The pandemic made people enjoy colour more, as it encouraged them to live more in the moment, says India Mahdavi, the Paris-based “virtuoso of colour” designer whose work forms half of the National Gallery of Victoria’s newest winter exhibition.

That is good news for Mahdavi – style bible Wallpaper’s 2023 designer of the year – but also for her long-departed exhibition counterpart, Impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard, a fellow master of colour and light whose works Mahdavi has styled for the four-month-long spectacle.