Museum Exhibition

‘Yayoi Kusama’, an Expansive Retrospective at The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)
Melbourne, Australia
09 January 2025

Yayoi Kusama is the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at  The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, Australia. Running from 15 December 2024 to 21 April 2025, ‘Yayoi Kusama’ brings together private and institutional loans to present over 200 works that span the Japanese polymath’s full output, comprising sculpture, painting, film and interactive installation among other mediums.

 

Kusama is notable for her refusal to settle into a singular artistic category, and this exhibition pays tribute to the rare diversity of the Japanese artist’s output. Beginning with rarely seen early works, including sketchbook pages from 1945, it guides the viewer through her imaginative world. It also places her within broader culture, displaying documentation of a number of her “happenings” — performance pieces staged in New York and elsewhere — and fashion collaborations.

 

Arguably the artist’s best-known body of work is her kaleidoscopic infinity mirror rooms, a new one of which,  titled My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light (2024) is shown here for the first time. Replete with illuminated spotted orbs, repeated ad infinitum by the mirrors that cover the walls, it is a .

 

It is with works like this one that Kusama has become a household name — but they are far from representing the full extent of her oeuvre. As well as showcasing a number of Kusama’s immersive environments and interactive installations — one such being The Obliteration Room (2002–), an ongoing installation project that invites viewers to cover a blank room with stickers resembling the artist’s trademark polka dots — this retrospective shines a holistic light on the artist.

 

Among lesser-seen works included in the exhibition are mixed media paintings made during her time spent in Japan in the 1970s and items of clothing that she created for her short-lived brand, Kusama Fashion Company, which she established in 1969.

 

This show follows recent solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., Tate Modern in London and the Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk, as well as a number of presentations at Opera Gallery — most recently, ‘Yayoi Kusama, Niki de Saint Phalle: A New World’ in Singapore in 2023. Kusama will be the subject of a second two-person exhibition with Niki de Saint Phalle at Opera Gallery London in 2025.