Crossing cultures, disciplines and traditional divides, Freedom of Movement: Contemporary Art and Design from the NGV Collection presents NGV Collection works bound together by their capacity to reveal the centrality of movement through the gestural, technological, and geographical, in contemporary art and design practice today.
With over 60 works from the NGV Collection, the exhibition includes furniture, lighting, painting, film, sculpture and installation. The exhibition surveys NGV’s commitment to collecting new, ground-breaking contemporary art and design that explores, unpicks, critiques and toys with contemporary issues.
The artists and designers in this exhibition tell complex stories about art and design making. Presented in four ‘movements’, each anchored by major works, the exhibition invites audiences to consider the capacity of collections to tell us about movement, change, perception, and transformation in contemporary life.
Movement one opens with Polish artist Alicja Kwade’s monumental WeltenLinie, 2020. This large-scale installation commissioned by the NGV, offers a perceptual puzzle through mirrored panels, shifting thresholds and illusory objects, that comes to life when the viewer moves in and around the structure.
Movement two presents a selection of Japanese design studio nendo’s iconic 50 Manga chairs, 2015. Situated in a grid, each chair is a character in its own right, moving between flatness and abstraction. Inspired by the line drawings of Japanese Manga comics, the body of work is a study in how furniture can convey emotion through gesture.
Movement three offers a room of immersive and interactive installations, sculpture and design that together consider time as an animating force, and an inescapable condition of our existence. Works describe how the elevation of simple everyday objects can powerfully shift our perception. Shilpa Gupta’s Untitled (Rock), 2012–15, made from hundreds of microphones, describes patterns of migration and the chosen and forced movement of people. Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer invites you to scan the contents of your pockets with the work Please Empty Your Pockets, 2010, that consists of a conveyor belt with a computerised scanner that records everything that passes under it. Once items pass under the scanner, it leaves behind a projected image – or memory – of itself upon the conveyor belt.
Movement four comprises a selection of sculptures that explore human and animal forms, figures and associations that together ask us to look again at our ourselves and the world – be it in disguise, through play or abstracted beyond recognition. These sculptures are profiles of hope, celebration and dynamic life, whether real or imaginary. Artists in this section include KAWS, Patricia Piccinini, Francis Uprtichard, Nick Cave, Dan Halter and Erwin Wurm.
Many of the artworks in Freedom of Movement have been collected for NGV’s landmark showcase of contemporary practice, the NGV Triennial, established in 2017.