Yayoi Kusama has devoted her life to the production of art for more than eight decades, and she retains the same intensity and concentration as when she started out in rural Japan at the end of the 1940s. Acknowledged globally as a pioneer of numerous art forms, including minimalism, immersive and pop art, performance, assemblage and installation, her artistic practice has spanned painting, drawing, sculpture, collage and film, as well as literature, fashion and product design. Two enduring and instantly recognisable motifs in her work are the pumpkin and the polka dot, both rooted in childhood experiences and hallucinations, but her output is prolific and expansive, her energy for art-making undimmed as she enters her ninth decade. This summer, she brought her largest-ever immersive experience to Manchester, where a new show celebrated three decades of her inflatable artworks, brought together for the first time. A vast warehouse space offered up a psychedelic, polka-dotted wonderland of dolls, pumpkins and tendrills. Gallery director and cultural historian David Elliott, an early champion of her
