27/08/2026
Remembering Yayoi Kusama 🍄
“Roslyn first saw Kusama’s work went she went to Japan with Judy Annear’s exhibition of Australian video art in 1982. A large exhibition of her work astonished Roslyn, who ‘had never seen anything like it’. Some 20 years later, ‘When I learned that Kusama was not represented outside Japan, I flew straight there to meet [Hidenori] Ota, her representative in Tokyo, and we agreed there and then that I would represent her in Australia’.
RO9 represented Kusama from 2002 until 2012. When they signed her, Kusama did not have many international galleries. During the period they worked together, which Roslyn recalls with particular fondness, four successful solo exhibitions were staged at RO9 and Kusama’s work received widespread curatorial and public acclaim in Australia, being included in both the Asia Pacific Triennial (2002) and Biennale of Sydney (2012). In addition, her hallmark mirrored works were the subject of a major exhibition at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (2009) and in 2012 the Oxleys worked closely with the artist on a large-scale public art commission for the Brisbane law courts (2012).
‘Eyes are Singing Out’ was Kusama’s first public artwork in Queensland. Roslyn and her team flew to Japan to discuss the commission with Kusama and Ota. As they were explaining the context in the first meeting, Kusama began to draw eyes. She made it clear that the work would comprise many, many eyes, and that she wanted them to be textured like relief sculptures, not flat. Kusama sketched a range of different eyes and they were fabricated by street-sign manufacturers using baked enamel in a metal surround.
Kusama’s bright orange hair is legendary. Ironically, however, the artist was fascinated by Roslyn’s similarly long hair which over the years has evolved from bouncy and red to straight and white. Whenever they met, Kusama would like to stroke Roslyn’s hair. RO9’s professional relationship with Kusama ended, heart-breakingly for Roslyn, when the artist’s London-based gallery insisted on exclusive representation outside Japan and America.”
– Excerpt from ‘Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery: The First 40 Years’, by Felicity Fenner
