Melbourne Now: an unlimited, sprawling and provoking exhibition that seems to burst out of its architectural framework

Melbourne Now 2013 remains to be spoken about with reverence.

It was a memorable exhibition: a shot of Viagra to the exhibiting of latest Australian art by a public art gallery. It was immense, occupying each buildings of the National Gallery of Victoria and surrounds, and it dropped at the fore much art that had never been seen before, combined with some well-known artists still making interesting work.

Melbourne Now 2023 is a more targeted exhibition, confined to the Federation Square constructing, with roughly half the variety of exhibitors compared with its predecessor a decade earlier.

The show does mix the work of some well-established artists, including Shaun Gladwell, Christian Thompson, Katherine Hattam and Julia Ciccarone, with a splurge of fresh blood, names largely unknown outside a decent circle inside the arts community.

Art is treated inside a broad spectrum of the cultural landscape to incorporate not only painters, printmakers, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers and installation artists, but additionally designers, studios, firms, practising architects, ceramicists, video artists and people working in virtual reality, jewellery, performance, product design and publishing.

These are a number of the individuals who now, or within the near future, will design the best way our world looks, feels and operates.

In an unlimited, sprawling and provoking exhibition that seems to burst out of its architectural framework, it’s pointless to debate omissions within the number of artists once we are surrounded by a lot vital and interesting art that challenges us on so many levels.

Intense visual excitement

Many of the artists are making their NGV debut. This isn’t a “stable” of artists that has been fostered by a gallery, an accusation that has been levelled, with some justification, at several state galleries.

Many of those artists are usually not recent to the institutional exhibiting scene and can have been seen in some regional galleries, public art spaces and dedicated municipal art centres, but they’re recent to the NGV and the broader public.

There is a sustained and intense visual excitement that pervades all levels of The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia.

We move from Rel Pham’s huge shrine-like “temple” in a darkened room, accompanied by a chorus of 640 computer fans with their cyberspace breeze, to Jenna Lee’s illuminated lanterns in forms harking back to traditional Gulumerridjin (Larrakia) dilly bags, and Troy Emery’s quirky nearly three-metre-long textile sculpture, Mountain climber, able to pounce on the viewer.

Although each of those works is spectacular and packs a substantial wow factor, they can not be dismissed as purely hedonistic eye candy designed as an escapist parachute out of reality.

Pham questions the ecological sustainability in our reliance on technology with the colors of the neon illumination chosen for symbolic considerations in Asian cultures. He creates an environment where the physical and digital worlds blur.

Lee, a Larrakia, Wardaman and Karajarri artist, views her lanterns as illuminating her ancestry and its mystical complexities.

Emery’s work affected me more directly than I anticipated. I used to be prepared for an encounter with something approaching high kitsch with brightly colored pom-poms forming the surface of this creature. For all its playfulness, there’s something quite sombre in an encounter with this giant feline, shown like a specimen taken out of the wild, now beautified and preserved in a museum.

It’s possibly something to do with animal extinction and an interrogation of the connection between us and non-human animals.

It will grow to be a brand new icon for our time.

Art meets design

The distinction between arts and crafts dissolved many a long time ago. Melbourne Now continues the method in dissolving the excellence between the visual arts as studio practice and functional design, fashion and applied photography.

The Design Wall that caused major ripples a decade ago has returned as a large-scale installation representing 23 Victorian design studios that over the past decade created recent consumer products from guitars, pink cricket balls to electric motorbikes.

Fashion Now brings together about 20 local fashion designers including J’Aton Couture, Ngali and Kara Baker.

Jewellery Now carries out an identical exercise with contemporary jewellers spread over about 60 recent or recent pieces that explore a wide range of forms. They include incredible pieces by Inari Kiuru, Tessa Blazey, Kirsten Lyttle and Anke Kindle.

As a lot on this exhibition, fundamental questions are raised concerning boundaries. What constitutes jewellery practice today and the way is jewellery consumed by society?

Civic Architecture investigates five award-winning civic projects by Melbourne architects where different neighbourhoods have been transformed.

No House Style assembles some Melbourne-based furniture designers and designers who’ve departed from mainstream trends to create their very own unique language.

Vessels examines 15 artists who create containers from materials as varied as ceramics, fibre, mixed media and experimental biomaterials.

The art of photography is interrogated through Slippery Images, a look on the work of 12 photographers. Printmaking is represented with a Print Portfolio by 12 printmakers plus the irrepressible Gracia and Louise and their bat installation.

A memorable exhibition

Conceived as a snapshot of visual culture in Melbourne and Victoria, this exhibition is difficult, visually exciting and memorable.

If you discover it a bit of bewildering, you may turn to Gee, an AI chatbot developed by Georgia Banks, who has been programmed as a goal to your affections, or lie down for Shaun Gladwell’s out-of-body experience.