Artist brings weather, and 3500 beads to NGV Triennial

Artist Franziska Furter has spent days high up in a scissor lift at the National Gallery of Victoria, hanging thousands of strands of glass beads from the ceiling.

Outside, it's by turns humid, hot, windy and chilly, and the Swiss artist aims to bring the weather inside too with her installation Liquid skies/Gyrwynt 2023, part of the NGV Triennial.

The exhibition opens in December across all four levels of NGV International, with projects from big names in global contemporary art such as Tracey Emin, Yoko Ono and David Shrigley.

Furter's room-size artwork is made from 3500 strands of shimmering glass beads suspended at different heights, above a rug measuring more than eight metres across depicting infrared images of hurricanes.

The installation is surrounded by oil paintings from the NGV's 19th century international collection, including J.M.W Turner's Falls of Schaffhausen (Val d'Aosta).

Gallery-goers can sit on the hurricane rug for a good look, says Furter.

"They're allowed to walk on it and lay on it, and sit down and spend time looking up as well," the artist told AAP.

Liquid Skies could be experienced like a poem with people making their own associations, said Furter, such as the land or the weather.

"The weather is, I think, a very interesting thing because it's always there, there is not a single second without weather," she said.

Furter took some inspiration from the Turner painting, which has a similar luminous quality to the waterfall of beads she is currently installing.

The 1845 oil painting had long been thought to depict the Val d'Aosta in the Italian Alps, in the Piedmont region just across the border from France.

But more recently, researchers found it might actually be a picture of falls on the Rhine river at Schaffhausen in northern Switzerland.

Furter, whose artworks are in collections all over the world, appreciated the coincidence of finding images from home at the NGV that she could reference to make new art.

Being high up on the scissor lift is also a treat - in France she would not be allowed to take such risks due to health and safety rules, she said.

After three weeks of meticulous work in her studio threading the beads on nylon thread with the help of assistants, she feels the hanging process is a kind of improvisation, and it's hard to know when to stop.

While Liquid Skies takes in the work of an English painter by way of Switzerland, it's specific to the Australian city that has four seasons in one day.

"Because of this space, this place Melbourne... I don't know, but I believe that I wouldn't have done this otherwise," she said.

The Triennial is a free exhibition open to the public at NGV International from December 3.

Australian Associated Press, November 17 2023, by Liz Hobday (last accessed on 4.01.2024)

Franziska Furter's room-size artwork is made from 3500 strands of shimmering glass beads. (HANDOUT/NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA)