Most people would be familiar with Dennis Hopper the Hollywood actor, but not as many would recognise him as a painter and prolific photographer, exhibited worldwide.

Dennis Hopper has taken portraits of artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Julian Schnabel, published covers for magazines including Vogue and Artforum and documented hundreds of artistic performances, graffiti-sites and political uprisings. Dennis Hopper is the photographer behind some of the world’s most recognised images of icons like Martin Luther King Jnr, Paul Newman and James Brown.

When Dennis Hopper’s nihilistic road movie Easy Rider was released in 1968, it sparked a cultural revolution. Mounted on a Harley Davidson, revved up to a thumping soundtrack and daring enough to show sex and drug use on screen, the film became a banner for a generation famed for its anti-establishment and counter-cultural values and gave birth to the ‘New Hollywood’.

In this expansive exhibition, showcasing an extraordinary man’s life’s work, his collaborations and personal art collection, visitors will witness an amazing insight into a formative era of Hollywood.

Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood retraces the paradoxes of an America undergoing a cultural, social and political transformation – from pop culture to suburban subculture, from psychedelia to slam poetry, from rebellion to disillusionment. The expansive exhibition brings together Hopper’s own photography and film work as a director and actor and his exceptional private collection of contemporary art, including paintings, photographs and sculptures by the likes of Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and Jenny Holzer.

Dennis Hopper will be in Melbourne for the official opening of the exhibition.
When: Opening 12 November –25 April 2010, 10am to 6pm daily
Where: ACMI, Gallery 1 – Federation Square, Melbourne
Tickets: Full $17, Conc $12 Family $50