Two large-scale paintings by Indigenous women from Central Desert communities in South Australia are currently on display in ‘Seeds and Sovereignty’ at the Gallery of Modern Art until 18 August 2024. Wawiriya Burton’s Ngayuku ngura – My Country 2018 and Nellie Ngampa Coulthard’s Tjuntala Ngurangka (Country with Acacia Wattle) 2018 are vibrant compositions that hum with energy and evoke the colours and heat of desert sands. Burton and Coulthard are nationally significant contemporary painters whose colourful representations of their Country are shaping stylistic movements and traditions within ..read more

The suburb of Kingston, in the City of Logan to the south of Brisbane, was named after one of the first European land owners, Charles and Harriet Kingston. Kingston and his family arrived in Australia from England in 1857 and eventually the couple took up a selection of Crown land in 1872. Early industry was timber, supplying the local sawmill, and once enough land was cleared, expanding to farming of cotton and sugar, then branching out to dairy and fruit groves with the Kingston’s specialising in grapes and wine. The Kingston’s successfully developed their property and then enjoyed even grea ..read more

Truth-telling has become an integral act of educating the wider community about colonialism and systemic racism. Truth-telling allows for the reshaping of past narratives and acts as a stepping stone to a future that elevates diverse voices and a process of healing. Jasmine Togo-Brisby is a fourth-generation Australian South Sea Islander woman, artist and truth-teller. Togo-Brisby’s great-great-grandparents were taken from Vanuatu as part of Australia’s slave trade, known as ‘blackbirding’, which began in the mid 1800s. At the age of eight, her great-great-grandmother was forcibly removed from ..read more

“Come up to the lab and see what’s on the slab”… here are five on-screen scientists we’re absolutely mad about. Monsters, secret laboratories, and experiments gone awry all feature in the terrifyingly inspired ‘Mad Science‘ film program at the Australian Cinémathèque, GOMA (3 May – 23 June 2024). For decades, Mary Shelley’s infamous Frankenstein story about a doctor driven mad by his desire to manufacture a human being has served as a rich source of inspiration for filmmakers. But what is it about these ill-fated scientists that makes them mad and why are we still so fascinated by their futile ..read more

For nearly two decades, Salote Tawale has upended viewers’ and critics’ expectations of who she is and what she is likely to do next. Significantly, she refuses for her art practice to be categorised as a symbol of ‘Pacific-ness’ or her place of birth – Fiji. You can watch Tawale’s work in the exhibition ‘sis: Pacific Art 1980–2023’ at the Gallery of Modern Art until 25 August 2024 ‘I think role playing and humour functions as a tool for my art in the same way it does in my life. It can be used as a coping mechanism. It can break the tension. I’m hoping that when people come and view these wor ..read more

The 60th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition opened on the weekend, with the major project by Queensland artist Archie Moore and QAGOMA curator Ellie Buttrose awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. The first work by an Australian artist to receive the prestigious accolade, Moore’s kith and kin was acknowledged by the jury ‘for its strong aesthetic, its lyricism and its invocation of a shared loss of an occluded past. The artwork, in Venice’s Australia Pavilion, immerses the viewer in personal and universal stories that situate Australia’s short two-and-a-half centuri ..read more

For Anzac Day this year, we focus on Palms, Anzac Square, a work depicting Brisbane’s Anzac Square looking towards the War Memorial by Betty Quelhurst (17 September 1919-2008). We also profile this and other works by Quelhurst in the Gallery’s Collection alongside contemporary photography. Focusing on recording life in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, Quelhurst mentioned about her work Palms, Anzac Square 1961 (illustrated): “When I was in Europe I was quite fascinated by the square, every city has a square, and when I came back I found that Brisbane had a square; Anzac Square. There were marvello ..read more

QAGOMA conservator Michael Marendy gives us an insight into Eiko Ishioka‘s exquisitely designed costumes made for the film Mirror Mirror (2012). The ‘Cream wedding dress’ costume (illustrated) worn by Julia Roberts as ‘Queen Clementianna’ is made from 70 metres of Duchess Silk Satin creating a multitude of overlapping petals and vine tendrils from bodice to skirt, and because it’s so large and heavy, required a remake of both the hoop petticoat and the soft covering before it could go on display in ‘Fairy Tales’. Here we take you behind-the-scenes to show you the preparation required to displa ..read more

Embracing new visual vocabularies to better express their distinct viewpoints, many notable Australian artists broke from tradition in the 1920s and 1930s and turned to Modernism. At this time, these artists immersed themselves in geometric concepts of space and volume, rhythm and repetition, as well as illusion and flatness. On display within the Queensland Art Gallery’s Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries (10-13) are works by Grace Cossington Smith, Roland Wakelin, Rah Fizelle, Ralph Balson, Grace Crowley and Godfrey Miller. Grace Cossington Smith (20 April ..read more

Consisting of 30 squared-off tree trunks elaborately carved with a chainsaw and arranged in an orderly open grid, Shigeo Toya’s Woods III 1991–92 (illustrated) on display at the Queensland Art Gallery until 27 January 2025 is celebrated for its formal beauty as well as its poetic and philosophical allusions. For Toya, the recesses and crevices created by his chainsaw laid bare the internal material qualities of the wood. The act of carving is an inscription — evidence of the artist’s intervention through mark-making, and an excavation — removing accumulated layers to reveal what they might con ..read more