Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei Exhibition - National Gallery of Victoria


Recently, I went with my friend Sandra to the Andy Warhol - Ai Weiwei Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.  These two artists were paired because of a number of parallel factors in their lives - New York, China, cats, photography and modern art.

There were plenty of familiar Warhol works to see, like Liz:


 
and Elvis:

 
vodka:


 and Campbell's soup cans:


I also learned that Warhol loved cats and had many of them, all of which were called Sam:


From Weiwei, there were several interactive displays of balloons that were blown about by a fan as you as you walked through them:


There was also a room full of photos of bunches of flowers that Weiwei over the course of two years or so had put in the basket of a bicycle outside of his Chinese apartment in protest at being monitored by the authorities:


and a dazzling display of metallic bicycles:


One of my favourite parts of the Exhibition was a room that was all about cats - ostensibly for the children, but it provided a lot more information about the overlapping lives of Warhol and Weiwei, and had the best photo booth where you could make your own selfie montage. Unfortunately, mine failed to come through to my email address, but it was fun anyway.

National Gallery of Victoria
St Kilda Road
Melbourne VIC 3000

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