Rembrandt, Hermannsburg watercolourists, Pierre Bonnard, India Mahdavi and more
10 March 2023: In 2023, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) presents a dynamic program of exhibitions, collection displays, festivals, events and more at NGV International and The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Featuring some of history’s greatest artists alongside a selection of the most exciting contemporary practitioners working today, the 2023 season offers visitors the opportunity to encounter a diverse and spectacular range of art and design.
The second edition of the ground-breaking exhibition Melbourne Now will be presented at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square from 24 March. Bold in scope and scale, the exhibition highlights the extraordinary work of more than 200 Victorian-based artists, designers, studios and firms whose practices are shaping the cultural landscape of Melbourne and Victoria. With more than 200 ambitious and thought-provoking projects on display, including more than 70 world-premiere works commissioned especially by the NGV for this major presentation, the exhibition highlights the vibrant creativity of local emerging, mid-career and senior practitioners and collectives – including many who are presenting at the NGV for the very first time.
Opening in June at NGV International, the blockbuster Melbourne Winter Masterpieces® exhibition Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi will feature more than 100 works by Pierre Bonnard – a beloved 20th century French painter celebrated for his luminous palette – presented within a contemporary scenography by award-winning architect and designer, India Mahdavi.
Curated by the NGV in partnership with the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the exhibition brings late 19th and 20th century France to life through paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and decorative objects by Pierre Bonnard, shown alongside early cinema by the Lumière brothers, and artworks by his early contemporaries, including Félix Vallotton and Édouard Vuillard.
In celebration of the exhibition, the NGV will stage talks, conversations, performances and more. Highlights include NGV Friday Nights which offers audiences late-night access to the exhibition and a line-up of leading Australian music acts, and a special concert event developed in partnership with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, created in response to Bonnard’s work and exploring the new artistic and musical vocabularies which developed in 20th century France.
The NGV holds the most important Rembrandt collection in the Southern Hemisphere and presents the exhibition Rembrandt: True to Life, the most comprehensive Australian exhibition devoted to the 17th century Dutch master held in the past 25 years. The exhibition will reveal the artist’s technical and creative innovation in printmaking through more than 100 etchings drawn from the NGV’s outstanding collection. Showcasing the breadth of the artist’s oeuvre, the exhibition presents Rembrandt’s prints alongside paintings and drawings from the NGV Collection, as well as iconic loans from the Rijksmuseum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the Louvre Museum, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Teylers Museum in Haarlem.
Now in its 29th year, the NGV’s annual Top Arts exhibition continues a tradition of celebrating the creativity, vision and commitment of young artists across the state. Featuring the most exceptional work from students who have completed VCE Studio Arts or Art in 2022, Top Arts, opening in March, brings the passions and concerns of these young artists into sharp focus in this all ages NGV-curated exhibition.
Australia’s leading and largest design event, Melbourne Design Week, presents an annual 11-day program of more than 300 talks, tours, exhibitions, launches, installations, and workshops across Australia’s design capital. In 2023, the festival will take place from 18 – 28 May, enlivening the late autumn period with its dynamic program of design excellence. Highlights of the week include Melbourne Museum’s Medtech forum, the Melbourne Design Week Film Festival, the work of the Numbulwar Weavers presented by Agency Projects with Tait, and over sixty exhibitions of Australia’s most innovative designers, including at Alpha 60, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Craft, Cult, OIGÅLL PROJECTS, pépite, Sophie Gannon Gallery, and Tolarno Galleries.
Melbourne Design Fair showcases the best collectible design from Australian and international designers and makers, with presentations staged by the NGV alongside leading commercial galleries, studios, design organisations and agencies. In 2023, Melbourne Design Fair moves to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, confirming the Fair as the leading platform for the presentation, promotion and sale of collectible design in the region. Melbourne Design Fair occurs over the first weekend of Melbourne Design Week and is an initiative of the NGV presented in collaboration with the Melbourne Art Foundation.
Since 2015, the Melbourne Art Book Fair has celebrated Melbourne’s status as a UNESCO City of Literature. Presented as part of Design Week, the Fair will once again host a range of events taking place around metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria, including the NGV, bookshops, galleries, libraries, community centres and design studios. The popular, free Stallholder Fair will take place Friday 19 May to Sunday 21 May in the NGV’s Great Hall and will feature the work of local and international artists, designers and publishers.
Featuring the work of leading international and Australian photographers, from Man Ray, Dora Maar, Max Dupain and Olive Cotton to Nan Goldin, Jeff Wall, Zanele Muholi and Michael Cook, Photography: Real and Imagined is the largest survey of the NGV’s photography collection in the institution’s history and features more than 200 works. Opening in October, this major exhibition examines the proposition that a photograph can be grounded in the real world, recording, documenting and reflecting the world around us; be the product of imagination, storytelling and illusion; and on occasion operate in both realms.
Watercolour Country: 100 works from Hermannsburg brings together the NGV’s significant holdings from this pivotal school of Australian art. With never-before-seen works by Albert Namatjira displayed alongside many of his contemporaries, this exhibition, opening in October, will map the relationships between artists working in Hermannsburg from the 1930s onwards and emphasise the legacy and lasting importance of the Hermannsburg school of watercolourists. The NGV gratefully acknowledges the generous gift by Darvell M. Hutchinson AM of 77 watercolours to the NGV Collection, which will be on display for the first time in this exhibition,
Since 2015, the NGV’s annual Architecture Commission series has invited Australian architects and designers to propose a compelling design idea for presentation within one of Australia’s great civic and cultural spaces, the NGV Garden. Awarded via competitive submission, many of the commissions have gone on to win some of the most prestigious design and architecture awards, both nationally and internationally. The NGV Architecture Commission will return in November to mark the eighth iteration of the competition, with the winning design to be announced in April.
The MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission is a major ongoing series that invites women working at the forefront of global design and architecture practice to create major new and significant works for the NGV Collection. Now in its second year, the 2023 recipient is Bethan Laura Wood, a London-based multidisciplinary designer known for her radical approach to materiality, colour, and pattern. Fascinated with the cultural and historical significance of surface design and colour in domestic space and the interior, Wood explores unlikely combinations of colour and shape, developing unique timber veneers, material composites and textiles for furniture, lighting, objects, installations, and accessories.
The third edition of the NGV Triennial will take over all levels of NGV International from December 2023. A free, large-scale exhibition of international contemporary art, design and architecture, the NGV Triennial highlights the urgent issues and ideas at the forefront of contemporary practice globally. Offering a visually arresting and thought-provoking view of the world at this unique moment, the exhibition will feature leading artists and designers from Australia and around the world who are at the vanguard of contemporary practice. The opening of the NGV Triennial will coincide with the NGV Gala, a celebration of Melbourne’s love of art, fashion, music, performances, fine food and wine.
Celebrated Australian designers Daniel To and Emma Aiston, aka Daniel Emma, have been designing products for leading design brands across the world for more than a decade, from furniture and lighting to accessories and textiles. Created exclusively for NGV, and designed for all ages and interests, Up, Down and All Around: Daniel Emma for Kids invites budding designers to learn about the role of design in the world we live in through hands-on and multimedia activities. Stimulating young people’s imaginations and putting their problem-solving skills to the test, the exhibition invites visitors to take familiar objects – from tennis balls to toothbrushes – and turn them in to new objects.
Sitting alongside the exhibition schedule is a year-round calendar of public programs, events and adult learning opportunities. The Scholars Series is a new program of in-depth presentations by world-leading experts in art history, exploring topics relating to works in the NGV Collection. Following the success of the inaugural 2022 Observations series, which explored women in art and design history, online academic seminar series returns from July 2023 to engage global thought leaders and researchers on the theme Living with Design and the role of design throughout history and across the globe.
Tony Ellwood AM, Director, NGV, said: ‘From Old Master paintings to works created using virtual reality technology, our 2023 program celebrates the astounding diversity of creative practice and the intersections of art and design. We are incredibly grateful to the Victorian Government for their year-round support of the NGV, especially the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces presentation Pierre Bonnard: Designed by India Mahdavi.’
Further information on NGV’s 2023 Season can be found on the NGV website.
Image credits: Ewald Namatjira, Untitled c. 1950; Man Ray, Kiki with African mask 1926; Pierre Bonnard, Stairs in the artist’s garden 1942–44, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Rembrandt Harmensz. Van Rijn, Beggars receiving alms at the door of a house 1648; Walter Ebatarinja, Untitled c. 1960; Portrait of India Mahdavi, Photo © Antoine Doyen; Rembrandt Harmensz. Van Rijn, Self-portrait in a cap, wide-eyed and open-mouthed 1630; Hassan Hajjaj, Master Cobra Mansa 2013
