Things to do in Melbourne in January

It’s unlikely that any photographer boasts a portfolio like Australian artist Polly Borland’s. It’s as chock full with celebrities as it is with fetishists – Borland spent five years documenting the surreal lives of adults who get their kicks by dressing up as infants. But it’s the wild diversity of her work that is perhaps its most distinctive quality. In Polyverse, the upcoming showcase of her new and recent work at the NGV, another facet of Borland’s photography will be on display. These otherworldly images feature human subjects distorted with stockings, gags and lumps of padding; smeared with make-up; bodies straining and restrained in poses that are both sexually charged and monstrous. It’s a collection that toes a fine yet powerful line between shock and awe. You could be forgiven for assuming the various phases of her output – spanning mainstream fashion editorials to avant garde tapestries – were created by different artists. And yet there is a unifying thread that binds her canon together. Borland’s images often hide a dual personality, albeit on a sometimes inscrutable level. Emotional extremes are superimposed, challenging the viewer to make sense of an underlying contradiction. “I think that’s partly the success of my work, but it’s also partly its downfall too,” Borland says of the duality found her shots. “When you’re conveying insights or ideas or other ways of seeing things, you’re giving the viewer another way of looking at the world. But I think what y

Until her death last August at the age of 90, artist Mirka Mora was a Melbourne institution, loved as much for her flamboyant personality and contribution to the city’s cultural life as for her distinctive artworks, which combine elements of folk art and surrealism with daydreams and fairytale characters. To commemorate her life and career, Heide Museum of Modern Art will host a retrospective exhibition, Mirka Mora: Pas de Deux - Drawings and Dolls, bringing together drawings and the soft-sculpture dolls for which she was known (“my dolls are my drawing in three dimensions,” Mora said), many which have never been on public display.

There aren't many artists in the world with a style as immediately recognisable as Julian Opie. The British sculptor sketches people with the simplest of details – black lines and splashes of colour – capturing the mood and spirit of the world's metropolises. This free solo exhibition of more than 60 of his works will take over several of the NGV's most prominent spaces. In the entry foyer, called Federation Court, Opie is installing an entire city of skyscrapers, which reach up 13 metres into the sky to create an immerisve environment. He'll also be setting a school of virtual carp loose on the NGV's waterwall, and in the garden, he'll install a large-scale fountain sculpture inspired by the 'Manneken Pis' (so yes, you know what to expect).

In 1764, the publication of Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto caused a sensation. Inspired by Walpole’s tale of a haunted castle, ladies of the day became obsessed with all things “gothic” and supernatural. Our fascination hasn’t faded in the years since (Twilight, we’re looking at you). Bendigo Art Gallery’s latest exhibition traces the influence of the gothic tradition through such objects as a Victorian horse-drawn hearse, 18th and 20th century first edition novels from Jane Austen and Horace Walpole, and works from Aubrey Beardsley and JMW Turner. The exhibition considers how the gothic continues to influence artists today such as Bill Henson Jess Johnson, Jane Burton and Julia DeVille.

If you wander into the NGV's Ian Potter Centre this summer you might find yourself face-to-face with some rather creepy spectres. Melbourne-born, Sydney-based artist Ken Unsworth's sculptural installations are full of skeletons, terrifying pianos (we promise that makes sense once you've seen them) and otherworldly figures. But despite the sheer punk attitude conjured up by a grand piano dissected by a giant saw blade, there's a softness and introspective quality to these sculptures. For example, that piano pays homage to Unsworth's late wife Elizabeth, who was a concert pianist. This is the first major survey of Unsworth's sculptural works in Melbourne, and is scattered all around the foyers of the NGV Ian Potter Centre. That means it's totally free to see all the works, which range from his earliest sculpture in 1968, through to four that have been created specifically for the exhibition.

It’s unlikely that any photographer boasts a portfolio like Australian artist Polly Borland’s. It’s as chock full with celebrities as it is with fetishists – Borland spent five years documenting the surreal lives of adults who get their kicks by dressing up as infants. But it’s the wild diversity of her work that is perhaps its most distinctive quality. In Polyverse, the upcoming showcase of her new and recent work at the NGV, another facet of Borland’s photography will be on display. These otherworldly images feature human subjects distorted with stockings, gags and lumps of padding; smeared with make-up; bodies straining and restrained in poses that are both sexually charged and monstrous. It’s a collection that toes a fine yet powerful line between shock and awe. You could be forgiven for assuming the various phases of her output – spanning mainstream fashion editorials to avant garde tapestries – were created by different artists. And yet there is a unifying thread that binds her canon together. Borland’s images often hide a dual personality, albeit on a sometimes inscrutable level. Emotional extremes are superimposed, challenging the viewer to make sense of an underlying contradiction. “I think that’s partly the success of my work, but it’s also partly its downfall too,” Borland says of the duality found her shots. “When you’re conveying insights or ideas or other ways of seeing things, you’re giving the viewer another way of looking at the world. But I think what y

The National Gallery of Victoria is bringing a world-first exhibition of works by MC Escher to Melbourne this summer. Between Two Worlds | Escher X nendo will feature more than 160 prints and drawings from the renowned Dutch artist as well as an immersive Escher-inspired environment created by Japanese design studio Nendo. We can't wait to see how they'll respond to Escher's most iconic image: the physically impossible, Hogwarts-esque staircases. Escher rose to prominence in the 20th-century art world for his mind-bending and mathematically complex works like ‘Hand with Reflecting Sphere’, ‘Relativity’ and ‘Balcony’. Though he considered himself to have little mathematical ability his art has become iconic for its seamless tessellation, warped perspectives and impossible objects – like endless, connected staircases and mirrored self-portraits. The works are on loan from the Gemeentemuseum in the Hague and will be joined by an immersive experience created by Nendo design studio. By manipulating geometry, space and perception like Escher, Nendo will create a never-before-seen exhibit that will bring the artist’s work to life. Cathy Leahy, the NGV's senior curator of prints and drawings says that Nendo is using Escher's playfulness to create the world-first experience. "Escher works with positive and negative space a lot and shapes transforming from one element to another. Nendo have created this space that you walk through that has some of those elements." Between Two Worl

Until her death last August at the age of 90, artist Mirka Mora was a Melbourne institution, loved as much for her flamboyant personality and contribution to the city’s cultural life as for her distinctive artworks, which combine elements of folk art and surrealism with daydreams and fairytale characters. To commemorate her life and career, Heide Museum of Modern Art will host a retrospective exhibition, Mirka Mora: Pas de Deux - Drawings and Dolls, bringing together drawings and the soft-sculpture dolls for which she was known (“my dolls are my drawing in three dimensions,” Mora said), many which have never been on public display.

There aren't many artists in the world with a style as immediately recognisable as Julian Opie. The British sculptor sketches people with the simplest of details – black lines and splashes of colour – capturing the mood and spirit of the world's metropolises. This free solo exhibition of more than 60 of his works will take over several of the NGV's most prominent spaces. In the entry foyer, called Federation Court, Opie is installing an entire city of skyscrapers, which reach up 13 metres into the sky to create an immerisve environment. He'll also be setting a school of virtual carp loose on the NGV's waterwall, and in the garden, he'll install a large-scale fountain sculpture inspired by the 'Manneken Pis' (so yes, you know what to expect).

In 1764, the publication of Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto caused a sensation. Inspired by Walpole’s tale of a haunted castle, ladies of the day became obsessed with all things “gothic” and supernatural. Our fascination hasn’t faded in the years since (Twilight, we’re looking at you). Bendigo Art Gallery’s latest exhibition traces the influence of the gothic tradition through such objects as a Victorian horse-drawn hearse, 18th and 20th century first edition novels from Jane Austen and Horace Walpole, and works from Aubrey Beardsley and JMW Turner. The exhibition considers how the gothic continues to influence artists today such as Bill Henson Jess Johnson, Jane Burton and Julia DeVille.

If you wander into the NGV's Ian Potter Centre this summer you might find yourself face-to-face with some rather creepy spectres. Melbourne-born, Sydney-based artist Ken Unsworth's sculptural installations are full of skeletons, terrifying pianos (we promise that makes sense once you've seen them) and otherworldly figures. But despite the sheer punk attitude conjured up by a grand piano dissected by a giant saw blade, there's a softness and introspective quality to these sculptures. For example, that piano pays homage to Unsworth's late wife Elizabeth, who was a concert pianist. This is the first major survey of Unsworth's sculptural works in Melbourne, and is scattered all around the foyers of the NGV Ian Potter Centre. That means it's totally free to see all the works, which range from his earliest sculpture in 1968, through to four that have been created specifically for the exhibition.

George Baldessin and Brett Whiteley were both born in 1939, achieved meteoric success in their respective cities of Melbourne and Sydney, and died tragically young. Yet the similarities don’t stop there. In the most comprehensive exhibition of both artists in more than 20 years, the National Gallery of Victoria explores the parallels between the two artists and the ways in which their provocative and expressive approach to the human figure created work with a distinctly Australian sensibility. Featuring more than 120 works,it includes such masterpieces as Whiteley’s 20-metre long painting The American Dream (1968-69), as well as five of Baldessin’s Pears sculptures (1971-72) and his acclaimed MM of Rue St Denis (1976) drawings.

Frida Kahlo's paintings are known all around the world, but her photography collection reveals even more about her life, her artistic process and the Mexico where she lived. Kahlo was fascinated with photography for most of her life, drawing inspiration from her father, Guillermo Kahlo, a noted photographer. She was an avid collector of photos. The photographs in this exhibition are drawn from the archive at the Casa Azul, the famous blue house where Kahlo grew up, now a museum in her honour. The photographic archive was only revealed to the public in 2007, and Mexican photographer and historian Pablo Ortiz Monasterio has sifted through the 6,500 strong collection to pick the 257 photographs headed to Bendigo. The photos capture Kahlo and her friends and family at work, at home, and even in her extended hospital stay following a debilitating 1925 accident. There'll be work on display from Kahlo's contemporaries, including Man Ray, Martin Munkacsi, Fritz Henle, Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Pierre Verger, and Lola and Manuel Alvarez.

Could dancing save the world? German artist Hito Steyerl uses a montage of dancing figures and other images — protests, simulated realities, 3D models of lightbulbs smashing into a million tiny fragments – as symbols of how we live and what we’re turning into, before we experience the complete digitisation of our everyday lives. First featured in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015, Hito Steyerl's 'Factory of the Sun' was bought by the National Gallery of Victoria in 2016. It’s a huge (read: room-sized) installation that immerses viewers in an environment akin to the movie TRON, replete with poolside deck chairs and a 23-minute film. It's being installed at the NGV for the first time in September, and you can visit it for free over summer. The environment is itself a type of alternative reality – you’re not in a cinema and you’re not in the gallery, but you’re in an environment that triggers your brain to think in sci-fi. And you’re in there for real. It’s not a simulation; your body is physically existing within those four walls. You’re breathing, and blood is flowing through your veins, but you’re in what you might recognise as a computer game. The screen is propped up on temporary scaffolding, giving it the effect of being a stage. In 2009, Steyerl wrote ‘Is A Museum a Factory?’. In that essay, she says that the screen – and cinema itself – is isolated and automated in the sanctified space of the museum; it's no longer experienced with people. She argues