Overview
Any chance to see Yayoi Kusama's work in Australia is huge news, and reason to make a date — including travel plans, if needed — to get immersed in the Japanese icon's infinity rooms, and also be surrounded by pumpkins and dots. So when the National Gallery of Victoria announced that its big summer 2024–25 showcase would be dedicated to the artist, that was enough to make the resulting exhibition a firm must-see. Adding Friday-night parties to the mix, which the NGV has just locked in, is the cherry on top, then.
How many ways can Melbourne go dotty for Kusama? Everyone is about to find out, although that question keeps being answered in the lead up to the exhibition's opening on Sunday, December 15, 2024. Already, Kusama's five-metre-tall dot-covered Dancing Pumpkin sculpture has made NGV International's Federation Court its home. Then came the revelation that the showcase will feature a world record-breaking number of infinity rooms and other immersive installations. And, outside the gallery on St Kilda Road right now, Kusama's Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees has wrapped the trunks of more than 60 trees in pink-and-white polka-dotted material.
NGV Friday Nights often forms part of the venue's high-profile exhibitions, so it should come as no surprise that the event series will be back for Yayoi Kusama. The after-hours parties will kick off on Friday, December 20, 204 for some pre-Christmas fun, then run for 18 weeks until Friday, April 18, 2025. Come quittin' time for the week, Melburnians can add spots to their late-night shenanigans. If you're making a visit from interstate, you'll want to ensure you time it to hit one of the soirees on your trip.
Seeing art is obviously on the NGV Friday Nights itinerary, but so is music and culinary experiences. The NGV's Great Hall will welcome live DJ sets, including from Dijok, Small FRY, Elle Shimada, Tanzer and more. In the NGV Garden Restaurant, acclaimed chefs Martin Benn is doing a residency for the exhibition's duration, serving up Asian-inspired dishes using Australian produce,
Attendees can also look forward to other dining and drinking options, such as the Moët & Chandon champagne bar, Four Pillars gin bar, Yering Station wine bar and Häagen-Dazs ice cream cart — so there's sparkling, G&Ts, wine flights and frozen treats covered — plus a Japanese-inspired menu from the Great Hall and Gallery Kitchen.
Gracing NGV International's walls until Monday, April 21, 2025, Yayoi Kusama will feature over 180 works, in what'll be the largest Kusama retrospective that Australia has ever seen — as well as one of the most-comprehensive retrospectives devoted to the artist to be staged globally, not to mention the closest that you'll get to experiencing her Tokyo museum without leaving the country.
Other highlights include NGV International's glass waterwall going pink, but with black rather than white dots; Kusama's new version of Narcissus Garden, which dates back to 1966 and will feature 1400 30-centimetre-diameter silver balls this time around, sitting in front of the waterwall and in parts of Federation Court; and the yellow-and-black spheres of Dots Obsession hanging over the Great Hall. Then there's the artist's sticker-fuelled, all-ages-friendly The Obliteration Room, where audiences young and old pop coloured dots everywhere — 'obliterating', as Kusama calls it — to cover an apartment interior that's completely white otherwise.
Overall, Yayoi Kusama will step through the 95-year-old artist's eight decades of making art via a thematic chronology. Some pieces hail from her childhood. Some are recent. Her output in her hometown of Matsumoto from the late 30s–50s; the results of relocating to America in 1957; archival materials covering her performances and activities in her studios, especially with a political charge, in the 60s and 70s; plenty from the past four decades: they'll all appear.
Yayoi Kusama, The Hope of the Polka Dots Buried in Infinity Will Eternally Cover the Universe 2019 at Kusama's solo exhibition Yayoi Kusama: All About Love Speaks Forever at Fosun Foundation, Shanghai. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts © YAYOI KUSAMA.
Yayoi Kusama, The obliteration room 2002–present. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, © YAYOI KUSAMA.
Installation view of Yayoi Kusama's Flower Obsession 2017 on display in NGV Triennial from 15 December 2017 – 15 April 2018 at NGV International Melbourne. Image courtesy of NGV.
Yayoi Kusama displays at NGV International, St Kilda Road, Melbourne from Sunday, December 15, 2024–Monday, April 21, 2025 — and NGV Friday Nights: Yayoi Kusama runs each Friday night from 6–10pm between Friday, December 20, 2024–Friday, April 18, 2025. Head to the NGV website for more details and tickets.
Top image: Installation view of Yayoi Kusama's Dots Obsession 1996/2015 at Kusama's solo exhibition YAYOI KUSAMA: IN INFINITY, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark. YAYOI KUSAMA Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts © YAYOI KUSAMA.
NGV Friday Nights images: Michael Pham / Tobias Titz.