Indigenous art will take centre stage this year with two major exhibitions slated for the National Gallery of Australia's 2023 program.
And female artists dominate the exhibition schedule, in keeping with the gallery's Know My Name initiative: Anmatyerre artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye will feature next summer, with two other solo shows by women will take place during the year.
Seoul and Berlin-based artist Haegue Yang will show recent works in Changing From From to From from May to September, and the most renowned series of American photographer Nan Goldin, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, will be on show from July.
Gallery director Nick Mitzevich said the year 2023 program reinforced the gallery's commitment to highlighting First Nations artists, and collecting and exhibiting the "pre-eminent works and artists of our times".
A landmark exhibition of major new works by artists from the Aangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, Ngura Pulka, will open in June, with 30 major works by three generations of Indigenous artists.
And the eponymous Emily Kame Kngwarreye will herald the Canberra summer from December 2.
The show will be a major survey exhibition by one of the 20th century's most significant artists, as well as being one of Australia's most celebrated.
It will bring together the most important pieces from the late artist's significant body of work, from her early, vibrant batiks to her later monumental paintings on canvas.
The summer show will be a far cry from the gallery's usual summer offerings, which in the past have included major international exhibitions from the likes of the Musee D'Orsay in Paris and the Tate Gallery in London.
But its most recent summer blockbuster, Cressida Campbell, due to finish later this month, has been something of a sleeper hit - a major survey of works by a living female Australian artist whose works were not necessarily familiar to many Australian art-lovers.
A spokeswoman confirmed the show had driven up visitor numbers well above those of the past few summers, which had been variously marred by bushfire smoke and waves of COVID.
The gallery has also commissioned The Mulka Project, a collective of Yolngu digital artists from Northeast Arnhem Land, to illuminate the building's facade as part of the 2023 Enlighten Festival in March.
In December, the gallery will host the world premiere of Body Sculpture, a new animatronic sculpture by international artist Jordan Wolfson.
"This major new acquisition builds on this legacy, embracing new and emerging global paradigms outside of traditional collecting areas," Dr Mitzevich said.
This will be the first solo presentation of Wolfson's work in Australia and will be shown alongside a selection of earlier works.
- Cressida Campbell is on at the National Gallery of Australia until February 19.
