The Gallery has seen some intense activity since APT8 closed: we’ve opened no less than four important exhibitions in as many weeks over May and June.
The vibrant palette of the late Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori’s Dulka Warngiid – Land of All exhibition, which has filled the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) with the spirit of north Queensland’s gulf country, tours to Melbourne in September. At the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) we welcomed the incomparable Cindy Sherman for the opening of an exhibition dedicated to her post-2000 digital work, which received extensive national media coverage in advance of the artist’s retrospective at the new Broad Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition will tour to City Gallery Wellington in November.
For the opening of Time of others, we welcomed a delegation of ten staff from the Singapore Art Museum, one of the institutions contributing to this pan-Asian touring exhibition. We had some productive conversations with SAM’s multidisciplinary contingent over the course of their week-long visit about possible future collaborative projects between Queensland and Singapore.
The GOMA Turns 10 program began in June, with the opening of A World View: The Tim Fairfax Gift, and over the next few months, all of GOMA will be transformed by new exhibitions and installations. These will include visitor favourites like Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s installation of live finches, from here to ear (v.13) 2010, as well as several spectacular new commissions.
Also in anticipation of GOMA’s birthday, we were pleased to announce in July that artist Judy Watson was chosen from a field of strong entries to undertake the Queensland Indigenous Artist Public Art Commission. Judy’s bronze sculpture, inspired by the traditional woven fishing nets of south-east Queensland’s Aboriginal communities, will bring an evocative local presence to GOMA’s entrance when it is unveiled in December.
Spring focuses on a substantial exhibition opening at QAG, No.1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966–2016 which looks at 50 years of art by PNG artists. You can follow the installation process on Flickr.
We also recently announced that the QAGOMA Foundation’s 2016 Appeal had successfully raised the funds to purchase Michael Zavros’s Bad dad 2013. This superb addition to the contemporary Australian collection was painted by an artist born and based in Queensland, but who has garnered national and global attention in recent years.
Meanwhile, Moving Pictures the Salon-style hang of highlights from the Australian art Collection has attracted great interest from our visitors. This concentration of Australian art can be viewed at QAG from two levels and explored on an interactive touchscreen in the space.
The next few weeks are your last chance to see the Cindy Sherman exhibition, including after hours for a brilliant Up Late program of music, talks and style over four Fridays in September. A host of other exhibitions will be closing or evolving before GOMA Turns 10 — I invite you to make the most of these and mark your calendars for GOMA’s birthday in December!
