Why it’s ‘Instagram-worth-it’ to visit the NGV Triennial in Melbourne

Melbourne - Ongoing until April 15, 2018, the NGV Triennial highlights contemporary art and design as represented by over 100 artists from 32 countries.

 Located on St. Kilda Road, the NGV is close to the Federation Square, Flinders Street station, and practically most establishments you’ll need to go to as a tourist.

The NGV Triennial is free and occupies all four levels of the building—filling it with Instagram-worthy art works that invite scrutiny and evoke emotion.

Here are just some of the must-not-miss pieces we saw:

• You won’t miss Chinese artist Xu Zhen’s “Eternity Buddha”, as the 14-meter-long sculpture by is the first thing you’ll see as soon as you enter the NGV.

• In “Flower Obsession”, visitors are brought into Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s world, a reality she says, that traces back to her childhood. Visitors are each given a flower sticker and are encouraged to apply it practically anywhere they wish—tables, bathtub, walls, clothes, bicycle—thus turning the entire environment into an aural and visual hallucination typical of Kusama’s works.

• Composed of 100 giant human skulls (main photo) made of fiberglass and resin, Australia-born Ron Mueck “Mass” is an installation that may be morbid for some but amazing for others. Mueck says that he considers the subject “beautiful and extraordinary” and that which links us all as a species.

• US-born Pae White’s “Untitled” is a textile installation that seeks to explore the three-dimensional space. As visitors move around the colorful room, so does their perspective.

• Tokyo-based Teamlab’s “Moving creates vortices and vortices create movement” is a calming sensual experience that is also quite hypnotic. Digital design and contemporary art come together in this installation as the vortices are created when the individual moves.

• Alexandra Kehayoglou’s “Santa Cruz River” is a 10 x 4.6 meter woven tapestry mounted on a wall and flows out onto the floor where guests can lie down and see themselves on a ceiling-mounted mirror. It took Kehayoglou two-and-a-half months to weave the carpet, which is the artist’s interpretation of the dangerous consequences to the natural ecosystem of Argentina’s last free-flowing wild river due to globalization.