Ragnar Kjartansson: Mercy: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Ragnar Kjartansson’s solo exhibition Mercy at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia marks his first major exhibition in Australia.

Key works included in the exhibition will be Kjartansson’s recent Sunday Without Love, 2025, in which we see people clad in folk costume in idyllic scenery, repeating the lament ‘You must learn to live without love, love is not good for you’; and the acclaimed nine-screen installation The Visitors, 2012, filmed at Rokeby mansion in upstate New York.

Concurrent with the exhibition, the NGV presents a children’s presentation, for which Kjartansson has created an exhibition inspired by the idea of a theatrical feast—a concept originating in the Middle Ages, evolving from lavish festivities at European courts in the Rococo period to the modern notion of ‘dinner and a show’. Together with the NGV team, Kjartansson has reimagined banquet halls and theatres for the NGV Children’s Gallery.