Tag: NGV

NGV Triennnial | Opening Weekend – Candice Breitz, Humberto Campana, Joris Laarman, Formafantasma

CANDICE BREITZ IN CONVERSATION | SUN 17 DEC, 6.30PM–7.30PM $20 M / $25 A / $22.50 C https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/program/candice-breitz-in-conversation/ International artist Candice Breitz, discusses her multiscreen video installation Love Story, 2016, a work that focusses on the current, worldwide refugee crisis, in conversation with director and producer Ivan O’Mahoney. Doors open at 6pm with drinks available for purchase. Candice Breitz is internationally recognised as a leading contemporary photographic and video artist. Her latest video installation Love story, 2016, considers the global scale of the refugee crisis. The work reflects on how celebrities are often treated by the media as more newsworthy than people facing real-world adversity. The film is based on interviews conducted with six people who have fled their countries as a result of a range of oppressive conditions: Sarah Mardini, who escaped war-torn Syria; José Maria João, a former…

Melbourne Masterclass: Objects, Sounds and Stories of Love

Melbourne Masterclass: Objects, Sounds and Stories of Love Wednesdays 12, 19, and 26 April, 6.00pm-8.30pm Love, a complex emotion to say the least, has inspired artists and creative practitioners for centuries, generating countless artworks, objects, poems, books, musical compositions and films. Over three weeks this masterclass will explore the materiality, visions and sounds of love in response to the exhibition Love: Art of Emotion 1400-1800 held at the National Gallery of Victoria (March 31- June 18 2017); a collaborative project produced with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions at the University of Melbourne. Love: Art of Emotion 1400–1800 draws upon the NGV’s diverse permanent collection to explore the theme of love in art, and the changing representations of this complex emotion throughout the early modern period in Europe. While popular conceptions of love tend to focus upon romantic love, Love: Art of…

Weekly News Round-Up | 6th July 2016 | Cows for poems, Fact Checking the SCA UNSW merger, More concerns over Indian sculptures at NGA + more

In this chaotic moment of uncertainty (ahem) with no government in Australia perhaps we might have to return to arts funding arrangements of yesteryear and inspire artists with… cows. Amanda Smith of RN has this story about the history of arts funding in Australia in which she reveals that the first arts grant was in the form of two cows ‘from the goverment herd’ given as payment to nineteenth-century poet Michael Masset Robinson for a series of ‘odes for George III and Queen Charlotte on their birthdays. In other signs of the apocalypse (though admittedly this was reported on the eve of the election) an artist has managed to hang his own painting on the wall at the NGV next to Picasso’s weeping woman. The artist, Ben Butcher, declares that ‘We live in an age where monolithic cultural institutions no longer have a…

Wednesday Art News Round Up | April 20th 2016 | David Hockney at NGV, Copyright Wins and Losses, etc

Yesterday the NGV announced their main exhibitions for the Spring and Sunmmer this year. The major summer exhibition at the NGV International will be a major solo exhibition of art by David Hockney (opening 11 November 2020 at NGV International). The exhibition, curated by the NGV in collaboration with David Hockney and his studio, will feature more than 700 works from the past decade of the artist’s career – some new and many never exhibted before in Australia. The exhibition will include paintings, digital drawings, photography and video works. One major work inclluded will be The Four Seasons, Woldgate Woods, a video work that shows the changing landscape of Hockney’s native Yorkshire, each season comprised of nine high-definition screens. Over at the NGV Australia the main exhibition will be a retrospective of John Olsen (opening in September). The exhibition will follow the work of…

News | NGV attendance figures rank alongside major international museums

Image of visitro figures from the Art Newspaper

The annual Art Newspaper report on attendance figures always makes for interesting reading. There are the unsurprising results (the Louvre remains the most visited museum in the world with 8.6 million over the year), alongside the news that the NGV nabbed three positions in the list of the most popular Contemporary Art Exhibitions of 2015, with the David Shrigley exhibition in top place, followed by Carlo Amorales and Ryan Trecartin, and its Medieval Moderns (based on the NGV’s permanent collection) garnering over 350k visitors. All three were free exhibitions. As Michaela Boland in The Australian has already pointed out these figures are based on the numbers of visitors to the gallery while the exhibition was on, not on actual visitors to each exhibition. Since the NGV has just announced that the very popular Warhol/Weiwei exhibition has hit 300 000 visitors after…

Symposium | Art and the Connected Future | NGV International

‘The blog is the modern drawing… It gives the most information: it shows my complete surroundings’ – Ai Weiwei ‘I want to be a machine’ – Andy Warhol Our worldview is increasingly mediated by digital technology. How do leading innovators think it might also impact on our creativity? Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei innovators of their age, push boundaries between culture and technology – Warhol through film, television and publishing, and Ai through social media networks that use art to engage with global social and political issues. Inspired by the artistic practices of Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei, share in the discussion of how we make and experience art alongside rapid changes in technology. What might the future of art look like? Speakers include: Ben Davis, National Art Critic, artnet News, New York City; Tom Uglow, Creative Director, Google Creative Lab, Sydney; Simon Crerar, Founding Editor, BuzzFeed, Australia; Max Delany, Artistic…

Opportunity | Free Book Fair Stalls for Indie and Small Press at 2016 NGV Arts Book Fair

The Melbourne UNESCO City of Literature Office is providing opportunities for smaller press publishers and independent artists to participate in this year’s NGV Arts Book Fair free-of-charge. The inaugural Fair in 2015 attracted over 16,000 visitors and showcased the work of over 100 publishers, artists, designers and writers. Returning in 2016, the Melbourne Art Book Fair is a unique platform bringing together emerging and established publishers, artists, writers and designers to provide visitors with access to artists’ books, catalogues and monographs, periodicals and independent publications, all in the one venue at NGV International. The Fair is also a unique design experience; visitors in 2016 will delight in an  architectural commission by Bangkok-based artist Wit Pimkanchanapong who will transform the NGV’s Great Hall. The Melbourne Art Book Fair will also feature a dynamic program of free talks, discussions and performances, as well…

Call for Papers | Conference: ‘Human Kind: Transforming Identity in British and Australian Portraits, 1700-1914’

Inspired by the outstanding collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, this interdisciplinary conference will be the largest gathering of international and Australian scholars to focus on portraits. It will provide a unique opportunity to explore both British and Australian portraits through a dynamic interchange between academics and curators. September 8-11 2016, University of Melbourne and National Gallery of Victoria Call for papers Papers are invited that focus on British or Australian portraits between 1700 and 1914, which can be interpreted as separate fields or as overlapping or comparative studies. The portraits may be in any public or private collection worldwide, but in particular in the National Gallery of Victoria. They may be in any medium, including painting, print, drawing, sculpture and photography. The conference aims to be both informed and provocative and to provide a robust forum for new…

Acquisitions | NGV acquires double-sided German Expressionist ‘degenerate’ painting

News from the NGV that they have acquired a German Expressionist painting by Erich Heckel, co-founder of the German Expressionist group Die Brücke (The Bridge) which was founded in Dresden in 1905. The canvas is painted on both sides with the joyous Great dancing pair, 1923, and Landscape by the fjord, 1939, on its reverse. Erich Heckel’s Great dancing pair, 1923, will be on display at NGV International in the Late 19th & early 20th Century Paintings & Decorative Arts Gallery, from Saturday 7 November. Open daily, 10am-5pm. Free entry. From the NGV While the NGV Collection includes prints by German Expressionist artists including Heckel, this is the very first painting by a member of the important movement to enter the gallery’s holdings. The purchase was generously supported by John Downer AM and Rose Downer. In a statement John Downer…

News | NGV to open both locations seven days a week from 5th October

From the NGV news that both NGV International on St Kilda Road and The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square will now be open daily, 9am to 5pm. Currently open six days a week, NGV Australia will now open on Mondays and NGV International will open on Tuesdays. Tony Ellwood, Director, NGV, said, ‘We are delighted that people will have the opportunity to spend more time at the NGV. There is a wonderful and lively program over spring and summer, and visitors can enjoy a range of exhibitions and free activities, from listening to live music under our recently launched Summer Architecture Commission by John Wardle Architects in the Grollo Equiset Garden at NGV International or taking in the new Australian art exhibition Our Land Is Alive: Hermannsburg Potters for Kids. ‘Visitors can also enjoy two major exhibitions…

Melbourne Masterclasses: The Life and Legacy of Catherine the Great

The Faculty of Arts at The University of Melbourne proudly presents a four-part masterclass series in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria’s exhibition Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great. Catherine the Great is the most famous and longest-ruling female monarch of Russia. Her passion for education, the arts and culture heralded the Golden Age of Russia during the Enlightenment era. As a patron of the arts, Catherine amassed a vast art collection over her thirty-four year reign, which ranged from Old Master of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the newest contemporary art of her day. Within a relatively short time Catherine had amassed a collection that rivalled many of the greatest collections in Europe. It was this collection which formed the basis for the State Hermitage Museum, founded in 1764 by Catherine and today…

Publication News | Art Journal of the National Gallery of Victoria 53 now available

The latest edition of the Art Journal of the National Gallery of Victoria is now available. You can read the full journal online here. From the editors: This edition of Art Journal of the National Gallery of Victoria again ranges widely across the NGV’s collection, including investigations of two nineteenth-century Tibetan lama paintings, a prize-winning work by an early and little-known Australian female artist, the iconography of two carved Renaissance cassoni and the relationship of Australian artist Guy Stuart’s late 1960s practice to American Minimalism. For this issue we have also invited Melbourne-based artist Patrick Pound to reflect on his Gallery of air, 2013, one of the most popular and talked about works in the NGV’s recent Melbourne Now exhibition. In an historic development in the long history of this publication, last year the digitisation of all back issues of…

Art Book Fair | National Gallery of Victoria

The NGV is holding an art book fair this weekend (1–3 May) at NGV International. Several of the major events are already booked out but there are plenty of other talks, signings, rare book tours, readings and performances going on, as well the book fair to browse. It is free and open to the public but some events are ticketed so double check the event listing online. About the Art Book Fair Melbourne is a literary city, of readers and curious minds. Celebrating Melbourne’s diverse literary heritage and love of printed matter, and international recognition as one of only eleven worldwide UNESCO Cities of Literature, the NGV presents the Melbourne Art Book Fair in 2015. A new project of its kind in Australia, the Melbourne Art Book Fair provides a unique art, architecture and design experience for visitors to the NGV. The…

News | Telstra and the National Gallery of Victoria announce three year creative partnership

The NGV has announced a three-year creative partnership with Telstra, which promises ‘creativity and innovation in a digital world’. It would be nice to have some more solid detail about exactly what the partnership hopes to achieve, beyond the statements in the press release, which include things like ‘reaching out’, ‘unlocking potential’, and ‘to revolutionise the gallery experience’ (does it need to be revolutionised?) But, there is certainly much the NGV could do digitally so here is what I hope it means. 1. Digitisation and online access to the entire collection Ideally the entire NGV collection (or a substantial amount of it) would be made available online with high quality images and relevant information about each work. The NGV already has a large number of works available via their website but the search is very basic (keyword only and no way to…

Volunteer Opportunity | NGV recruiting Volunteer Guides

The NGV is recruiting Voluntary Guides to commence training in 2015. The Voluntary Guides of the National Gallery of Victoria was established in 1967 with the approval of the NGV Council of Trustees. It operates with the expressed aim of providing support to the NGV by assisting the community in understanding and appreciating the NGV and its collections. Since 1968, the NGV Voluntary Guides have been providing daily tours and talks for visitors, providing a link between the NGV and the public, and playing an important role in encouraging and deepening the interest of visitors in NGV collections and exhibitions. The guides are a dedicated team with a comprehensive knowledge of the NGV Collection and a passion for the visual arts. In the coming months a new group of guides will be recruited for a training program commencing in February 2015…