Making worlds brings together artists whose work reflects on the complex worlds we create and share, both real and imagined.

Occupying a vast column-free gallery on lower level 1 of Naala Badu, the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ north building, it includes new acquisitions and much-loved collection highlights.

Visitors walk into the gallery through Ugo Rondinone’s immersive mirror installation, clockwork for oracles 2010, while within the display Gail Mabo’s Tagai joins major works by Rashid Johnson, Sally Smart, Shireen Taweel, Guan Wei and many others which reflect on ideas of personal representation, time, mapping and exchange.

In a recent change to the display, a visitor favourite by Ernesto Neto has been installed next to the windows overlooking Sydney Harbour and the suburb of Woolloomooloo. Neto’s room-sized sculpture, Just like drops in time, nothing is often smelt before it is seen. Its intense aroma derives from spices suspended within a translucent, pendulous fabric membrane. Like many of the works in the exhibition, Neto’s sculpture draws our attention to the physicality of bodies, inviting a sensory and immersive engagement with art.