More than 700 works by David Hockney, many of which have never have been seen in Australia before, are to be shown by the National Gallery of Victoria in a major exhibition in November.
While best known for his canvas paintings, such as 1967’s A Bigger Splash, since at least 2010 the British artist has also been experimenting with new technologies, producing thousands of drawings and works created on the iPhone and iPad.
The gallery’s director, Tony Ellwood, said “lush and vibrant landscapes” would be created with these new media works, and a dedicated 35m-long gallery lined with more than 80 recently painted acrylic portrait paintings of the artist’s family, friends and notable subjects, including American conceptual artist John Baldessari and Australian actor Barry Humphries.
Also featured will be Hockney’s The Four Seasons, Woldgate Woods, a video piece showcasing the changing landscape of his native Yorkshire with each season comprised of nine high-definition screens and his largest painting, the 50 oil-on-canvas panels of Bigger Trees Near Warter.
The exhibition, opening on 11 November, focuses on the past 10 years of Hockney’s career and “provides a rare chance to view the most current practice of one of the most discussed artists of our time”, Ellwood said.
Next year Tate Britain is to show an extensive retrospective of six decades of Hockney’s work, before the exhibition goes on to the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The National Gallery of Victoria also announced on Tuesday that its spring and summer 2016 schedule would include an exhibition of avant-garde Amsterdam-based fashion designers Viktor&Rolf. Audiences will have the chance to view 35 haute couture pieces plus a selection of their famed “Dolls”: replicas of antique dolls dressed in the designers’ most recognised looks.
Ellwood said Viktor&Rolf designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren were known for their spectacular and avant-garde creations. “Horsting and Snoeren are self-confessed outsiders of the fashion world, blurring the lines between art and fashion.”
The gallery also announced plans to show a comprehensive survey of Australian artist John Olsen’s work. The retrospective will trace Olsen’s career from his first exhibition in 1955 to his more recent work.
Other works to be featured throughout the season include the paintings of Kaiadilt artist Sally Gabori, a survey of Japanese bamboo weaving, the jewellery of Bulgari from Italy, and an installation by Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei called The Moving Garden that invites visitors to take a flower from the installation, then present it to someone they don’t know who they feel would benefit from the act of generosity.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion