NGV Triennial 2024

We visited NGV Triennial 2023-2024 in March this year.  It was beautiful, insightful and challenging as have been previous Triennial exhibitions in Melbourne's premier art gallery.  The Triennial artworks are exhibited on all floors intertwined with the regular exhibitions.  This means there are many fun surprises around each corner and also that we missed some.  We also had to ask a few of the guides where to go for the blue fluffy thing and pink faces for Sylvia.  I was really pleased that we managed to find time and energy for a visit before it closed.

Above artwork seen through the iconic NGV waterfall windows at the entrance: And beneath it all flows liquid fire by Julian Charrière

One of the first things we saw upon entering was the Thomas J Price installation.  It was very similar to a statue that we saw in the yard of the V&A in London only weeks earlier.  The artist is addressing the lack of coloured people in statues.  You can see the iconic stained ceiling of the Great Hall and a human in the background for perspective.

The Cosbys by Hugh Hayden  The frypan is transformed into a West African traditional mask.  It is reflects on the cultural impact of the African disapora and "asks that we don’t abandon, even discredited, cultural history".

I loved this installation by Diana Al-Hadid called What remains of the floating man hypothesis.  It is an ethereal modern copy of a medieval panting with medieval statues to be seen behind the gossamer images.

Upon a closer look, I was surprised to see medieval statues behind the stalactite-like drips.  They look beautiful framed in this way.

This is the Medieval painting, The Garden of Love from the studio of Antonio Vivarini, 1465-70.  I love how the old and new are connected as part of a continuum.

The artist Richard Lewer invited people to come to "confession" and he painted their words on the wall. The confessions were both relatable and funny.

Colonialism and abstract art by Hank Willis Thomas.  This reminds me of the London tube map but with sinister undertones of racism and colonisation.  I love all the details.

The Dialectic Gaze by Danie Mellor.  We did not have time to stop and take in lots of details from artworks and the accompanying blurbs.  This is fine for some but I would have loved to stop and really take in the details of this one, especially when I see it described by NGV as a snapshot of "the spectacle and theatre of colonial expansion" by an Indigenous artist. 

Propgate by Jayden Moore.  I was fascinated by this piece because if you look closely, it is made of old silver plated serving platters.  What a way to reflect on memory and nostalgia!

The Saxon Gallery at first glance looks like a Victorian-era art gallery but is brimming with contemporary ideas alongside wonderful old artworks.  Joshua Petherick and Lewis Fidock's display of giant Autumn leaves on the red platform plays with notions of decay and regeneration.  Todd Gray's the hidden order of the whole (venus) juxtaposes black and white photos of ancient sculptures, colonising architecture and the African disapora.  If it had a frame like the other images, it would both conform and challenge.

Fell by Ahsley Jameson Erkismoen looks at the relationship between humans and nature.  This is only part of the artwork which has a felled "tree trunk" as a companion to this "stump" both made out of tooled furniture as though to reverse decay.

Tee’wiith yot-a! means ‘Plenty of white cockatoos!’ by Keith Wikmunea.  One of his totems is the cockatoo.

Conflict Avocado project by Fernando Laposse uses avocados as material to illustrate the injustices in the avocado trade.

Untitled by Farrokh Mahdavi was a room of lots of odd pink faces on the wall and the floor.  It felt wrong to have to walk across the artwork.

Comedian by Maurizio Cattelan, a banana taped to the wall with duct tape was the iconic image of the Triennial.  It was surrounded by people taking photos.  The artist is making a common object into art by adding the unusual pairing of the duct tape.  The notes with artwork say that banana should be replaced every 7-10 days!

Speculum by SMACK was a triptych that depicts the Garden of Eden, Paradise and Hell.  Paradise (in the photo above) is "a garden of superegos" alluding to artwork by Hieronymous Bosch.

The End by Hugh Hayden.  This schoolroom with odd anthropomorphised dinosaur skeletons is to represent education and extinction that relate to class, race, identity and belonging.

Nowhere to go  by Shelia Hicks "communicates Hicks’s attention to abstraction, colour theory and painterly gesture".  It is so soft and lovely compared to the hard gallery surfaces that it looks really huggable.  I am not sure you can say that of many artworks!

Petrit Halilaj created the large installation called the Very Volcanic over this green feather.  It uses enlarged illustration from his childhood as a refugee from the Kosovo War where he was encouraged to draw to process experiences.  It feels like walking through a children's picture book or a child's imagination.

Elmgreen & Dragset's What's left (above) and the Paint er (below) evokes the performative.  It is disturbing to look up and see a figure hanging so precariously in What's left. 

The Paint er creates such such exciting sense of movement and expression.

Block flowers (above) and A chaotic garden (below) by Azuma Makoto are very beautiful at first sight.  Above the flowers are suspended in resin.

I was fascinated by this video that showed bright and vibrant flowers and greenery as they grew and decayed.

I wish I had seen more.  I wish I had more time to consider each piece.  Most of all, I am glad we got along to Triennial this year.

You can see my posts on Triennial 2018 and Triennial 2021.

NGV Triennial
Natrional Gallery of Victoria, St Kilda Road, Melbourne
23 December 2023 to 7 April 2024
Free entry
www.ngv.vic.gov.au/triennial/home