallery's most visited exhibition in decades.

The life and times of this modern iconoclast are delved into through a documentary entitled Kusama: Infinity which will be screening at Rialto Newmarket's Art Lovers Film Night on Thursday, 8 November. This new series is run in association with Auckland Art Gallery. Every addition shows an advanced screening of a new film about art, architecture, or design with an introduction by an expert on the films topic. The ticket price will also get you a goodie bag and a glass of wine. Speaking at Kusama: Infinity is art historian Linda Tyler, Associate Professor in Museums and Cultural Heritage at the University of Auckland.

Image: Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, David Zwirner.