The must-see artworks at the free Melbourne Now exhibition
A neon playground slash photo booth, a reality TV dating show chatbot, and a work that “simulates the experience of dying” are among the free exhibition’s highlights.
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The weird and wonderful works of more than 200 Victorian-based artists, designers, studios and firms are now on display as part of Melbourne Now.
The second edition of the ambitious exhibition – which returns to The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia for the first time in a decade – includes more than 60 world-premiere works commissioned especially by the NGV.
It’s open, for free, until August 20. Here are the artworks you shouldn’t miss.
1. Temple, Rel Pham
Visitors to Melbourne Now will immediately be drawn to Temple – emerging artist Rel Pham’s neon-lit artwork you can walk into, which blurs the boundaries between digital and physical realms. Pham, who has Vietnamese and Australian heritage, said: “Temple considers the intersection of the cultural, environmental, physical, political and personal forces that make up what the internet landscape looks like.” The installation combines the visual language of technology – it comprises 640 fans used to cool gaming computers – with classical Asian architecture and religious iconography.
2. Passing Electrical Storms, Shaun Gladwell
This confronting immersive artwork “simulates the experience of dying” through XR (Extended Reality). Participants lie on a replica hospital bed, put on XR glasses and experience cardiac arrest, an attempt to resuscitate them, death and an outer-body experience that transcends life and planet Earth. Described as simultaneously “meditative and unsettling”, this piece commissioned by the NGV for Melbourne Now takes Shaun Gladwell’s career-long inquiry into the human body to the extreme.
3. Mountain climber, Troy Emery
Stretching almost 3m high and containing hundreds of colourful pompoms, Mountain climber is Troy Emery’s most ambitious work to date. The Melbourne-based artist said the piece – commissioned by the NGV for this exhibition – explored humans’ relationships with animals and their historical representations in natural history museums and taxidermy. “The animal body removed from the context of nature, the wild world being brought inside, is an analogy for the natural world being somehow diminished,” he said.
4. Swarming, James Lemon
What is it like to be a bee? James Lemon’s “ultraviolet hive of activity” answers this question by inviting visitors of all ages to “interact with soft pupae forms, learning through play about the importance of bee life in our ecosystems and to human survival”, according to the NGV. The part-playground, part-photobooth is sure to be popular with Instagrammers hoping to achieve the perfect pic.
5. Patron saint of lapdogs, Maria of Mars, and Red dust sticks to you, Atong Atem
South Sudanese-born and Melbourne-based artist Atong Atem’s trio of photographic self-portraits are immediately eye-catching. The colourful pieces draw and build on the history of studio photography in Africa. In Melbourne Now, they are flanked by two of Atem’s neon works and wallpaper referencing native Australian flora.
6. DataBaes, Georgia Banks
Georgia Banks has turned 12 months of failed attempts to land on reality TV dating shows into DataBaes – an interactive work in which participants can attempt to fall in love with an AI chatbot named Gee. Gee’s personality was developed using data from the copious questionnaires Banks completed while applying for the reality shows. The NGV describes the exhibit as an “exploration of the role of ego in modern technology and our contemporary dependence upon it”.
7. For the angels in paradise, Mia Boe
Melbourne-based painter with Butchulla and Burmese ancestry, Mia Boe, has created a mural and nine paintings for Melbourne Now speaking to First Nations people’s relations with the justice system and police. The haunting display draws on both “historical events and events in the news today”, among them the acquittal of an NT police officer for the murder of 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker by a jury with no First Nations people on it.
8. Walkers with dinosaurs, Lou Hubbard
Lou Hubbard’s quirky creation comprises two parts. There is a pile inflatable Zimmer frames that Hubbard says may be used as a “party costume, a gag for young people, or a joke gift for retirees”, but which also inevitably evoke mortality. And two stacks of colourful dinosaur chairs appear to look down on the frames. The NGV notes the exhibit presents visitors with “a calculated, unavoidable moment of physicality and reflection” – so read into it what you will.
9. The remaking of things, Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison
Visitors will find themselves immersed in nature when they step into this creation: a collage drawn from 100 works in the NGV collection that adorns the walls from ceiling to floor. The scene, crafted by artists and wildlife carers Gracia and Louise, celebrates nature’s unsung hero: the Grey-headed flying fox that resides on the banks of the Birrarung. “They are pollinators,” the duo explain. “If we lose them, our forests collapse.”
10. 52 ceramic replicas of shopping lists found while working in a Melbourne supermarket, Kenny Pittock
While working as a part-time cleaner and trolley pusher in a supermarket, Kenny Pittock collected more than 5000 shopping lists that had been left behind. He has since recreated the otherwise fleeting objects in kiln-fired earthenware clay to create one of Melbourne Now’s most intriguing exhibits. “The anonymous shopping lists read like poetry,” he said. “Each list is a little portrait, giving a tiny glimpse of insight into the people we pass as we walk down the aisles.”
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