While the state galleries around the nation are staging their summer blockbuster exhibitions – Gerhard Richter in Brisbane; the NGV Triennial in Melbourne and the Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum in Sydney – Canberra has a unique array of must-see major exhibitions this summer.
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Here are my seven reasons every art lovers must make the pilgrimage to Canberra this summer.
1) Hyper Real at the National Gallery of Australia (closes February 18, 2018) presents a journey into the weird world of parallel realities where everything exists in a world of heightened sensibilities. The boundary between the real and the imagined is eroded, the fantastic has a palpable corporeality and the ghoulish, voyeuristic and the absurd convincingly exists within our own space. The beautiful and disturbing Inverso mundus by the Russian collective AES+F is a powerful and unique viewing experience where, in a specially constructed round amphitheatre, you are surrounded by a world of refined beauty. It is one in which the current world order has been inverted – women reign over men, the young over elders, animals over people and the poor over the rich – as a powerful narrative unfolds. There is a profound and pure beauty that is unforgettable.
2) David Hockney: Prints, National Gallery of Australia (closes May 27, 2018), also at the National Gallery, is a major blockbuster retrospective exhibition of the print oeuvre of one of the most famous and influential contemporary artists in the world. For Hockney, printmaking was never about breeding multiple images of things that he had already realised in painting, but creating in prints that which could not be achieved in any other medium. Taking Picasso as his model, Hockney pushed etchings, lithographs, pulp paper prints and new technology prints into new and exciting realms that at times had never before been explored. This exhibition redefines the art of printmaking of the past half century and asserts Hockney's central place in it, from the early homoerotic images through to the virtuoso colour pieces on a monumental scale.
3) Russian avant-garde, National Gallery of Australia (closes March 4, 2018) is the other major must-see exhibition at the National Gallery. Exactly a century ago, Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in backward tsarist Russia and sought to ignite a world revolution. Although economically and militarily impoverished, the young Soviet Union promoted a revolutionary form of art that to some extent changed the nature of art in the world. The National Gallery, with such seminal works as Kazimir Malevich's House under construction and National Goncharova's Peasants Dancing, as well as key examples from the art movements of Suprematism, Primitivism and Constructivism, charts the path of the great experiment in Russian art. This large and dazzling exhibition provides a unique insight into the creative cauldron of art and revolution in early 20th century Russia.
4) Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, National Museum of Australia (closes February 25, 2018) is an exceptional exhibition that brings to life one of the grand ancestral tales of Aboriginal Australia. Through a combination of high-tech wizardry and carefully selected cultural artefacts, Indigenous voices take the viewer on a journey with the Seven Sisters. A huge dome acts as an immersive chamber that allows us to take flight and explore the journey of creation and naming. It is a very unusual and challenging exhibition, which presents an alternative way of explaining Aboriginal art in a language true to its makers.
5) Midawarr: Harvest, National Museum of Australia (closes February 18, 2018), the other major exhibition at the National Museum, brings together two of the senior Australian artists of our time, Mulkun Wirrpanda and John Wolseley. The Indigenous artist explores, explains and depicts the plants and the bush tucker of north-east Arnhem Land, while Wolseley, in a collaboration that has lasted many years, renders them and their particular environments from a western perspective. It is a beautiful and provocative exhibition by two of the elder statesmen of Australian art.
6) Dombrovskis: Journeys into the wild, National Library of Australia (closes January 30, 2018) is the first comprehensive retrospective exhibition of one of Australia's best-known and most-loved wilderness photographers, Peter Dombrovskis. An environmental warrior, Dombrovskis stood at the forefront of the battle to save the Tasmanian wilderness and his detailed, crisp and beautifully defined photographs preserve a memory of a threatened pristine environment that is part of our natural heritage. These are remarkable images by a totally dedicated professional.
7) Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits, National Portrait Gallery (closes March 4, 2018) is an unusual collaborative exhibition between the National Film and Sound Archive and the National Portrait Gallery. It is more than a trip down nostalgia lane, where we see stills, posters and scrapbooks from most Australian films from the past century. The first full-length narrative film in the world was probably made in Australia in 1906! We also encounter unusual, striking and humorous images. From the great Lottie Lyell to Nicole Kidman, they all play a role in Starstruck.
