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National Gallery of Victoria Announces 2026 Triennial Exhibition

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NGV Triennial 2026–27: Major Free Exhibition Announced

The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne will present its Triennial exhibition from December 13, 2026, to April 11, 2027. The exhibition will feature more than 100 works by nearly 100 artists from 35 countries. Admission to the exhibition will be free.

Exhibition Overview

The NGV Triennial is a large-scale exhibition held every three years. The 2026 edition will run for several months across the gallery's International and Contemporary Art spaces.

According to the gallery, several works in the exhibition will address themes including the perception of truth and authority, artificial intelligence and digital culture, human community and solidarity, and the natural world.

Donna McColm, NGV's assistant director of curatorial and audience engagement, stated that due to the scale of the exhibition, visitors may wish to attend multiple times.

Featured Artists and Works

The exhibition will include a diverse range of installations, sculptures, paintings, and performances. Key works announced include:

  • Jenny Holzer (USA) will exhibit WTF, a 2022 LED sign installation. The work displays tweets by former US president Donald Trump and the online persona known as Q. The installation is designed to move unpredictably when suspended from a ceiling. In a 2023 interview with The Guardian, Holzer described the work as being about "the damage one man can do, and what happened around him."

    McColm described the installation's movement as creating "a really interesting portrait of how text just infiltrates our daily lives now, and questioning ideas around truth and authority."

  • Avery Singer (USA) will present Deepfake Stan, a painting of photojournalist Stan Honda created from digitally altered composite images. The work will be displayed within a recreation of World Trade Center offices. Stan Honda is known for photographs taken during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York.

  • Wolfgang Tillmans (Germany) will create a new room-sized photography installation.

  • Christine Sun Kim (USA) will present works translating American Sign Language into graphic form.

  • Louise Paramor (Australia) will create a human-sized chess set for visitor use in the Great Hall.

  • Ayoung Kim (South Korea) will show Delivery Dancer's Arc: Inverse, a work using AI, CGI, and game engines to depict two female couriers in a futuristic Seoul.

  • Kresiah Mukwazhi (Zimbabwe) will exhibit an eight-metre textile work made from used bra straps and lingerie fragments sourced from sex workers in Harare.

  • Maria Madeira (Timor-Leste) will perform Kiss and Don't Tell, which involves repeatedly kissing a canvas. The performance is described as honoring women subjected to abuse during Indonesia's occupation of Timor-Leste.

  • Ocean Vuong (USA/Vietnam) will present photographs of his mother's nail salon, documenting Vietnamese immigrant experiences.

  • Angelina Karadada Boona (Australia) will install a giant glowing Wandjina figure at the NGV's Waterwall entrance.

  • Benedikte Bjerre (Denmark) will present The Birds, an installation of foil-balloon penguins filled with helium, making its Australian debut. The work is described as commenting on habitat destruction.

Large-Scale and Commissioned Works

The exhibition will also feature several monumental pieces:

  • A 15-metre painting by Australian artist Juan Ford.
  • A large pink tree sculpture by Swiss artist Pamela Rosenkranz.
  • A 3.3-metre sculpture by South African artist Zanele Muholi depicting the artist as the Virgin Mary.
  • A major limestone sculpture by Lebanese-French artist Najla El Zein, commissioned by the City of Melbourne in partnership with the NGV and designed for public gatherings.