A ripe banana taped to a wall. An apocalyptic classroom. A rabble of painting robot dogs.
These are the three Rs headlining the latest installment of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) Triennial, which opened on December 3 and has quickly become one of Australia’s premier and most popular art and architectural events.
There might be an overarching tagline marketing it to the masses (“Magic, Matter and Memory,” this time) but the diversity and breadth of practices, disciplines and art suggest little thematic cohesion otherwise. The show features the work of over 100 international artists and practitioners, with twenty-five pieces specifically commissioned by the NGV for permanent acquisition.
There are overt statements from the likes of UK artist Tracey Emin, including her terse confessional, Love poem for CF (2023), rendered as a blinking neon sign, and Yoko Ono proffering patrons a declarative if hopeful message: I LOVE YOU EARTH (2021).
Other works in the Triennial are likely to court skeptics. Polish-born Agnieszka Pilat and her Heterorobota (2023)—three automated canines painting the gallery walls—is one, while David Shrigley’s bronze sculpture, Really Good (2016), with its thumbs-up on life today is undoubtedly another.
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For Ewan McEoin, NGV Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture, any overt claims at a unifying concern are part marketing spin and part outsider observation. “A lot of biennials and triennials are very thematically coordinated—we don’t do that,” he says. “The theme is more about what we’re observing coming from the work, rather than where we........