WARHOL AND CO POP ART ON SHOW

A STUNNING collection of work by pop art legend Andy Warhol opens Saturday at HOTA Gallery on the Gold Coast is the most exciting exhibition in Australia. Surprised that it’s happening in Surfers Paradise?

HOTA Gallery director Tracy Cooper-Lavery says Pop Masters: Art From The Mugrabi Collection reckons that Andy Warhol himself would have loved the idea.

“I think Warhol would have liked Surfers Paradise,” she says. “It would have suited his style.”

The exhibition features a stunning array of 24 works by the pop art icon and features some famous faces including Mao Tse Tung, Sylvester Stallone, Dolly Parton and Warhol himself. The show is drawn entirely from the famed collection of one of the world’s most prominent art collectors, New York based Syrian Israeli billionaire Jose Mugrabi, who owns in excess of 800 works by Warhol, the exhibition is the first international blockbuster for the new HOTA Gallery.

“And it won’t be seen anywhere else in Australia or the world for that matter,” Ms Cooper-Lavery (pictured) says.

“The exhibition celebrates the history of Pop Art, while examining its influence on art and artists today.

Pop Masters: Art from the Mugrabi Collection, New York, presents more than 50 works never-beforeseen in Australia by 15 legendary and renowned artists including Warhol and his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Tom Wesselmann, Katherine Bernhardt, Kwesi Botchway, George Condo, Damien Hirst, KAWS, Jeff Koons, Joel Mesler, Richard Prince, Tom Sachs, Julian Schnabel and Mickalene Thomas.

Mayor Tom Tate says “it’s showtime at HOTA with the precinct’s first international exhibition lighting up our magnificent gallery”.

18 February - 4 June 2023. HOTA Gallery, 10am-4pm, daily. Tickets from $25 hota.com.au/popmasters