The UK's Tate has shared more than 70 of its artworks - including by J. M. W. Turner, Constable and Kandinsky - for the show at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
Light: Works from Tate's Collection looks at how some of the world's most renowned artists have harnessed light through painting, photography and sculpture over the past 200 years.
The exhibition includes Turner's monumental 1805 painting The Deluge, on show in Australia for the first time.
The Tate has more than 30,000 of Turner's works, and while his luminous oils may seem traditional to contemporary viewers, his use of light and colour was radical at the time.
Satirical cartoons were even published mocking his methods, Tate curator Matthew Watts told AAP.
"He was so controversial and he copped a lot of flak ... they just gave him such a hard time because of the way he used colour," Mr Watts said.
Yet Turner's innovations run through the exhibition, which also includes the likes of John Constable, Wassily Kandinsky and Josef Albers, along with Impressionist painters Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley.
There are plenty of contemporary works concerned not just with the depiction of light, but its use as a medium.
One show-stopping installation is a monumental reflective globe suspended from the ceiling, 2014's Stardust particle by Olafur Eliasson.
Its intricately faceted structure throws reflections and shadows around the gallery, and changes appearance according to the surrounding light.
A work that will speak particularly to Melbourne visitors as the cold weather settles in is a large mirrored cube by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.
Designed to give off the illusion of infinite space when viewers step in for a close look, it is titled The Passing Winter.
Light: Work from Tate's Collection runs from Thursday to November 13 at ACMI in Fed Square.
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