AN exhibition that turns gender concepts of power on their heads is the latest British Museum blockbuster at the National Museum of Australia.

NMA director Mathew Trinca unveiled the show, “Feared and Revered: Feminine Power through the Ages”, before assembled media and guests this morning (December 7) including former governor-general Dame Quentin Bryce, ACT Arts Minister Tara Cheyne, British Museum’s Belinda Crerar and indigenous artists to have been responsible for an extraordinary display relating to mermaid-like YawkYawk spirits from western Arnhemland.

Trinca said he had been at the British Museum just last week and spoken with its director, Hartwig Fischer, who had praised the almost two-decade relationship between the two museums that had seen five major exhibitions, including the present one travelling from London to Sydney.

It was a feather in the NMA’s cap, Trinca believed, that “Feared and Revered” had opened in May in London and was now in Canberra, the first destination in a world tour and the only place in Australia where it would be seen.

“Feared and Revered” boasts large sculptures of Venus and the lioness headed Egyptian goddess of destruction, Sekhmet, among the 160 objects from six continents dating back 5000 years and includes contemporary artworks reflecting the influence of female spiritual power.

Lissant Bolton, keeper of the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the BM and an Australian herself, said she believed the exhibition looked better here than in the London space. Observing that English words for goddesses, spirits, and demons were not exactly translatable into other cultures, she noted that such figures bore closer examination, as they were often unique to their own place.

National Museum senior curator, Cheryl Crilly, while speaking of the “magic, wisdom, fury and passion” on show in the exhibition, made mention of something more light-hearted – a costume worn by Kylie Minogue in her 2011 “Aphrodite: Les folies” tour, a sure sign that the influence of the ancient goddess of love, and sex, is still among us.

“Feared and Revered: Feminine Power through the Ages,” National Museum Australia, until August 27.