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EXHIBITION
17 NOVEMBER 2025 - 2027
10AM TO 2PM DAILY
Described as ‘the world’s most popular artist’, Yayoi Kusama (Japan, b. 1929) is best known for her immersive polka-dot and mirror installations. Over the course of her 70-year career, she has engaged with an expansive idea of space and the human body. She uses several recurring motifs – dots, eyes, nets and pumpkins – to investigate repetition and to create sensory experiences that hint at the infinite.
THE SPIRITS OF THE PUMPKINS DESCENDED INTO THE HEAVENS, 2017, is an installation comprising a vibrant yellow room overrun with black polka dots of various sizes. At its centre is a mirrored box, inside which are several dozen illuminated pumpkin sculptures that can be seen through windows. The pumpkins, endlessly reflected in the room’s internal mirrors, are also vivid yellow and adorned with dots. The dazzling combination of dots, mirrors and pumpkins creates an optical illusion – a sensation of infinite space and colour.
This work of art is on long term loan from the National Gallery of Australia with support from the Australian Government as part of Sharing the National Collection. #ArtAcrossAustralia
Born in Matsumoto, Japan in 1929, Yayoi Kusama is one of the world’s most important and recognised practitioners working today. Kusama’s personal expression was indelibly shaped by her childhood experiences, including hallucinations that overwhelmed her sense of self. She has explained these visions as part of an obsessional neurosis that has driven her to create art for nearly nine decades.
Today, Kusama is renowned globally for her singular and idiosyncratic use of pattern, colour and symbols to create immersive, thought-provoking and intensely personal works of art that transcend language and borders. She has made significant contributions to key art movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including minimalism, pop art and feminist art.
YAYOI KUSAMA
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“I hope that the power of art can make the world more peaceful.”
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VOLUNTEER
#SPOTTEDINDUBBO
Yayoi Kusama, THE SPIRITS OF THE PUMPKINS DESCENDED INTO THE HEAVENS, 2017, (detail) purchased 2018 with the assistance of Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett © YAYOI KUSAMA
Yayoi Kusama, THE SPIRITS OF THE PUMPKINS DESCENDED INTO THE HEAVENS, 2017, (detail) National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 2018 with the assistance of Andrew and Hiroko Gwinnett © YAYOI KUSAMA
A crop of pumpkins are reflected into infinity by a set of internal mirrors in, THE SPIRITS OF THE PUMPKINS DESCENDED INTO THE HEAVENS, 2017 © YAYOI KUSAMA (detail)
© YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts.
