Common Ground

Drawing work from the NGV’s permanent collections of contemporary art, design, fashion, decorative art, photography and prints and drawings, Common Ground ignores traditional artistic or medium-based categories to investigate relationships between and across contemporary creative practices.

Each of the unique settings in the exhibition is anchored by a central theme chosen to illuminate the common ground between creative disciplines. The themes – urbanism, nature, time, masculinity and anthropomorphism – serve as bases from which viewers can explore how ideas, materials, mediums and forms flow, recur or overlap between works of art and design.

This interdisciplinary approach to the display of art and design allows us to slice through social, cultural, scientific or physiological terrains to reveal how certain themes repeat and act as connecting pathways between contemporary creative practices.