Eight Unmissable Exhibitions to See in Melbourne This Winter
Chilly winter weather is the perfect excuse to explore a few (or many) of Melbourne's world-class art exhibitions.
Eight Unmissable Exhibitions to See in Melbourne This Winter
Chilly winter weather is the perfect excuse to explore a few (or many) of Melbourne's world-class art exhibitions.
From Picasso to queer icons and Van Gogh-inspired projections: this winter, Melbourne has it all. As the weather gets even colder, those looking to spend the season exploring Melbourne's expansive art scene have a wide variety of exhibitions to choose from.
With hundreds of lights, the Royal Botanic Garden's after-dark Lightscape installation turns the park into a festival of lights. On chillier winter days, you can head indoors to check out the NGV's QUEER exhibit to explore iconic moments in art history and queer history side by side, or visit the world premiere of The Picasso Century exhibition, developed exclusively for the NGV by the Centre Pompidou and the Musée national Picasso-Paris.
No matter what you're looking for, this winter, you can find it. These are our picks for this season's must-see art exhibitions in Melbourne.
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If you’re Melbourne’s NGV International and you’ve spent the summer filling your walls and halls with fashion by Coco Chanel, how do you follow up come winter? By dedicating your next blockbuster exhibition to Pablo Picasso and the artists he crossed paths with. The iconic Spanish painter, sculptor and printmaker’s pieces will sit alongside works by everyone from Salvador Dalí and Henri Matisse to Marie Laurencin and Gertrude Stein at The Picasso Century, which’ll take over the St Kilda Road gallery from Friday, June 10.
A world-premiere showcase developed exclusively for the NGV by the Centre Pompidou and the Musée national Picasso-Paris, The Picasso Century won’t skimp on its namesake. From Picasso alone, more than 70 works will be on display. It will also surround his pieces with over 100 others from more than 50 of his contemporaries.
Photo: Pablo Picasso. Spanish 1881–1973. Reclining woman (Femme couchée). 19 June 1932, oil on canvas, 38.0 x 46.0 cm, 55.6 x 63.0 cm (framed). Centre Pompidou, Paris, Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle. Donated by Louise and Michel Leiris, 1984. © Succession Picasso/Copyright Agency, 2022 Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM – CCI/Bertrand Prévost/Dist. RMN – GP.
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Fancy an art experience that extends beyond looking at works on a wall? Then prepare to be impressed by Melbourne’s new 3000-square-metre, 11-metre-high immersive digital art gallery.
Running now until August 31, 2022, The Lume’s inaugural exhibition celebrates the works and life of Vincent van Gogh, so you will walk through his famous masterpieces including The Starry Night and Sunflowers. For the latter, there’s a dedicated mirror infinity room filled with sunflowers. Elsewhere, expect a reimagined Café Terrace 1888, and a life-size recreation of Van Gogh’s The Bedroom.
A carefully curated fusion of colour, sound, taste and aroma will see you experience the works of the famed Dutch artist like never before.
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With a reimagined collection of over 400 artworks, QUEER presents hundreds of years of paintings, photography and more through a queer lens. The most historically expansive exhibition of its kind in Australia, QUEER features works by queer artists or artists who have a strong connection to queer history.
The exhibition seeks to explore the idea of queerness as an expression of sexuality and gender, a sensibility and attitude, as well as a political movement. The exhibit also considers the collection of the NGV itself, examining where queer history is notably absent from the NGV either accidentally or through purposeful omission.
QUEER will be free and open to the public at NGV International from Thursday, March 10 until Sunday, August 21.
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Walking through a cathedral made of 100,000-plus lights, moseying beneath a canopy of glowing multi-coloured trees, wandering between ribbons of flashing beams — you’ll be able to do all of this when Lightscape heads to Australia for the first time in 2022.
The after-dark light festival will be taking over the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria — Melbourne from Friday, June 24–Sunday, August 7, beaming away from 5.15pm Wednesday–Sunday.
Prepare to see the garden illuminated by immersive and large-scale installations scattered along a 1.8-kilometre route, including sparkling trees, luminous walkways and bursts of colour that look like fireworks.
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Step into an immersive light installation at Bruce Munro’s new gallery exhibition, Bruce Munro: From Sunrise Road. Munro — a British artist well-known for his large-scale light installations — will be bringing his considerable talents to Melbourne this winter for the first time.
The exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art is Munro’s first installation in Australia, and is a combination of indoor and outdoor experimental artworks and smaller, more intimate storytelling pieces.
The exhibition aims to demonstrate the depth and breadth of the artist’s work, with inspiration coming from both the personal as well as the literary, philosophical and spiritual. An interactive experience, Munro’s exhibition aims to be both playful and contemplative.
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For a five-month season from mid-June, the UK’s Tate will take over Melbourne’s Australian Centre for the Moving Image with a hefty exhibition that’ll span everything from painting, photography and sculpture through to drawing, kinetic art and installations — and, of course, the moving image.
Art lovers will be able to see works by famed English romantic painter and watercolourist Joseph Mallord William Turner alongside the light- and space-focused efforts of American artist James Turrell, plus pieces by impressionist Claude Monet and Japanese favourite Yayoi Kusama.
The ticketed exhibition will be accompanied by talks, performances, workshops and late-night events, as well as film screenings. There will also be two free exhibits for visitors to explore.
Image: Raemar, Blue, 1969, James Turrell. Tate: Presented by the Tate Americas Foundation, partial purchase and partial gift of Doris J. Lockhart 2013. © James Turrell. Photo: Tate.
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By bringing together unconventional historical and contemporary portraiture in one experience, this exhibition pushes the boundaries of what counts as a portrait.
This combination exhibition brings together the collections of the NGV as well as the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, creating the largest exhibition of Australian portraiture ever compiled by either gallery. This is the first time the two collections have combined on a large-scale project.
From Boris Cipusev’s typographic portrait of Jeff from The Wiggles to Polixeni Papapetrou’s Magma Man — a photograph that aims to merge sitter with landscape until they cannot be distinguished from one another — the portraits in this jointly-curated exhibition test the limits of Australian portraiture.
Situated on the third floor of the NGV’s Ian Potter Centre, this exhibition is free to the public and open from Friday, March 22 until Sunday, August 21.
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Hosted by the City of Stonnington over fourteen nights, the free after-dark arts fest celebrates the best that local creatives have to offer, with plenty of dazzling light projections to tempt you off the couch.
And this year, it’ll be spread across two main precincts, descending on Prahran Square from Friday, June 3–Sunday, June 12, before hitting Malvern East’s Central Park from Thursday, June 16–Sunday, June 19.
Working to the theme ‘Metamorphosis’, the festival first lights up Prahran Square with intricate new work Now Breathe, by Resolution X collaborators Jamie Russell, David Bartholomeusz and Kait Hall. Expect a giant living organism, crafted from a series of light tubes and backed by a calming soundtrack featuring more than 250 different recordings of human breaths. Then, from June 16, Central Park Gardens will come alive nightly with five eye-popping glowing installations from local artists. Take a wander through works like ENESS’ renowned Sky Castle, with its interactive colour-changing archways inspired by a rainbow; or the vibrant, ever-morphing Monolith, by Skunk Control.
Image: ‘Sky Castle’ by ENESS, photographed by Zhu Rui. Glow Winter Arts Festival, supplied.
Top image: The Passing Winter, 2005, Yayoi Kusama. Tate: Purchased with funds provided by the Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee 2008. ©Yayoi Kusama. Tate.
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