Lisa Adams 1971–
Sparrow 2009
oil on canvas
65 x 75 cm
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2010
Courtesy of the artist and Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane
An exciting array of new acquisitions for The University of Queensland Art Collection is featured in this exhibition. Artists include Lisa Adams, Tony Albert, Lincoln Austin, Tony Garofalakis, Louise Hearman, Bill Henson, Danie Mellor, TV Moore, Sidney Nolan, Dennis Nona, John Passmore, Julie Rrap, Arryn Snowball, Madonna Staunton, Thomas Tjapaltjarri, Guan Wei and Ken Whisson.
Curator: Michele Helmrich
William Yang 1943–
Self portrait #3 (c. 1949) 2008
silver gelatin photograph, edition 3/20
image 59.9 x 52.1 cm
sheet 79.2 x 58.0 cm
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2009
Courtesy of the artist and the Queensland Centre for Photography, Brisbane
Over the past forty years self portraiture has evolved to encompass more variety than ever before. Multiplicities: Self portraits from the Collection celebrates this diversity through works that challenge and surprise: a video in which twins mirror each other’s movements and become indistinguishable; a monumental work on paper in which mother, son and daughter merge; a sequence of cardboard panels emblazoned in red and white that assert the artist’s identity through the evocation of her name. Whether through repetition, in series, or as part of ongoing self-portrait projects, the artists in Multiplicities have invigorated and expanded the form.
Included in the exhibition are videos by Laresa Kosloff, and Gabriella and Silvana Mangano; a series of inkjet prints by Gordon Bennett; photographs by Luke Roberts, Robert Rooney and William Yang and a sequence of papercuts by Pamela See.
Narcissistic or sceptical, playful or antagonistic, the self portraits in Multiplicities confront, intrigue and engage, and help us to navigate the plurality within ourselves.
The works in Multiplicities are drawn from the National Collection of Artists’ Self Portraits. Established in 2004, the Collection is an important focus area of The University of Queensland Art Collection. Del Kathryn Barton’s 2008 Archibald Prize-winning painting, you are what is most beautiful about me, a self portrait with kel and arella …, has been generously loaned for the exhibition.
Artists included in Multiplicities are: Vernon Ah Kee, Del Kathryn Barton, Gordon Bennett, Cherine Fahd, Anastasia Klose, Laresa Kosloff, Kevin Lincoln, Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano, John Nixon, Rose Nolan, Mike Parr, Scott Redford, Luke Roberts, William Robinson, Robert Rooney, Pamela See and William Yang.
Curator: Samantha Littley
Sidney Nolan 1917–1992
Kenneth 1958
synthetic polymer paint on hardboard
122.2 x 91.4 cm
Australian War Memorial
Sidney Nolan (1917–1992) was one of Australia’s most complex, innovative, and prolific artists. In 1978 Nolan presented the Gallipoli series to the Australian War Memorial. These 252 drawings and paintings, completed over a 20-year period, were donated in memory of his brother Raymond, a soldier who died in a tragic accident just before the end of World War II. Gallipoli was a theme to which Nolan returned throughout his artistic career.
Sidney Nolan: the Gallipoli series showcases a selection of these works, which constitute both a personal and public lament. They commemorate not just the death of Nolan’s brother, but also a campaign that cost so many Australian lives. The exhibition offers a rare opportunity for visitors to experience these works.
Curators: Lola Wilkins and Laura Webster, Australian War Memorial
View 'Sidney Nolan's Gallipoli artworks on show at UQ' here
Horace Wikmunea 1963–
Waaram (Dugong) 2008
natural ochres with synthetic polymer binder on milkwood
43 x 113 x 25 cm
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2008
Reproduced courtesy of the artist, Wik and Kugu Art Centre, and Andrew Baker Art Dealer
Before Time Today: Reinventing Tradition in Aurukun Aboriginal Art focuses on the art from Cape York’s Aurukun community, involving Wik, Kugu and associated peoples. The exhibition provides insight into the life and culture surrounding Aurukun’s outstanding carving tradition, and how this tradition has inspired, in today’s community, a flourishing new chapter of art production across a range of media: painting, sculpture, weaving and works on paper.
Initiated in response to collections of Aurukun art in the UQ Anthropology Museum and UQ Art Museum, the exhibition brings together historical pieces and significant examples of contemporary Aurukun art from public art and cultural institutions.
Curator: Dr Sally Butler, The University of Queensland
Before Time Today: Reinventing Tradition in Aurukun Aboriginal Art Interpretive Guide available here
View 'Workshop for senior high school students with Mavis Ngallametta Indigenous weaver and painter' here
Watch or download MP4 on Before Time Today: Reinventing Tradition in Aurukun Aboriginal Art, here ( 247MB MP4 - includes talks in the exhibition and dancing )
or watch on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKfGKuB4sMs
View the publication Before Time Today: Reinventing Tradition in Aurukun Aboriginal Art here
View 'UQ unveils first major survey of Aurukun art' here
A UQ Centenary event
This project has received financial assistance from the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
The accompanying publication has been supported by the Queensland Government, Australia through Trade Queensland’s Queensland Indigenous Arts Marketing and Export Agency (QIAMEA). QIAMEA promotes Queensland's Indigenous arts industry through marketing and export activity throughout Australia and internationally.
Supported by the Aurukun Development Fund, a partnership funded by CHALCO and the Queensland and Australian Governments.
Brook Andrew 1970–
Jumping Castle War Memorial 2010
PVC vinyl
Courtesy of the artist, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, DETACHED, Hobart and UQ Art Museum, Brisbane
Photo: Gordon Craig
Brook Andrew’s Jumping Castle War Memorial presents a puzzle: as a full-size inflatable ‘bouncy’ castle it offers fun and laughs and an immersive experience, but as a self-titled war memorial it suggests solemnity and reflection.
A monumental black figure stands proud atop the Wiradjuri patterns, while skulls dangle like Halloween toys within the plastic ‘windows’ of the castle turrets. The dizzying ‘mix of pop and Wiradjuri-op’, as Anthony Gardner describes Andrew’s patterns, stamps its identity on this fairground symbol of European wealth and power. Andrew offers a contemporary war memorial for the Indigenous people who died after European settlement. His work may also suggest the ‘bounce’ of debate and the verbal jousting of the ‘history wars’. Questions are posed to the viewer – what would it mean to jump on this heritage, this site of commemoration?*
Jumping Castle War Memorial was commissioned by DETACHED, Hobart and UQ Art Museum, in association with Urban Art Projects, and featured in the 17th Biennale of Sydney.
*Viewers are invited to touch, but are asked not to stand or jump on the work.
AES+F
Allegoria #8 (The War of Worlds) 2010
Lambada print on paper
two parts, overall 205 x 290 cm
© AES+F
Courtesy of the artists and Triumph Gallery, Moscow
Russian artist collective AES+F create fantasy worlds combining classical western mythology with contemporary global consumerism.
AES+F: THE REVOLUTION STARTS NOW! presents photographic and new-media artworks, including two large-scale digital video installations: The Feast of Trimalchio and Last Riot 2 previously shown at the Venice Biennale 2009 and 2007 respectively.
The Feast of Trimalchio retells Petronius’s epic poem from the Satyricon for a twenty-first century audience. Using the imagery of high-fashion, cinema, lifestyle magazines, and luxury design, The Feast of Trimalchio is an Olympic-sized orgy of wealth and pleasure. Set in a luxury hotel on an artificially constructed island paradise, the guests and staff change roles to live out their gastronomic and erotic fantasies. Despite the hotel's endless pleasures, anxiety, inequality, and disaster continually threaten to destroy this very contemporary vision of paradise.
The AES+F Group comprises four Russian artists. Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovitch and Evgeny Svyatsky have collaborated as AES since 1987, and have worked with photographer Vladimir Fridkes since 1995 (AES+F Group). Arzamasova and Evzovitch are graduates of Moscow Architectural Institute, Svyatskiy is a graduate of Moscow University of Printing Arts, and Fridkes has been a fashion photographer for Russian editions of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and others. In collaboration, their work has included photo-projects, video, sculptures and installations.
‘…the work overpowers the viewer with its scale, hyper-real CG enhanced tableaux and monumental score, the Allegretto from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony’ (Jacqueline Millner, Eyeline 70).
View 'Art exhibition explores digital dreamscape' here
View the publication AES+F: THE REVOLUTION STARTS NOW! here
Supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation.
Frederick McCubbin 1855–1917
The Artist's Studio, Macedon c. 1901–1906
oil on canvas
35.0 x 50.5 cm
The Stuartholme-Behan Collection of Australian Art, The University of Queensland
The name of The Stuartholme-Behan Collection celebrates both the Stuartholme School, where the Collection was initially housed, and Dr Norman Behan (1908–2000), medical practitioner, art collector and philanthropist, who purchased and gifted the works to the School in the early 1960s.
In 1975 the Collection was relocated to The University of Queensland, where it is held on long-term loan. Revealing the breadth of Dr Behan’s interest in the visual arts, the Collection ranges from the 1840s to the 1960s and includes major works by artists such as Rupert Bunny, Bessie Gibson, George Lambert, Max Meldrum and Jon Molvig.
Curators: Bettina MacAulay and Desmond MacAulay
View the publication The Behan legacy: The Stuartholme-Behan Collection of Australian Art here
View 'Philanthropists collection of Australian art goes on display' here
Gordon Bennett 1955–
Outsider 1988
oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas
290.5 x 179.5 cm
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased with the assistance of the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council, 1989
Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane
Historic and contemporary artworks will be juxtaposed in an exhibition that highlights the depth of collecting by The University of Queensland. Works on show will include the first artwork gifted to the University in 1929, Mary Christison’s Self portrait (c.1870), William Frank Calderon’s grand Victorian picture Crest of the Hill (1898) gifted by the Veterinary Students Society in 1979, and outstanding examples of Chinese antiquities gifted by Dr Nat Yuen.
Alongside works by major artists such as Howard Arkley, Ian Fairweather, E. Phillips Fox, Rosalie Gascoigne, Colin Lanceley, Margaret Preston and Tony Tuckson will be contemporary works by artists such as Gordon Bennett, Daniel Crooks, Anastasia Klose, Tracey Moffatt, Dorothy Napangardi and Michael Zavros. This exhibition of old favourites and little-known gems will feature works acquired by gift, bequest and purchase, and will include works from The University of Queensland National Collection of Artists’ Self Portraits. A self portrait by John Passmore, recently gifted to commemorate the University’s Centenary, will be one of the highlights of the exhibition.
The exhibition is one of the major events celebrating The University of Queensland’s Centenary.
Curators: Nick Mitzevich and Michele Helmrich
View 'William Yang to discuss art during UQ Diversity Week' here
Fiona Foley 1964–
photography: Dennis Cowley
HHH #1 2004
Ultrachrome print on paper, edition 6/15
76 x 101 cm
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2008
Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane
Fiona Foley: Forbidden is the first major exhibition to survey the work of this leading Australian artist. Her diverse artistic practice has, over the past 15 years, encompassed photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture, video, installation and public art. With a history of exhibitions featuring uncompromising titles such as No shades of white and Lick my black art, Foley’s work traces the ongoing significance of Australia’s colonial histories. Individual works explore a broad range of themes that relate to frontier violence, race relations, sexuality, and the history of opium in Queensland.
Fiona Foley: Forbidden is presented by the UQ Art Museum in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
Curators: Michele Helmrich, Rachel Kent and Christine Morrow
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 12 November 2009 – 31 January 2010
University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane 19 February – 2 May 2010
View the publication Fiona Foley: Forbidden here
View 'Forbidden art on show at UQ' here
This project has received financial assistance from the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland
Marian Drew 1960–
Rainbow lorikeet on Queensland needlepoint 2008
inkjet print on cotton rag, edition 1/5
90.0 x 108.7 cm
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2009
Courtesy of the artist and the Queensland Centre for Photography, Brisbane
The state we're in showcases new work by a selection of Queensland’s leading photographers.
Focussing on artists whose primary medium is photography and who are extending the parameters of contemporary photographic practice, the exhibition explores themes concerning local history, the landscape, constructed identities and environments, sites of struggle and memento mori. Included in the exhibition are artists Paul Adair, Camilla Birkeland, Eric Bridgeman, Ray Cook, Marian Drew, Shane Fitzgerald, Joachim Froese, Mari Hirata, Peter Milne, Maurice Ortega, Martin Smith and Carl Warner.
The state we're in: Contemporary Queensland Photography coincides with the biennial Queensland Festival of Photography 3 (April 2010).
Curator: Gordon Craig
View the publication The state we're in: Contemporary Queensland photography here
View 'Exhibition looks at Queensland through a new lens' here
