The National Gallery of Victoria’s Australian art is housed across several levels in Melbourne’s Federation Square. The numerous separate galleries allows for a number of permanent collections to remain on display alongside temporary exhibitions of Australian art and fashion.

With the appointment of former Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts’ contemporary art curator Dr Alex Baker as senior curator of contemporary art, the National Gallery of Victoria has gained an international perspective that has led to lively new interpretations of the collection, such as 2008’s Look! New Perspectives on the Contemporary Collection.

Aside from visual art, the NGV Australia also exhibits the work of Australian fashion designers, such as Martin Grant and Akira Isogawa in solo retrospectives, as well Romance Was Born, amongst others, in the curated Together Alone: Australian and New Zealand Fashion. Including New Zealand designers in the Australia-focused exhibition space allows the influences that cross our borders and affect creativity to become apparent.