For the first time in Austria, a major museum retrospective will celebrate the work of the German Dada artist Hannah Höch (1889–1978). Höch was a key figure of the 1920s avant-garde and is regarded as one of the inventors of collage and photomontage. Armed with scissors and glue, she explored the power and impact of images in an incisive and ironic way. The exhibition focuses on Hannah Höch’s collages and photomontages. Little known until now is that Höch regarded photomontage as closely related to film – as ‘static film’ on paper that could create new views of the world through cutting and composing. Both film and photomontage use montage: visually and mechanically dividing the world into separate images and reassembling these to produce new visual experiences. In addition to sixty photomontages by Hannah Höch, the exhibition will feature a selection of paintings, drawings, prints and archival material from the artist’s estate. The works will be placed in a dialogue with film projections by Hans Richter, László Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Viking Eggeling, Jan Cornelis Mol, Alexander Dovzhenko and Dziga Vertov.

Vanessa Bell was one of the leading artists associated with the Bloomsbury Group, the avant-garde group of artists, writers and philosophers who pioneered literary and artistic modernism in Britain at the beginning of the twentieth century. This focused display will include paintings such as her masterpiece A Conversation, as well as the bold, abstract textile designs she produced for the Omega Workshops, led by influential artist and critic Roger Fry in London, which aimed to abolish the boundaries between the fine and decorative arts.

Focusing on the period 1825–95, this will be the first public display for a number of the works, which were hugely popular in 19th century Japan and Europe. Initially commissioned as a commercial art form by renowned personas like kabuki actors, geishas and courtesans, these prints served as a favoured means of entertainment before the dawn of photography in the late 1800s.

Ibrahim Mahama is a Ghanaian artist critically acclaimed for his evocative large-scale, site-specific installations that speak to the cultural and social effects of post-colonialism and global migration. Mahama is making a brand new body of work inspired by the gallery’s unique physical location, supported on columns above Waverley railway station. This proximity to – and dependence on – the railway is the starting point for large scale drawings, sculpture and installations referencing his own interest in and using material from the now defunct colonial-era railway of Ghana.

Marking the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition, held in Paris in 1874, Women Impressionists showcases the works of four important artists. Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalès, Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt played vital roles in one of the most revolutionary movements in Western art. The exhibition will explore how each artist navigated complex personal and professional networks to create and exhibit her art