Australia Is Getting Its First Major Takashi Murakami Retrospective

• Art Gallery of New South Wales will host Australia’s first major Takashi Murakami retrospective opening in December.
• The exhibition spans 30 years and 150 works, charting Murakami’s evolution and Superflat movement development.
• Anchoring Sydney’s International Art Series programming, the show will also debut new Murakami works.

Takashi Murakami has shared his iconic Superflat style with museums from Cleveland to Moscow. Somehow, though, the trailblazing Japanese artist has yet to truly hit Australia. That changes this December, when the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney will unveil a new Murakami retrospective exclusive to the city.

To be fair, Murakami has brought his art to the land down under on several small occasions. In 2019, for instance, he created a brand new mural on commission for this very same institution, as part of a group show titled “Japanese Supernatural.” This retrospective, however, is on another level. The sprawling presentation, simply titled “Takashi Murakami,” will span 30 years and 150 artworks, including paintings, sculptures, video, and large-scale installations, according to the museum.

The endeavor will take over part of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s Naala Badu building, a relatively new subterranean addition to the institution’s campus constructed to show modern and contemporary art. To begin, its Ainsworth Family Gallery will display Murakami’s early art of the 1990s through his ubiquitous creations of today—illustrating the artist’s evolution from a failed manga creator finding his voice to the renowned progenitor of the politically motivated Superflat movement along the way.

That story will culminate in the building’s Nelson Packer Tank, a 23,680 square-foot oil reserve used during World War II. There, Murakami will premier new works currently underway in his Tokyo studio, a veritable art factory that only strengthens the ongoing comparisons between his practice and that of late Pop art legend Andy Warhol. Murakami will also contribute new writing to the exhibition’s catalog, complementing essays by the museum’s senior curator of Asian art Melanie Eastburn, and Ed Schad, the curator and publications manager at The Broad in Los Angeles, which debuted a traveling survey of Murakami’s work in 2022.

“Takashi Murakami” will be one of two exhibitions staged under New South Wales’ 16-year-old Sydney International Art Series—alongside another show by French installation artist Philippe Parreno, who will transform two floors of the nearby Museum of Contemporary Art Australia using artificial intelligence, robotics, sound, and light.

“Securing the works of an internationally acclaimed artist like Takashi Murakami is a fantastic coup,” Steve Kamper, the nation’s minister for jobs and tourism, remarked in press materials. He’s banking that Murakami’s forthcoming retrospective “will deliver significant economic benefits to our state and showcase Sydney as Australia’s leading destination for world-class cultural experiences.”