You can(’t) always get what you want

 

Making reference to the Rolling Stones classic ‘You can’t always get what you want’, from the 1969 album Let It Bleed, the Get What You Want film program (2 September until 2 October 2016) flashes forwards through five decades of music, surveying the lives and experiences of its composers, performers and fans.

Production still from Cobain: Montage of Heck 2015 / Director: Brett Morgen / Image courtesy: Park Circus

Get What You Want was a selection of documentary and fiction films concerned with different genres of music, from country, disco, folk and hip hop to house, punk, metal, reggae and soul. It offers viewers a unique platform from which to appraise the creative and social dynamics operating across these different musical subcultures, as well as acknowledging the exchange and movement between them. These films underline the idea that music, in all its endless permutations, can enrich our identities and transform both musician and listener into the somebody they want to be.

DELVE DEEPER: Dip into more music blogs

Contemplating what motivates musicians, films such as Don Cheadle’s take on jazz legend Miles Davis (Miles Ahead 2015) are accompanied by Nick Cave’s esoteric 20,000 Days on Earth 2014 and the celebrated posthumous study on Amy Winehouse (Amy 2015). The Carter 2009 offers eye-popping insights into Lil’ Wayne’s success, while Cobain: Montage of Heck 2015 and Anvil: The Story of Anvil 2008 offer divergent tales of struggle and resolve.

The program also explores how the music industry brings audience and performer together, with films such as the disturbing K-Pop documentary 9 Muses of Star Empire 2012, the archetypal rock rivalry of 2004’s Dig!, the restless innovation seen in Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton: This is Stones Throw Records 2013, and the heart-rending story of Charles Bradley (Charles Bradley: Soul of America 2012), who released his powerful first album at the age of 62. The inimitable Coen brothers also take a look at the life of a musician rejected by the industry, family and friends in their 2013 Cannes Grand Prix winner, Inside Llewyn Davis.

Music’s capacity to promote hope and foster change on both an individual and a community level features heavily in 2012’s Marley (the illuminating documentary on Bob Marley), in the Portuguese-language film Death Metal Angola (an account of the burgeoning metal scene in war-torn Angola) 2012, and in Shake the Dust 2014 (through interviews and performances by breakdancers in Cambodia, Colombia, Uganda and Yemen). Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing 2006, about the boycotts organised against the country group during George W Bush’s Iraq War; and The Punk Singer, a take on the art and life of activist Kathleen Hanna, both recall the obstacles faced by public figures advocating progressive politics. Maestro, a social history of the dance music underground in 1970s New York made in 2003; and the recent reflections from Madonna’s backup dancers on her 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour in Strike a Pose 2016, both promote the idea of growth through better living (and dancing).

If you want to revel in accounts of performers striving for great musical experiences, check out the 2006 backstage Wu-Tang drama Rock the Bells, Q Bert’s mind-expanding animated quest Wave Twisters 2001, the Beastie Boy’s innovative concert film Awesome; ‘I … Shot That!’ 2006, the 2013 underground take on LA’s Low End Theory scene titled All Ears: A Glimpse into the Los Angeles Beat Community, and Penelope Spheeris’s beautiful madness in The Decline of Western Civilisation parts I and II (1981/88).

For those loyal to the pop royalty of earlier times, In Bed with Madonna 1991 and Prince’s Purple Rain 1984 will also be screening. So whether you carefully program your playlists to mirror your personality, or can groove to any random radio station, ‘Get What You Want’ should shuffle your sensibilities.

Dip into our Cinema blogs / View the ongoing Australian Cinémathèque program

QAGOMA is the only Australian art gallery with purpose-built facilities dedicated to film and the moving image. The Australian Cinémathèque at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) provides an ongoing program of film and video that you’re unlikely to see elsewhere, offering a rich and diverse experience of the moving image, showcasing the work of influential filmmakers and international cinema, rare 35mm prints, recent restorations and silent films with live musical accompaniment on the Gallery’s Wurlitzer organ originally installed in Brisbane’s Regent Theatre in November 1929.

Featured image detail: Production still from 20,000 Days on Earth 2014 / Directors: Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard / Image courtesy: Madman Entertainment

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Top 5 music cinema films

 

After watching 100s of music themed films,  Gallery curator Peter McKay has selected his personal top five films. These are from a selection of documentary and fiction films concerned with different genres of music, from country, disco, folk and hip hop to house, punk, metal, reggae and soul. These films underline the idea that music, in all its endless permutations, can enrich our identities and transform both musician and listener into the somebody they want to be. What would your top 5 look like?

DELVE DEEPER: Dip into more music blogs

#5 ‘Nine Muses of Star Empire’ 2012

Nine Muses of Star Empire 2012 15+ (1Hr 22 Mins)

Ever wondered how teams of dancers construct their routines or stay in perfect time in front of audiences of thousands? Practice, practice and more practice. Practice until every song becomes meaningless and you never want to dance again. Practice until your soul leaves your body to sit and cry in the corner of the change room. Nine Muses of Star Empire divulges a dark and bizarre part of the music-industrial complex known as K-Pop!

#4 ‘Rock the Bells’ 2006

Rock the Bells 2006 MA15+ (1Hr 43Mins)

Rock the Bells is a white-knuckle trip through the world of concert production as an ambitious small time promoter attempts to bring together the full Wu-Tang Clan for his latest festival. Incidentally the film reveals something of the terrible injustice that plagued rap superstar ODB, capturing and contextualising some of the days before his untimely death. Must see!

#3 ‘Anvil: The Story of Anvil’ 2008

Anvil: The Story of Anvil 2008 M (1Hr 20Min)

Anvil: The Story of Anvil is the first film directed by Sacha Gervasi, a journalist, educator and scriptwriter of The Terminal. Gervasi introduced himself to the Canadian band as ‘England’s number one Anvil fan’ back in 1982 after they performed at a London club – he then acted as their roadie for tours in 1982, 84 and 85. Their unique off-camera relationship infuses the film with a contagious affection for Anvil’s energetic approach to music making. Equally their familiarity takes the camera to instances of profound frustration, exhaustion and confusion at their years of struggle. Quite simply this documentary offers a phenomenal lesson in perseverance and friendship.

#2 ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ 2013

Inside Llewyn Davis 2013 MA15+ (1Hr 44 Mins)

The Coen brothers look at some of the gloomier existential dilemmas that musicians face in pursuing their art as they try to balance their time and resources against the demands made by society. Llewyn Davis is fictional folk singer surviving on the kindness of others in 1960s New York – though the directors admit they were partly inspired by the life of musician Dave Van Ronk as captured in his memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street. The comparison elicited a little anger from friends of Van Ronk was known to be a particularly nice guy – as the character of Davis certainly isn’t.

It’s a complicated, if not chaotic, life that Davis leads. As obligations close in on the protagonist’s future, Inside Llewyn Davis manages to describe with rich insights the unforgiving existence faced by many an artist. There is also Justin Timberlake and a grumpy cat to satisfy those two particularly prominent fan groups.

#1 ‘Maestro’ 2003

Maestro 2003 M (1Hr 29Min) View Trailer

The legacy of the 1970s New York club scene and its persistent impact on the music of today is hard to overestimate. Private loft parties hosted by some of the first and most innovative and influential DJs to ever spin and mix records also helped breakdown social boundaries and support freedom of expression in uplifting and unexpected ways. And also Keith Haring’s murals can be seen on the walls at the Paradise Garage, as well as scenes of Haring himself dancing during the club’s last weekend.

Full of historical footage and recent interviews, Maestro is essential viewing for anyone interested in electronic dance music. An inspiring lo-fi reflection on hi-fi dreams!

View the Cinémathèque’s ongoing program / Subscribe to QAGOMA YouTube to go behind-the-scenes

What You Want: Music Cinema‘ screened at the Australian Cinémathèque 2 September until 2 October 2016

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Bad dad: An interview with Michael Zavros

 

Queensland artist Michael Zavros’s painting, Bad dad 2013 was the subject of the 2016 QAGOMA Foundation Appeal. Peter McKay spoke with the artist about the work, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Archibald Prize.

Peter McKay / Audiences often appear attracted to the quality of your images as much as their content. Your technical ability has evolved considerably in recent years and is perhaps edging closer towards photorealism, yet I tend to think of your visual style as being more charmed or seductive than realistic or literal like a photograph. It’s as though the polish itself is an integral part of the content.

Michael Zavros / When something is nearing completion or is starting to look good, I find myself losing time looking at the work, enjoying it. There’s a luxury in the looking. And whilst I think you’re right that the paintings at times edge closer to a photorealism, I’m never slavishly mimicking the source material. I still pick and choose information, taking what’s required. There are always parts of a painting that I consciously or subconsciously focus on, that my eye goes to and my audience then follows.

The polish you describe and the technique itself are mirrored by the content. Looking back I realise most of my portraits have either come from the world of fashion or advertising: perfected and slick. And even when they’re not models, they’re cast as if they were or with an awareness of their place in such a world.

Peter / Bad dad certainly appears to make reference to Caravaggio’s masterpiece Narcissus in its composition. How important is the link?

Michael / The work was certainly made in response to Caravaggio’s Narcissus in the Barberini collection in Rome, which I saw when I was on residence as part of the Bulgari Art Award. It is a contemporary response to his painting, but it also extends on previous works I have made about the myth of Narcissus. V12 Narcissus 2009 was a small oil-on-board painting I made of myself looking in to the bonnet of a V12 Mercedes Benz sports car.

Michael Zavros, Australia b.1974 / Bad dad 2013 / Oil on canvas / 110 x 150cm / Purchased 2016 with funds raised through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Appeal / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Michael Zavros
Caravaggio / Narcissus c.1597–1599 / Oil on canvas / Collection: Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome

Peter / Bad dad is very distinct, much brighter and more colourful than Caravaggio’s interpretation, which is heavy on the chiaroscuro. Are these themes losing their drama, becoming ordinary? Is sunlight the new shadow?

Michael / Perhaps there is a new ordinariness to narcissism. Certainly within social media platforms it’s becoming commonplace and I find this phenomenon fascinating.

Few contemporary artists employ anything like Caravaggio’s palette without it looking twee. My palette reflects my love of Pop, and in Bad dad, crucially, it turns up the volume, emphasising a paralysis and the curious stillness of the family pool. I have been looking a lot at David Hockney and his swimming pool works, which I have always admired.

I recently finished a large painting for Art Los Angeles Contemporary called The Sunbather, which riffs on a Hockney painting of the same name but extends on the Narcissus theme. I have taken up swimming for fitness, and it affords me great thinking time and epic swimmer’s tan lines. I have just made a new film work with my daughter, Phoebe, called Phoebe treads water, which is an amalgam of the ideas in Bad dad and The Sunbather. All my work this year, including a small painting of Phoebe in the pool entitled The Mermaid, has a water theme. I am waterlogged.

Peter / Continuing with that discussion about colour, have your methods changed, and what prompted the shift?

Michael / Yes. How I paint has shifted profoundly in recent years. I started to employ Old Master techniques, building my paintings in monochromatic layers before finishing with bright, pure and transparent colour. Bad dad was made this way and it’s more saturated, richer for it. This also marks a dramatic shift from typical photorealist painters who finish sections at a time.

I have also changed my practice in other subtle and significant ways. I used to work mostly with found imagery, but I now spend a long time making my subjects before I photograph them, and then I paint them. So previously, the creative moment was immediate, but now it can last days, weeks or months.

The still-life works I have been making, for example, are a big production, from the buying of flowers, finding props, arranging, lighting and photography to reach the final paintable image. I create my own tableaux and that has become an important part of the process. It is almost performative and revealing the hand of the artist more so than the painting process.

Peter / When I think about your works, I interpret them as representing pieces of the world that interest you most. By extension, I take them to form a de facto self-portrait: luxury goods, gardens, flowers, family, palaces and pedigree animals. In Bad dad, however, your own likeness becomes the centre, and we are directed by the title to think of your family and surmise why you’ve been labelled ‘bad’. Are you acknowledging, in a light-hearted way, the foibles of practising such perfection, or is there a moment of deeper self-reflection at play?

Michael / I think all artists make work about the thing that interests them and it’s what they do with it that makes them a good artist or not. What interests me deviates from what interests most artists or curators, hence your question I presume, and the requirement to defend my choices.

I’m an unashamed aesthete. I like to make work that is beautiful and then to gaze at it. Bad dad is mockingly circuitous in that way. And my idea of beauty is often keyed to luxury or status but I never seek to cast a moral judgement over my subject; if anything I think I hold a mirror to other people’s relationships to these things and their personal feelings of desire, guilt or distaste perhaps.

If people read them as a statement about the parlous state of contemporary culture, so be it. I am interested in a more cool observance. I paint these things because they are in my life.

It is serendipitous. Bad dad is on one level a personal meditation on my experience of fatherhood. The children are present through their absence, and I like the sinister tension at play here; the bereft pool toys, my self-absorption. My work is often described as narcissistic or vainglorious and I am comfortable with that.

Peter / How important is it to you to be acknowledged by your home state through the work of the QAGOMA Foundation? With growing recognition of your work — in Auckland, Hong Kong, Los Angeles — the world is beckoning.

Michael / It’s very important to me. I have been visiting the Queensland Art Gallery since I was a child and now my children come here. It is really exciting to be working more overseas and developing this side of my practice but I do seek acknowledgment from this state and my peers. It matters what my home town thinks of me. That’s why Madonna always plays Detroit.

Peter McKay spoke with Michael Zavros in March 2016.

The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) Foundation raises crucial funds to develop the Gallery’s Collection and present major exhibitions and community-based public programs, including regional and children’s programs.

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Abdul Abdullah ‘Coming to terms’

 

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Abdul Abdullah,Australia b. 1986 / Groom II (Stratagem)Bride II (Subterfuge)Groom I (Zofloya)Bride I (Victoria) (from ‘Coming to terms’ series 2015) / Chromogenic prints, ed 1/5 + 2AP / Purchased 2015 with funds from the Future Collective through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

The ‘Coming to terms’ series is Abdul Abdullah’s most recent reply to the present mistrust directed towards Muslims in Australia. Featured in APT8, and selected by QAGOMA’s new Future Collective as their first contribution to the Gallery’s Collection, these five photographs repurpose the palatable tropes of traditional wedding photography to convey complex intercultural narratives, with the bride and groom donning balaclavas — a visual synonym for criminality and its threats.

Born in Perth a seventh-generation Australian, Abdul Abdullah’s earliest forebear reached these shores from England in 1815. His mother is a first generation migrant — a Bugis Malay woman from Malaysia — and his father, a prominent community figure, converted to Islam in 1971. As a child, Abdullah often stood distinct from the Australian ‘norm’, but at the formative age of 14, the events of 11 September 2001 recast his relationship with this country. He, his family and others like him became subject to a new dimension of hate-filled aggression, violence and intimidation. The artist comments:

Australia is one of the best places in the world to live. But growing up a Muslim in this country — you get used to seeing Muslims portrayed negatively in the media. In the popular imagination . . . you are the bad guy. You start to feel the divide of them and us’.1

Abdullah’s familiarity with this pervasive cultural prejudice has informed his most significant recent works.

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Abdul Abdullah, Australia b. 1986 / The wedding (Conspiracy to commit) (from ‘Coming to Terms’ series) 2015 / Chromogenic print, ed. 1/5 + 2 AP / Purchased 2015 with funds from the Future Collective through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

The wedding (Conspiracy to commit) — the largest of the works in the series — depicts a young couple in contemporary wedding costumes that bear the vivid colour and fine embellishment of Islamic culture. They sit within a fantasy-themed scene of flowing curtains and mounds of green and white flowers, a playful exuberance common in wedding photography studios in Malaysia, where the photo was taken. Yet their expressions of happiness are substituted with rigid postures. Here, Abdullah reflects the inflammatory projections of a select political discourse and the slurry of media depictions, demonstrating something of the corruption of character through language in this take on ‘commitment’. Groom II (Stratagem) and Bride II (Subterfuge) function the same way, with these related works setting each figure alone against an infinite black background with dramatic studio lighting. Emerging from the shadows, their union is seen as a construction, an elaborate plot to distract from the alleged nature of their actions.

Another pair of figures set against perfect black — Bride I (Victoria) and Groom I (Zofloya) — are different again, touching on the historical vilification of Muslims in Western cultures through a reference to the nineteenth-century gothic novel Zofloya; or, The Moor, penned by Charlotte Dacre. The tale is brimming with acts of scheming, neglect, adultery and abandonment, which cumulatively poison the characters and their relationships. As the story goes, Victoria confides her sense of guilt in Zofloya after her deceptions end in the misery and suicide of other characters. At this moment, Zofloya is inspired to reveal his true identity to Victoria: he is Satan, her corrupter and destroyer. This intricate tale is conceivably representative of the xenophobia of its era, and in this new context, suggests a sustained mistrust of and bigotry towards Muslims.

The absurd notion that a wedding, a time of joy, should be misappropriated by evil, responds succinctly to the current conflation of Islam and terrorism. Engaging with representations of difference by presenting imagery in which contradictory symbols coexist, Abdullah draws attention to inconsistent attitudes and instances of mainstream cultural bias. The series’ title, ‘Coming to terms’, perhaps reflects the artist’s attempt to come to terms with the marginalisation he has experienced living in post-9/11 Australia; it could also imply a proxy attempt to draft ‘terms’ of understanding and awareness that might resolve this recent period of discord.

Through these striking works, Abdul Abdullah facilitates more thoughtful reflection and dialogue, encouraging viewers to engage with the subject critically, and to challenge the ways in which Muslim people continue to be unfairly represented and perceived.

Endnote
1  Rod Pattenden, ‘Atheist critic blind to current religious symbols’, in Eureka Street, vol.21, no.19, 4 October 2011, www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=28496#, accessed 16 October 2015.

Peter McKay is Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA

Rosalie Gascoigne’s ‘Overland’ recalls a patchwork landscape

 

Overland, a wonderful work by Rosalie Gascoigne entered the Gallery’s collection as an exceptional gift, given in memory of Rosalie and Ben Gascoigne, her husband.

Gascoigne is among the most highly regarded Australian artists of recent history. Coming to art somewhat later in life — only holding her first exhibition in 1974 at the age of 57 — Gascoigne eschewed the dominant career pattern followed by most and walked a path of her own making. Arguably, the source of Gascoigne’s success was her capacity to think and act differently, and to honour an object for its inherent qualities rather than assume the values attributed by general regard.

In considering the late masterwork Overland, it is important to understand the origins of her insights — and how they could be employed to transform a stack of beaten old ply into a harmonious evocation of the Australian landscape.

Rosalie Gascoigne, Australia 1917-99 / Installation of the Australian collection at QAG featuring Overland 1996 / Painted, warped plywood panels on wood blocks / 25 panels and 16 blocks (installed, variable) / Gift in memory of Rosalie and Ben Gascoigne through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation 2014. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © Rosalie Gascoigne 1996/Licensed by Viscopy / Photograph: Natasha Harth © QAGOMA

Gascoigne was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1917. She graduated from the University of Auckland in 1937 with a Bachelor of Arts (majoring in English, French, Latin, Mathematics and Greek) before training as a teacher and teaching English, Latin, French and History at Auckland Girl’s Grammar School between 1938 and 1942. When Gascoigne arrived in Australia in 1943 to marry Ben Gascoigne, a New Zealand-born astronomer working at Mount Stromlo observatory outside Canberra, she found herself somewhat isolated in what was a small foreign community, though she refused to be confined by distance and social expectations. As Kelly Gellatly noted,

. . . far from her home and support of family and friends, she found solace in nature, learning to identify the variety of grasses and stones while on walks with the children; gradually coming to appreciate the different markers of the Australian landscape. And despite the restricted domestic conventions of Stromlo’s tight community, these found objects we eventually brought inside, where they were assembled and arranged by Gascoigne for contemplation over time.1

Subsequently, Gascoigne would study ikebana from 1962 with Norman Sparnon, a master in the Sogetsu School. Sparnon espoused the belief that ‘good design’ was the foundation of beauty and the vehicle for emotional content. While Gascoigne demonstrated great aptitude for arranging, even receiving praise from the founder of the Sogetsu School himself, her interests would continue to expand with her growing engagement in the Canberra art world.2 From this point on, Gascoigne embarked on a necessarily idiosyncratic expedition through art and nature, somewhat obsessively combing the paddocks and rural dumps, factories and junkyards for discarded materials left to weather, finding beauty in that which would normally be overlooked, and in the process, bringing everyday life into new frames of reference.

With this in mind we can recognise that landscape and art materials were, in Gascoigne’s eyes, one and the same. Moreover, only through understanding nature in its most elemental, the light and shadow, hot and cold, the wind, rain and dry — and also the vocabulary left by the elements impressions on the physical — was Gascoigne able to cast such deep impressions of the majesty instilled by the Monaro–Canberra region with such humble means.

Overland

When gridded and carefully spaced to allow a rolling continuity of surface, the 25 gently warped plywood panels of Overland recall the patchwork effect of a landscape viewed from the air, the subtle undulations of countryside, order rendered through cultivation, and the mottled effects of light and shadow. The tension between order and irregularity create a rhythmic pattern; a musicality and a geometric certainty, which could extend out in any direction and, in this way, conveys both a sense of expanse and the particularities of place. The panels’ placement on the ground further emphasises the undulating horizon, which, at this scale and body relationship, offers the audience a mind’s eye view of a land that comes from time spent piecing together a place by place, hill by hill, valley by valley. Overland ventures far beyond illustration to become an iteration of nature, a landscape at peace with its emptiness and richness.

READ more On YOUR AUSTRALIAN COLLECTION OR watch our YOUTUBE playlist

Endnotes
1  Kelly Gellatly ‘Rosalie Gascoigne: Making poetry of the commonplace’, in Rosalie Gascoigne, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2008, p.10.
2  Gellatly, p.11–12.

Peter Mckay is Curator, Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA

GOMA Q: Contemporary Queensland Art

 
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Liam O’Brien / Production still of Domestication 2014 / High-definition video / Courtesy: The artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney

A new exhibition is set to present insights into the contemporary art being produced by more than 30 Queensland artists and will open at GOMA from 11 July until 11 October 2015.

‘GOMA Q: Contemporary Queensland Art’ presents original insights into the character of Queensland art and culture. The exhibition will contextualise the most dynamic achievements in Queensland art today, showcasing artists of all generations working across the spectrum of themes and media. Queensland is a diverse setting and has become the site of exciting and productive artistic exchanges and intriguing ideas, values and aesthetic practices. ‘GOMA Q’ is a concept spun from the state’s evolving vitality and identity.

All throughout 2014, curator Bruce McLean, QAGOMA Director Chris Saines and I met with hundreds of Queensland artists, consulting and researching in preparation for this project. After countless discussions and deliberations, a line-up of more than 30 exceptional emerging, midcareer and senior artists working in painting, ceramic, video, performance, installation and sculpture has been established.

Featured artists include lively scenes from Davida Allen’s day‑to‑days, the delicately layered meditations of Ian Friend, and recent paintings by Gordon Shepherdson — which chart memories of time spent at sea — will show alongside a new generation of painters. Julie Fragar delves further into her ongoing series, putting imagery to the wild tales of her earliest ancestor in Australia, Antonio de Fraga, who set out from the Portuguese colony of Flores on an American whaling ship at the age of 12. Madeleine Kelly takes a new tangent in memorialising her whimsical encounters with local bird life. Rising star Tyza Stewart and the immaculate Michael Zavros each consider some of the unique ways in which individual identities are constructed in contemporary Australia. The works of north Queensland’s Naomi Hobson sparkle with brilliance as they present the artist’s country, between the eastern slopes of the McIlwraith Range south of Lockhart River and its western slopes north of Coen; while senior artist Mavis Ngallametta captures the grandeur, complexity and intensity of her country on the West Cape in her imposing paintings.

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Sam Cranstoun / Mountbatten 2014–15 (stills) / High definition video / Courtesy: The artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

New sculpture and installation works also feature prominently in the exhibition. Up-and-comer Sam Cranstoun tells of the incredible and tragic life and death of Lord Mountbatten, while Dale Harding examines moments of heartbreaking Aboriginal oppression in the state. Anita Holtsclaw searches the seas for a sense of belonging, and David Thomas’s participatory work walks the audience down a tightrope between happiness and alienation. Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan demonstrate the ingenuity and inventiveness of Filipino culture, showing how abandoned US jeeps from World War Two have been reinvented as exuberant jeepneys. Meanwhile, Brian Robinson’s sci-fi creation stories, rooted in the mythologies and traditions of the Torres Strait, reach into the unknown to explain the present; while Lawrence Omeenyo’s fluid ceramics celebrate his country by immortalising ancestral heroes in hybrid figurative vessels.

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Lawrence Omeenyo / Umpila people / Croc Man Bowl III 2012 / Earthenware, hand built with glazes / Purchased 2014. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Political dialogues find voice through the cutting works of Vernon Ah Kee. Similarly, Pat Hoffie reflects on the tensions between domestic expectations, international relations, and the measurable dimensions of the sound bite. Chantal Fraser considers the tensions between culture, race and the state, and the consequences for a community when trusted authorities abuse their power. Media artist Moe Louanjli cleverly harnesses the power of a divide‑and-conquer algorithm employed in preparation for modern warfare, while Antoinette J Citizen uses a rudimentary artificial intelligence to predict her near future.

Prolific photographer Kim Guthrie puts the extraordinary lives of ordinary Queenslanders in the frame, while collaborative duo Clark Beaumont perform to the camera, describing love as a potentially selfish and vain engagement. Monica Rohan’s self-portraiture draws attention to the plight of the introvert in a world that demands attention and interaction. Likewise, Liam O’Brien uses video to confront his personal history, seeking explanation for his past impulses.

With computer animation, Grant Stevens ruminates on the desire to cultivate a sense of self in a society that appears to have little interest in the individual beyond their potential to consume. Tim Woodward uses video to illustrate a relationship between art and religion in their dependence on society for confirmation and support of their value. Paul Bai also plays with perception, representation and the economy of form in his graphic wall-work, while Ross Manning emphasises the subjective experience of the passing present with similar restraint.

Emerging printmaker Teho Ropeyarn’s large-scale work reveals the cultural landscape of his country at the very tip of Cape York, while Jennifer Herd’s pinhole drawings of rainforest shield designs are a lesson in refinement and minimal translation. Ready to challenge expectations, ‘GOMA Q’ will demonstrate the inspired, innovative and inventive art of contemporary Queensland. Recognising the Gallery’s enduring responsibility to connect audiences to artists, future exhibitions will continue to provide original insights into the art and culture of the state.