Okay. I’ll admit it. The term ‘biennale’ was entirely unbeknownst to me before I studied my MA in Curating Contemporary Art. 

 

Venice Biennale. The Whitney Biennial. Liverpool Biennial. 

 

Yes, I had heard of these events, but I had never truly understood what they were, their significance, or what exactly they encompassed. 

Turns out, they are quite simply HUMONGOUS exhibitions showcasing contemporary art from all across the world! Basically, every art lover’s dream. Well, at least mine. 

 

So you can imagine my avid excitement when realising that during my trip to Melbourne last month, the NGV Triennial had just begun – arguably Australia’s biggest international contemporary arts exhibition displaying 120 incredible artists, designers and collectives that are shaping global contemporary practice today! 

 

Museum fatigue did not exist within my experience of the NGV Triennial, despite the works spanning all four floors of the giant site. I was constantly mesmerised, intellectually stimulated and entertained by the work on display, unable to cross the gallery corners quick enough to see what my eyes could fall in love with next. 

 

Therefore, without further ado, out of over 100 projects consisting of fashion, sculpture, film, animation, robots, prints, photography, painting and more, here is a review of my Top 10 favourite pieces of the 2024 NGV Triennial!

 

The Examiner (2023) by Elmgreen & Dragset

 

Berlin-based artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset is a collective I had heard of extensively but had never had the privilege of seeing their work in person.

 

The Examiner (2023) consists of a positively shiny, stainless-steel man leaning on a Juliet-style balcony, casually posed looking down the lens of a camera. While the work, in its overtly polished, aesthetically audacious nature, would appear to seem fairly unnatural residing in the whitewashed walls of a gallery, it feels entirely at home.

 

Quite magnificently, upon glancing the work crafts a scene in the viewer’s mind – a scene where you are no longer walking through the exhibition space, but instead, situated as a passerby on a quiet morning, strolling through a warm city looking up passively to see a young man on his balcony, capturing a moment he felt the urge to freeze. It is comforting, inviting, and relaxing to the eye and mind, despite its obvious disco-ball-radiance, which I ultimately find very fascinating.  

 

 

Comedian (2019) by Maurizio Cattelan

 

I know what some of you are thinking. How is this art? How is a banana duct taped to a wall classified as art? And I can tell you, I was hearing a lot of questions along similar lines echoing around the gallery walls surrounding this piece. 

But that is precisely, what I believe to be the point of the work and Cattelan’s intention: to spark conversation, questioning and debate about the value of art. Why do we consider some works more valuable than others? What makes contemporary art of value? Is it based on the creative talent of an artist? Their popularity? Their medium and whether that is trendy right now? Is a work of art good just because it’s hung in the MoMA, or the National Portrait Gallery, or the NGV? Is art valuable because it looks beautiful? Because it feels beautiful? Who decides what is and isn’t beautiful? Is this banana taped to a wall worth millions of pounds now because it’s been exhibited at the NGV? Or because Cattelan is fairly world-renowned? If this banana was duct taped to your living room at home, would you call it art? Or just a banana duct taped to a wall? 

 

See, it’s got you thinking. 

 

And those are the pieces of contemporary art that I enjoy the most, no matter their aesthetic appeal. The works that provoke thought, challenge what we think we know, and prompt conversation between people, forging connections and like-mindedness in the process. 

 

(I think it’s also worth noting that the banana gets swapped every seven to ten days, just in case you were wondering.)

 

 

Heterobota by Agnieszka Pilat

 

If I could figure out a way of incorporating video into these articles, I would because BOY these things were creepy.

 

Meet Basia Spot and Bunny Spot, two four-legged robots that trot around a large pen in the middle of a gallery space. They walk, they sit, they draw, they extend, they tilt their heads, they come towards you when you are standing near to the edge of their little home – it’s all very uncanny. 

 

Though strange, I do feel that they present a very pressing topic within contemporary society where humans are being gradually replaced by machines in a lot of industries, especially retail. Pilat actually takes this topic further, by creating machines that are inherently creative, producing their own artwork, and existing outside of servitude. 

 

With the rise of artificial intelligence and robotics that will only continue to accelerate, will we still need human artists? Or will future arts movements be moulded by the work of robots? 

 

I honestly don’t think I want to know. 

 

 

Hunting & Fishing by Prudence Flint

 

Melbourne-based Prudence Flint has produced a new body of work that had me completely mesmerised. I must have sat on that seat staring deeply into those paintings (that seem so airbrushed you can barely believe they’re created with oil paint) for so long. Something about being surrounded by these works made me feel safe, made me feel like I could rest. 

 

Throughout the history of figurative painting, we’re very accustomed to seeing women represented through careful posing, or completing laboural tasks. With Flint’s scenes, however, we are witnessing women literally just chilling: sitting on their beds, stretching out in their bedrooms and gazing into the abyss of deep thought. I honestly sat down and did the same – I didn’t feel like I had to look like I was anything other than a woman, taking a moment to rest and let my thoughts run free alongside the women within these paintings. Argh! Beautiful. 

 

Can we also take a moment for the insane colour palette of these paintings? I want this series in my own bedroom immediately. 

 

 

My Mummy is Beautiful by Yoko Ono

 

Whenever I enter a space and see Yoko Ono’s name, I know that we’re in for a treat. And her new participatory project My Mummy is Beautiful was definitely that.

 

Providing a large circular desk, pencils, paper and tape, viewers were invited to write about their mothers, and stick it on any of the four walls of the large gallery space, that Ono called ‘the canvas.’ Whilst it seems a relatively simple concept, it was intensely moving to see the scale of how many people had participated in the project so far. Poems, letters, drawings, origami, stories and more spanned the room, in so many different languages, different styles of calligraphy, different sentiments: love, appreciation, loss, confusion, grief, hurt, anger, wanting. The room was vulnerable, transparent, raw and courageous, not just in viewing the words on the walls but in viewing the act of those sitting, reflecting, contemplating, and communicating with pencil to paper. 

 

It was a work that allowed for human beings reminding each other of our humanness, and ultimately, our innate need for unconditional love that we often yearn from a mother. 

 

 

A Chaotic Garden (2023) by Azuma Makoto

 

If you have ever been to a spa, or received a massage of some sort (stay with me), I want you to recall the atmosphere. The lighting is dimmed, the music is soft and soothing, the overall mood is relaxing, gentle and seducing. You almost want the room to wrap itself around you just because it’s so inviting.

 

This is the best way I can explain the ambience Japanese florist and artist Azuma Makoto creates with A Chaotic Garden. 

 

Sandwiched between two starkly white gallery spaces of the NGV, Makoto interrupts this with a pitch-black, cubed room illuminated only via a video projected onto the floor (titled Drop time), and through 130 floating resin-cast flowers.

 

The work is utterly beautiful. And the absolute magic of choosing very limited lighting for this piece, inevitably allows for an exaggerated focus on the magnetising reflections of said Block flowers, as the artist calls them. 

 

Aiming to capture these plants at the peak of their aesthetic appearance, Makoto toys with the very common human infatuation with preserving beauty and resisting decay. The botanical display poses questions regarding the temporality of the human condition.

 

If you could choose to pause your life at the peak of your aesthetic appearance, and live forever in that state – would you? 

 

 

#CIVICS by Kevin Abosch 

Now this collection of photographs were completely terrifying to me. Not only because they express violent social upheaval, the brutality of public unrest and the clashes between authority and citizens, but because they aren’t real. 

 

Nope. These images have been produced entirely with Artificial Intelligence (AI).

 

What?!? They look SO. SO real. But no, they are complete fictional projections.

 

Whilst I was relieved to know that these images of pain, destruction and in some, death, were not true depictions of previous riots and protests, Abosch believes that these snapshots can be perceived as future news to come. Jesus. 

 

#CIVICS also provokes commentary on our current social climate where fake videos, photos and audio recordings are increasingly circulating, propagating disinformation that results in real life consequences.

 

If these images began circulating online with related headlines, would you immediately assume that they weren’t real?

 

With the emergence of AI, how must we begin to interrogate visuals that are disseminated online?

 

How do we learn to characterise transparent news sources versus the fake ones?

 

How do we learn who to trust when deciphering this information when the characteristics aren’t so clear?

 

 

Resonance (2022) by Joshua Yeldham

I always gravitate towards works that make me want to touch them.

 

Textured works, especially. Works where the paint is so thick and confronting it dries in the shape of the last brush stroke, breaking the intangible barrier between artist and viewer because I now have a small, visible insight into the movements you made when working on this piece.

 

Does that make sense? As audiences, consumers of art on walls, we always see the outcome, but never witness the process of creating it. But works such as Joshua Yeldman’s Resonance do just that; it’s only a small, mischievous, most likely unconscious hint towards part of the process, but I was inextricably drawn to it. 

 

The work’s initial layer is a monochrome photo of the tree, but feeling like the photograph didn’t truly speak to him, the artist decided to work in some extra mediums.

 

If you look at the image closely, you will not only notice the intricate details of the white synthetic polymer paint spreading across the arms and body of the tree, but also notice the string tied to the branches through drilled holes, binding them to the ground. 

 

Fun fact. Yeldman has been producing work based on this mangrove tree by Hawkesbury River in New South Wales, Australia, for 16 years. Sixteen. Now, that is a true love story. 

 

 

The End (2020) by Ryan Gander

Contemporary art can really encompass absolutely anything. And ‘absolutely anything’ can include a tiny little robotic mouse breaking through a gallery wall to ask you existential questions about life, its meaning, the value of time and what happens after we die. 

 

Asking big questions from something very small, UK-based artist Ryan Gander has actually used his young daughter’s voice to give his animatronic animal the ability to speak.

 

It was honestly quite a sight to witness several people kneeling around the mouse eager to listen to its commanding speech on climate change, the effects of our technology-led age and ‘the end.’

 

I have always held a very strong belief that art has this immense power to communicate the most pressing ideas, issues and motivations for social change, but I never thought it would speak directly to me by breaking through a gallery wall. 

 

Super curious as to how the NGV are going to repair that wall after the triennial is over though.  

 

 

Very volcanic over this green feather by Petrit Halilaj 

 

After being displaced from his home during the Kosovo War in 1998, young Halilaj spent two years in a refugee camp in Albania. It was in this camp where a visiting psychologist, Giacomo Poli, provided all of the children with art materials and encouraged them to express their innermost thoughts, feelings and experiences down on paper (great psychologist). 

 

It wasn’t until decades later that Halilaj re-discovered these drawings, and then decided to enlarge them onto thick pieces of felt and hang them as an installation. 

 

ARGH. So. Much. To Say. About. This. Work!!

 

I find it so incredibly engaging that entering this space transports viewers into the imagination of the 13 year old artist.

 

The hanging structure of these drawings vividly reminds me of a cot mobile, reinforcing ideas of youth and child-like curiosity, but also situating the viewer as though they are walking underneath a world of memory.

 

I also love the idea of Halilaj giving visibility to his inner child, giving his thoughts, feelings and concerns a voice, in the centre of the National Gallery of Victoria!

 

I wonder how 13 year old Halilaj would feel if he was told the future of what his drawings would become. 

 

 

Okay! That’s a wrap! I was planning on organising my top 10 works of art in an order of some sort, but as I was writing and reflecting upon them I knew it would be way too difficult! I love them all! It was so difficult to narrow down all of the works I saw to just 10 in the first place. 

 

Though, I would love to know – do you have a favourite from the ten that I have selected? Or maybe a completely different one if you went to see the triennial in person? 

 

I absolutely adored visiting the NGV Triennial, it was such a highlight of my trip to Melbourne! And I cannot wait to visit the next one in 2026!

 

Melbourne’s NGV Triennial is on until 7th April 2024, but if you can’t see it in person, the gallery’s website has an abundance of great photos, information and interesting essays on the event! Explore it all here: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/triennial/home/