National Gallery of Victoria: Warhol and Weiwei

Melbourne has been incredible to say the least. Working five days a week surrounded by medical heritage has pretty much been heaven. I am going to save my comments on the internship for a blog post of its own.

As for now, I’m going to say the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) never truly disappoints. Sure a couple of exhibitions haven’t quite lived up to standards, but, I  always walk away feeling I haven’t wasted my time. The new Warhol & Weiwei exhibition is no exception. Opening only six days ago now, I visited with a friend last weekend to have a stickybeak.

It is a huge exhibition spanning quite a few rooms. The only major issue I had was that I wasn’t quite sure why they were comparing these artists and since seeing the exhibition, yeah nothing. I couldn’t really see them operating together to unlock broader themes etc. Nonetheless, separately I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the work of Warhol and Weiwei.

The pieces by Warhol included a few of his famous masterpieces as well as a few sculptures. Having seen the Warhol exhibition at GOMA in Queensland, the NGV had big shoes to fill. I think they filled them pretty well. The exhibition was lots of fun with each room very different to the other. The use of colour and texture, yes texture, separated the pieces thematically. I say texture because in one of the rooms there was a smaller room entirely covered in Lego.

Favourite rooms included the flower room (pictured below) and the pop art room (I guess you’d call it that). I was so glad to see works featuring President Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis pop up a couple of times. A series of particular pictures/paintings that really caught my eye looked sort of boring from afar, but, the closer you got the more detail came out of them. They documented Kennedy’s assassination.

Other than those two rooms, there was literally a room filled with giant bird and alpaca balloons. Love a good interactive installation. Speaking of interactive elements, on the other side of the exhibition are photobooths! Super fun photobooths. There is an entire exhibition space filled with cats which I guess caters to our obsession with internet cats and right at the back are these photobooths that fit thematically because you get to enjoy a bit of banter from a talking animated cat.

In terms of gift shop, not bad. A lot on the pricey side but heaps of knick knacks including a magnet of Weiwei giving the finger to buildings around the world.

It’s worth your time and definitely worth your money. I had a lot of fun in this exhibition!