Destination art: The best exhibitions to see around Australia while on holiday

It’s that strange period again – from the days before Christmas into the new year – where everything goes both very quickly and very slowly. Whether you are staying put, heading back home, or setting off elsewhere for a holiday, now’s the perfect opportunity to go and see some of the great visual art on offer across the different states.

Victoria

Yayoi Kusama
National Gallery of Victoria, until April 21

Yayoi Kusama exhibition at NGV - December 2024Credit: Chris Hopkins and Sean Fennessy

While celebrated artist Yayoi Kusama may now be best known for her immersive spaces, this sprawling exhibition at the NGV surveys the entirety of the 95-year-old artist’s storied career, from moody paintings and early correspondence through to her more recent vibrant, large-scale works (including the world premiere of a new Infinity Mirrored Room). As reviewer Tiarney Miekus wrote: “Usually, shows billed as blockbusters often aren’t blockbusters at all – instead shouting famous names to shield second-rate works and dubious themes. Yayoi Kusama is a proper blockbuster.”

Rekospective: The Art of Reko Rennie
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia

Installation view of Rekospective: The Art of Reko Rennie, on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia.Credit: Kate Shanasy

The exhibition starts downstairs, where you see the Rolls-Royce that, despite its camouflage print, stands out in pride of place just inside the entrance. Rekospective is a sprawling, colourful and thoughtful journey through the work of Reko Rennie. From sculpture to painting to video, Rennie draws on his past as a graffiti artist and his Kamilaroi heritage to create works that challenge stereotypes, while also interrogating topics from police brutality and deaths in custody through to identity, masculinity and his family history.

The Future & Other Fictions
ACMI, until April 27

Credit: ACMI

Bringing together 180 works that span film to contemporary art, this exhibition at ACMI, Australia’s national museum of screen culture, turns its attention to the future and “[dares] to imagine tomorrows both hopeful and possible”. From a dress worn by Bjork to pieces drawn from the set of Blade Runner 2049, The Future & Other Fictions uses pop culture to imagine where the world could head next.

The Charge That Binds
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, until March 16

Izabela Pluta, Like folds in water (caustic network) 2024, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Commissioned by ACCA. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert. Credit: Andrew Curtis

The Charge That Binds at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) brings together a series of recent artworks by artists both local and international to explore connections, the environment, and the push-and-pull and influence we have on one another and the world. From video works through to giant installations, each piece takes on the themes of the exhibition in unexpected ways. One of the largest pieces is My Heart Beneath the Earth by artist Mel O’Callagan. Set against a black backdrop is what looks like a colourful set of constellations, stretching out into all directions. Each spot on the black is made up of freshly crushed pigments, some of which are the last in the artist’s own collection. This work is painted directly on the gallery wall – after this exhibition, this version of it will be gone forever.

Intimate Imaginaries
TarraWarra Museum of Art, until March 10

Terry Williams’ Untitled 2011 is one of the works on display at Intimite Imaginaries.

If you’ve never visited TarraWarra Museum of Art, about 45 kilometres north-east of Melbourne, now is the perfect time. The Museum’s current show is Intimite Imaginaries, a group exhibition of work by 13 artists from Arts Project Australia (APA), a studio that has supported and showcased the work of artists with intellectual disabilities for the past 50 years. The exhibition is a significant showcase of both new and early pieces by APA artists, with work spanning from portraiture to sculpture.

Albert Tucker’s Grotesques
Heide, until March 9

Installation view, Albert Tucker’s Grotesques, 2024, Heide Museum of Modern Art.Credit: Christian Capurro 

For a period of time, Heide – once the home of arts patrons Sunday and John Reed – was a lightning rod for modernist art and culture, with many now-household names living and working at the Bulleen property. In between the often stormy interpersonal relationships that formed, many significant works were created. Now the work of one of Heide’s artists, Albert Tucker, is on display at the museum. Albert Tucker’s Grotesques is a collection of some of his darkest and most disturbing imagery.

Medieval to Metal: The Art and Evolution of the Guitar
Art Gallery of Ballarat, until February 2

HP Newquist at Medieval to Metal: The Art and Evolution of the Guitar in Ballarat.Credit: Justin McManus

The guitar has a surprisingly storied history, which this exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ballarat digs into. Forty rare instruments “from the oud, which dates to around 3000 BC, through to the 20th-century invention of the electric guitar” are on display, accompanied by works by artists including Picasso, Renoir and Manet, as well as album art, posters and photography. “We like to put old and new artworks in conversation,” co-curator Louise Tegart told writer Will Cox ahead of the Medieval to Metal opening. “I wasn’t aware of any exhibition in Australia like it, and I thought it might strike a chord.”

Rob McHaffie: We are family
Bendigo Art Gallery, until January 27

Artist Rob McHaffie at his Castlemaine studio.Credit: Jason South

Castlemaine artist Rob McHaffie is skilled at capturing everyday moments in a way that is both playful and familiar. We are Family is the artist’s biggest exhibition to date, with work spread across five rooms and themes. Speaking to writer Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen, he explained: “Humour is part of the aesthetic of the work. I don’t paint depressive scenes, but there is a lot behind the surface.”

New South Wales

Magritte
Art Gallery of NSW, until February 9

The Philosophical Lamp (La lampe philosophique), 1936.

Even if you don’t think you know Rene Magritte, you most likely do. His vaguely troubling, dreamlike images featuring bowler hats, tobacco pipes and apples have seeped into the collective consciousness in the years since he was active in the middle of last century. This exhibition presents a satisfyingly comprehensive survey of the master surrealist’s output and features more than 100 works.

“Magritte was a master of visual intrigue and wonder,” curator Nicholas Chambers told Linda Morris in October. “We have put together a retrospective that will take visitors on a journey from the very first works that he made after finishing art school in the 1920s, where viewers will be confronted by pictures they would not associate with Magritte.”

Cao Fei: My City is Yours
Art Gallery of NSW, until April 13

Cao Fei’s Haze and Fog 04, 2013, inkjet print on paper.Credit: Cao Fei/Vitamin Creative Space/Sprüth Magers

Guangzhou-born artist Cao Fei employs a range of digital media, from photography to video installations, in her work examining contemporary China and the effect of the country’s warp-speed transformation on its citizens. This is Cao’s first major Australian exhibition. The show features a series of “precincts”, including a homage to the much-lamented Sydney yum cha restaurant the Marigold. There is also a deeply personal work, The Golden Wattle, dedicated to Cao’s late sister, who migrated to Sydney in 1998 and died in 2022 aged just 50.

Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginary
Museum of Contemporary Art, until April 27

Julie Mehretu at work on HOWL, eon (I, II), 2017 commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.Credit: Tom Powel Imaging

New York artist Julie Mehretu is regarded as one of the world’s greatest living painters. Working mostly on a monumental scale, her abstract works have a mesmerising, almost 3D quality. The Ethiopian-born artist draws inspiration from many sources, including multiple trips to Australia. “It’s been really formative, those trips sleeping in the middle of nowhere and waking up with those big birds, emus, walking by,” she told this masthead in November. “It’s insane. Going to Australia, you get a sense of how large this world is.”

Australian Capital Territory

Ethel Carrick | Anne Dangar
National Gallery of Australia, until April 27

Christmas Day on Manly Beach, 1913, by Ethel CarrickCredit: Manly Art Gallery & Museum Collection

Reinserting under-recognised women artists into art history is a mantra of museums and galleries worldwide, but the National Gallery of Australia puts theory into practice with its major retrospectives of trailblazers Ethel Carrick and Anne Dangar this summer. Carrick (1872–1952) was a gifted painter and bold colourist, among the first artists to introduce Australians to post-impressionism – yet overshadowed by the achievements of her painter husband Emanuel Phillips Fox. Dangar (1885-1951) was a potter who influenced the development of abstraction in Australia from an artists’ colony in her adopted home of France. See what the fuss is all about.

Queensland

11th Asia Pacific Triennial
QAGOMA, until April 27

Installation of Haus Yuriyal’s artwork including (front to back) Bopa, 2024, Kalabus, 2024, Kamkau Ike (Haus Toktok) 2024, with Yuriyal Bridgeman’s Yuri Alai Eagles (ceiling shield paintings) 2024 and Kuman (shield) paintings, 2024.Credit: C Callistemon © QAGOMA

Brisbane’s triennial survey of contemporary art of the Asia Pacific region is a very big deal; there’s even going to be an exhibition of APT highlights at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in 2026. This year, check out a colourful recreated pavilion from Papua New Guinea Collective Haus Yuriyal; Thailand’s Kawita Vatanajyankur, whose chillingly hilarious videos turn her body into machines; and Brett Graham’s grimly imposing monuments to New Zealand’s colonial past. Admission is free and there’s an extensive program of arty activities for kids.

Northern Territory

2024 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards
Museum and Art Gallery Northern Territory, until January 27

Noli Rictor, winner of the 2024 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, with his work.Credit: Philip Gostelow

Each year, the Telstra NATSIAAs celebrates and showcases work by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, not only through the awards themselves but through an exhibition featuring the work of the winners and finalists. This year’s winner was Pitjantjatjara man Noli Rictor, “believed to be the youngest ‘first contact’ Aboriginal person in Australia”. See Rictor’s winning artwork, Kamanti, along with works by other finalists now at MAGNT, or take a virtual tour here.

Western Australia

Time | Rone and Material Practice: Howard Taylor’s Journal
Art Gallery of Western Australia, until February 2

Part of Time, which sold out in Melbourne.Credit:

Melbourne-based artist Rone explores the concepts of impermanence, persistence and memory in Time. The show had a sell-out season in Melbourne, and this iteration has been expanded with new elements exclusive to Perth. Meanwhile, also at AGWA, a very different show surveys the work of West Australian artist Howard Taylor. Through pages from his journal, the exhibition charts Taylor’s intense preoccupation with the process of art-making and the natural world around him.

South Australia

Radical Textiles
Art Gallery of South Australia, until March 30

Installation view: Radical Textiles, Art Gallery of South Australia, AdelaideCredit: Saul Steed

What can textiles teach us about history, politics and social change? With exhibits ranging from garments by Vivienne Westwood and Viktor & Rolf to artefacts such as the South Australian AIDS Memorial Quit, Radical Textiles at the Art Gallery of South Australia brings together works by over 100 different creators to delve into the role textiles play in echoing society – from fashion to activism, to a physical reminder of the transition from handmade to machine-made and back again.

Tasmania

Namedropping
Museum of Old and New Art, until April 21

Foreground: Painted vases (2006), Ai Weiwei. Background: Mao (1972), Andy Warhol.Credit: Mona/Jesse Hunniford

At first, it seems like an eclectic combination of objects and artworks. A doll cut in half. A vest in a frame. The lyrics to David Bowie’s Starman written out by hand. But Namedropping at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) is all about the power of association. That doll was maybe cut in half by the same guillotine that beheaded Marie Antoinette. The vest is made out of a scarf owned by Margaret Thatcher. And the hand that wrote out Starman? Bowie’s own. It’s an exhibition that works both as a collection of curios and an interrogation of celebrity, fame, and what exactly it is that gives something value.

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