NGV’s barnstorming exhibition provides an overview of global contemporary arts practice over the past three years – and given what the past three years have been like, it makes sense that the 100 or so projects on display over four levels of the NGV range from reflective to deeply weird. Catch works from international luminaries such as Scottish provocateur David Shrigley, pivotal British artist Tracey Emin, avant-garde icon Yoko Ono and Parisian fashion house Maison Schiaparelli. There’s also art made closer to home – like the eight-metre-long bronze eel trap by Wurundjeri artist Aunty Kim Wandin. Plus: robot dogs, deep-fake photography, and a single banana duct-taped to a wall.
Until April 7 at NGV International. Free entry
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SIGN UPThere’s a heap of joy (and more than a pinch of rock’n’roll) in Yankunytjatjara artist Kaylene Whiskey’s work. The Archibald finalist is known for her celebration of sisterhood and kungka kunpu (strong women) – especially in irreverent paintings that depict pop culture colliding with life on Country. Dolly Parton performing in South Australia’s APY lands, perhaps, or a black Wonder Woman flying over Uluru. This exhibition of newly acquired pieces shows a series of 10 paintings produced on found tourism magazine pages, featuring some of Whiskey’s signature icons including Cher, Catwoman, Tina Turner, and Sandy from Grease.
Until February at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square. Free entry
Marshmallow Laser Feast: Works of Nature at ACMI
London-based experimental art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) brings its spin on large-scale moving images and technology to consider our place in the natural world with Works of Nature. The world-premiere exhibition features four major immersive digital artworks as well as a series of works on paper. From microscopic cells and tiny droplets of water to the majesty of ancient Amazonian trees and the galactic expanses of black holes, the exhibition plays with scale to guide visitors on a trippy journey through the natural world.
Until April 14 at ACMI, Federation Square. Ticketed
Beguiling at Victorian Pride Centre
From acclaimed Australian artist Dr Lisa Anderson comes this evocative multimedia exploration of changing landscapes and environmental collapse. Photos captured over many years of research and expedition work – including in the Arctic and Antarctic regions – show beauty and destruction in the Anthropocene. Images are scarred and burnt, reprinted on odd surfaces with custom filters, both wonderful and broken. Meanwhile, video works are influenced by folklore and myths used across cultures to explain the world of nature. Earth, fire and air are anthropomorphised as dangerous and beautiful, enticing, alluring and a signal of destruction.
Until January 5 at Victorian Pride Centre, 79–81 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. Free entry
Fired Up: Stories Through Embers and Earth
See more than 100 individual ceramics designed and produced by First Peoples creatives – including a clay-based take on weaving that tells the story of the Seven Sisters, ceramic representations of decorative mouth grillz (with plenty of rhinestones) and traditional bark shields and bowls made from mud. The exhibition is the outcome of Koorie Heritage Trust’s third iteration of the groundbreaking Blak Design Program, which helps Victorian-based Indigenous artists and designers to develop professional practices. This year’s crop of talent features Annie Brigdale, Suzanne Connelly-Klidomitis, Nicholas Currie, Trina Dalton-Oogjes, Eleanor Franks, Mick Harding, Darcy McConnell, Sean Miller and Corina Muir.
Until February 11 at Floor 3, Birrarung Building, Fed Square. Free entry
Surrealist Lee Miller at Heide
Check out this major survey of American-born photographer Lee Miller, whose work spans art, fashion, travel, her extraordinary creative circle and the horrors of frontline combat in the Second World War. Known for her austere, dreamlike monochrome photographs and personal connection to significant figures and events of the 20th century, Miller was dubbed a surrealist before she even knew of the movement. The photographs on display at Heide lean into this surrealist streak, showcasing Miller’s fondness for incongruity, dislocation, dark humour and finding the marvellous in the everyday. Includes portraits of creative contemporaries like Man Ray, Max Ernst and Picasso (who painted Miller six times).
Until February 25 at Heide Museum of Modern Art, 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen. Ticketed
Big news in the world of little art: this year’s Linden Postcard Show is busting out of its traditional 8-by-10-inch format to embrace larger 2D works, 3D works, and most forms of AV. Now in its 33rd year at St Kilda gallery Linden New Art, the longstanding exhibition-cross-competition is open entry, so anyone from hobbyists to established artists can submit their mini masterpieces and have them hang in the beautiful Victorian-era building. And if you can envisage any of them on your own wall, you’re in luck – they’re all up for sale.
Until February 11 at Linden New Art, 26 Acland Street, St Kilda. Free entry
You won’t find any Final Girls here. This ACCA exhibitions explores representations of female monsters – the witch, the hag, the evil mother, the shapeshifter, the possessed woman – and how they’ve been reclaimed by female storytellers in recent years. Embrace the dark with works from 19 Australian and international artists, bringing together historical and contemporary pieces, as well as new commissions that draw on horror’s capacity to transgress. It’s gore-splattered feminist rage and revenge cut through with dread, camp, comedy and catharsis.
Until March 3 at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 111 Sturt Street, Southbank. Free entry
The digital gallery’s spectacular exhibition transforms paintings, photography and video works by First Nations artists into an immersive experience spanning 3000 square metres and four storeys. Step inside recreations of works by Emily Kame Kngwarreye; Tommy Watson; Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi and Michelle Possum Nungurrayi; Anna Pitjara; Lin Onus; and 100 more artists – each piece digitally enhanced to move, swirl and flow all around you. There’s traditional art and paintings, alongside portraits, landscapes, nature photography and drone footage. Plus a musical score from First Nations musicians like Yothu Yindi, Archie Roach, Emily Wurramara, Gurrumul, Alice Skye and Baker Boy.
Until February 4 at The Lume, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, 5 Convention Centre Place, South Wharf. Ticketed
Liam Young: Planetary Redesign
The first major Australian solo exhibition from filmmaker and speculative architect Liam Young proposes a number of redesigns for our planet that offer radically optimistic solutions to the climate crisis. An immersive display of moving-image works, costumes and photography imagines alternative urban futures for us to inhabit. A hyper-dense sustainable city sheltering the whole human population of Earth (while the rest of the planet recovers as wilderness). Or a mobilisation of workers and resources on a planetary scale to construct a global system of greenhouse-gas extraction and storage. It’s part sci-fi, part eco-idealism.
Until February 11 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square. Free entry