The National Gallery of Victoria is open for virtual tours, even if the state isn’t.
Thanks to the NGV’s virtual programming channel, anybody can tour the 2020 Triennial, which includes works from a diverse range of artists and creators such as Faye Toogood, Refik Anadol and Porky Hefer. (Featured image: @nao_takabayashi)
But there are many more artists, designers and creators you can see online, and although the virtual tours don’t quite get around the entire gallery, you can definitely lose yourself in the virtual world for hours and hours.
Other notable artists and creators that are featured on the NGV’s virtual channel include Kengo Kuma, Jeff Koons, Cerith Wyn Evans and the Los Angeles-based artists’ collaboration Fallen Fruit.
The NGV has also put together an hour-long Virtual Tour Opening where viewers can be walked through the gallery by a number of curators explaining and detailing the ideas, thoughts and intentions behind the artworks, designs and installations. Watch it below.
Also online and available to explore on the NGV virtual channel is the Collecting Comme exhibition, ideal for lovers of fashion and haute couture as it displays the work of one of the most visionary and influential fashion designers working today: Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons.
Featuring more than fifty examples, Collecting Comme examines the radical concepts and design methods that have informed Kawakubo’s practice since 1981, the year she first presented in Paris, as well as the work of her protégés.
Online audiences can also be graced with the aptly titled Companionship In The Age Of Loneliness, the exhibition for New York-based artist Brian Donnelly, aka KAWS. The collection on show brings together his multiple disciplines, as well as the worlds of art, fashion, and design.
Taken from the NGV website, ”KAWS celebrates generosity, support for others and the deep need we have for companionship … his work presents an antidote or rejoinder to the increasingly toxic nature of public discourse and social media, and division within and across societies. He reminds us we need one another and that life should be lived as compassionately as possible to combat this ‘Age of Loneliness’, in the face of fear and hatred.”
The massive second installment of the NGV Triennial—the large-scale exhibition of international contemporary art, design and architecture—opened its doors in December and will run through till 18 April. If you have the chance to go, you definitely should. Entry is free, but you will need to reserve your spot ahead of time.