{"id":39039,"date":"2026-06-26T07:28:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T07:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/39039\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T07:28:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T07:28:15","slug":"icelandic-cool-comes-to-melbourne-ngv-presents-major-solo-exhibition-of-ragnar-kjartansson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/39039\/","title":{"rendered":"Icelandic cool comes to Melbourne: NGV presents major solo exhibition of Ragnar Kjartansson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NGVNGV presents Australian major solo exhibition of Icelandic artist, Ragnar Kjartansson, heralded as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary art today. Drawing on a multitude of references from literature, cinema and pop music, Kjartansson\u2019s work offers a critical yet comedic commentary on contemporary life and culture.<\/p>\n

On display at NGV International in Melbourne, the world-premiere exhibition, Ragnar Kjartansson: Mercy<\/a>, features eight new and recent video works that combine music, humour and spectacle. Striking a balance between comedic irony and sincerity, Kjartansson\u2019s captivating video works explore themes of love, melancholy, masculinity and repetition \u2013 all with a toe-tapping soundtrack.<\/p>\n

Key works in the exhibition include his acclaimed nine-screen installation The Visitors, 2012, which was named by The Guardian as the best artwork of the twenty-first century. Filmed at Rokeby mansion in upstate New York, the work features the artist and various musicians from the Reykjavik music scene, performing a song with lyrics written by the artist \u00c1sd\u00eds Sif Gunnarsd\u00f3ttir.<\/p>\n

Each room of the ramshackle mansion hosts a different musician; a drummer in the kitchen, a banjo-player in the library, Kjartansson on guitar in the bath. Filmed in real-time, the work presents a melancholic house party that the artist has described as a \u201cfeminine nihilistic gospel song\u201d. <\/p>\n

\"NGVThe exhibition will also present the Australian premiere of the artist\u2019s most recent work Sunday Without Love, 2025, a single channel video work inspired by a postcard on the artist\u2019s fridge featuring people wearing matching folk costumes in a nameless, bucolic location.<\/p>\n

In response, Kjartansson and a cast of nine other performers are dressed in non-descriptive European folk costumes and sing the phrase \u201cYou must learn to live without love\u201d. Drawing on classical pastoral painting and traditional romantic ballads, Sunday Without Love is a painting-as-moving image work that forces a confluence of references into sonic and visual harmony.<\/p>\n

The juxtaposition of both tragedy and humour is another thread through Kjartansson\u2019s work. In the ongoing video work Me and My Mother, every five years Kjartansson asks his mother, the acclaimed Icelandic actor Gu\u00f0r\u00fan \u00c1smundsd\u00f3ttir, to spit on him.<\/p>\n

The resulting moving images capture dramatic pauses, sideways glances, grimaces and stifled laughter. The work is a video portrait of a relationship between mother and son, over time, each acting out their tragi-comic part.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis exhibition, the first of its kind in Australia, shares the idiosyncratic worldview of Ragnar with Australian audiences for the very first time. With tongue firmly in cheek, his works have truly captured the zeitgeist with their original combination of music, wit and performance,\u201d said Tony Ellwood AM, Director, NGV.<\/p>\n

\"NGVAlongside Ragnar Kjartansson: Mercy, the NGV presents the FREE children\u2019s exhibition Children\u2019s Play: Ragnar Kjartansson<\/a> \u2013 the artist\u2019s first ever exhibition for children. As the son of an actor and a theatre director, Kjartansson grew up surrounded by rehearsals, scripts and backstage activity.<\/p>\n

This world-premiere exhibition invites young visitors into a playful and creative space inspired by the theatre. Kids can be an audience member, an actor or a creator, inventing and performing stories with friends and family on stage.<\/p>\n

Taking inspiration from the theatre tradition of \u2018dinner and a show\u2019 \u2013\u00a0the exhibition also features activity tables with lavish banquet-style displays of food. Arranged like still-life compositions, these displays invite children to draw what entices them or perhaps what they imagine they would like to eat. And for dessert: soft, colourful upholstered cushions, perfect for small hands to stack and turn into topsy-turvy cake sculptures.<\/p>\n

Kjartansson has had major solo exhibitions at the Reykjav\u00edk Art Museum; the Barbican, London; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; and has represented Iceland at the Venice Biennale. In recognition of his contributions to Icelandic art, Kjartansson was honoured as the 2016 Reykjav\u00edk City Artist.<\/p>\n

Ragnar Kjartansson: Mercy<\/a> and Children\u2019s Play: Ragnar Kjartansson<\/a> is on display at NGV International, St Kilda Road, Melbourne, until 4 October 2026.<\/p>\n

Images: Installation view of Ragnar Kjartansson\u2019s No Tomorrow, 2022 in Ragnar Kjartansson: Mercy on display at NGV International, Melbourne \u2013 photo by Sean Fennessy | Installation view of Ragnar Kjartansson\u2019s Sunday Without Love, 2025\u00a0in Ragnar Kjartansson: Mercy on display at NGV International, Melbourne \u2013 photo by Sean Fennessy | Installation view of Ragnar Kjartansson\u2019s Steak (Variation on Meat Joy), 2013\u00a0in Ragnar Kjartansson: Mercy on display at NGV International, Melbourne \u2013 photo by Sean Fennessy<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NGV presents Australian major solo exhibition of Icelandic artist, Ragnar Kjartansson, heralded as one of the most distinctive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1174,1164,1168,1172,1165,1175,260,1163,1171,1169,1170,1173,1166,1177,1167,1162,1176],"class_list":["post-39039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-melbourne","tag-belvoir","tag-book-of-mormom","tag-destination-nsw","tag-fortyfivedownstairs","tag-kooza","tag-la-boite-theatre","tag-melbourne","tag-meow-meow","tag-midsumma","tag-muck-rack","tag-ngv","tag-opera-australia","tag-publication-media","tag-rocky-horror","tag-the-lion-king","tag-theatre","tag-todd-mckenney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}