Preparations are underway for our winter program of two irresistible exhibitions ‘eX de Medici: Beautiful Wickedness’ and ‘Michael Zavros: The Favourite’, presented side by side at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Brisbane from 24 June 2023. Focused on the practice of two highly regarded mid-career Australian artists, these exhibitions offer opportunities for unique dialogue and appreciation of the differences and similarities between the work of de Medici and Zavros.
Offering different viewing experiences, both artists are engaged in representation and share an interest in the tradition of still life painting. de Medici’s extraordinarily layered works reveal the artist’s ongoing concern with the value and fragility of life, global affairs, greed, commerce, conflict and death; while ‘The Favourite’ looks at Zavros’s recurring thematic interests: his idealised and compelling images exploring the nature and culture of beauty, inspired by fashion magazines, European palaces, luxury cars, his children, and the still life.
Buy Tickets. Your ticket provides entry to both exhibitions on your day of visit. GOMA, 24 June – 2 October 2023
‘Beautiful Wickedness’ will be the most significant exhibition of work by celebrated Australian artist eX de Medici yet staged. An avowed environmentalist and activist, she is dedicated to uncloaking abuses of power and revealing their effects on ordinary and everyday lives, highlighting the excesses of global capitalism. Through a wide-range of subjects and materials, de Medici aims to seduce her viewers, and to shake them out of complacency.
Known for his extraordinary technical prowess over 25 years of painting, sculpture, photography and video, Michael Zavros has captivated audiences with his sumptuous realist renderings and surreal juxtapositions. Frequently engrossed in notions of quality and luxury, fashion and appearance, Zavros’s idealised imagery has developed alongside Australia’s pronounced turn to conspicuous consumption and aspirational individualism.
Immerse yourself in an irresistible contemporary art experience, see more than 200 artworks in two major retrospectives from leading Australian artists.Your ticket provides entry to both exhibitions on your day of visit. Buy timed tickets in advance to guarantee entry. Last session 4.00pm daily. Exhibition closes at 5.00pm. Full-day Flexi Ticket also available.
‘eX de Medici: Beautiful Wickedness’ in Gallery 1.2 and 1.3 (Eric and Marion Taylor Gallery) is presented in the adjacent gallery to ‘Michael Zavros: The Favourite‘ in 1.1 (The Fairfax Gallery) and 1.2 at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) from 24 June to 2 October 2023.
A selection of an intriguing group of brooches are on display in the Australian Art Collection, Queensland Art Gallery — made by unknown jewellers, they were produced in the Australian goldfields, circa 1880–1915 and are a peculiarly Australian innovation. These elegant pieces in uniquely Australian designs which are made from gold, small nuggets of native gold, fragments of gold-bearing quartz, and garnet, employ mining motifs such as picks, shovels, buckets and prospector’s pan.
Following significant discoveries of gold in Australia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a movement of making innovative gold jewellery began, with the earliest being dateable from the mid-1850s. Original examples were quite large, and most of these were melted down when smaller brooches were more in favour.
Though the makers are unknown, the jewellery’s existence embellishes the story of the Australian gold discoveries.
Charters Towers goldfields
Due to the gold boom between 1872 and 1899, Charters Towers in North Queensland — affectionately known as ‘The World’ — operated the only Stock Exchange outside of a capital city. Its population of around 30,000 made Charters Towers the largest city in Queensland other than Brisbane where the metropolitan population in the early 1880s was about 37,000.
Charters Towers Stock Exchange, Queensland c. 1890 / 99184004764802061 / Courtesy: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane
Miners at the gold diggings outside Charters Towers, Queensland c.1878 / 99183858888102061/ Courtesy: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane
Charters Towers, Queensland c.1890 / 21272106270002061 / Courtesy: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane
Charters Towers goldfields, Queensland c.1900 / 57987 / Courtesy: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Brisbane
Goldfields bar brooch (dark quartz with applied flowers)
Goldfields bar brooch (dark quartz with applied flowers) c.1880–1915 / Gold and dark gold bearing quartz / 2.2 x 4.5 x 2cm
Goldfields bar brooch (gold bearing ore)
Goldfields bar brooch (gold bearing ore) c.1880–1915 / Gold and gold bearing ore / 1.5 x 5.3 x 1.5cm
Goldfields bar brooch (three bars with four nuggets and garnet)
Goldfields bar brooch (three bars with four nuggets and garnet) c.1880–1915 / Gold, gold nuggets and garnet / 1.5 x 5.3 x 1.5cm
Goldfields bar brooch and chain (two bars with large nugget)
Goldfields bar brooch and chain (two bars with large nugget) c.1880–1915 / Gold and gold nuggets / 1.5 x 6 x 2.2cm
Goldfields brooch and chain (boomerang with gold nugget)
Goldfields brooch and chain (boomerang with gold nugget) c.1880–1915 / Gold and gold with red ore / 5.3 x 2.2. x 1.2cm
Goldfields bar brooch (two bars with large nugget)
Goldfields bar brooch (two bars with large nugget) c.1880–1915 / Gold and gold nugget / 2 x 6.7 x 2cm
Goldfields stick-pin (crossed pick and shovel with garnet)
Goldfields stick-pin (crossed pick and shovel with garnet) c.1880–1915 / Gold, gold nugget and garnet / 5.2 x 2 x 0.5cm
Goldfields pendant (crossed pick and shovel)
Goldfields pendant (crossed pick and shovel) c.1880–1915 / Gold, gold nuggets and garnet / 3.3 x 2.2 x 0.5cm
Goldfields brooch (crossed pick and shovel with nugget)
Goldfields brooch (crossed pick and shovel with nugget) c.1880–1915 / Gold and gold nugget / 2.5 x 4.8 x 1cm
Goldfields bar brooch (two bars with pick, shovel and prospector’s pan)
Goldfields bar brooch (two bars with pick, shovel and prospector’s pan) c.1880–1915 / Gold and gold nugget / 1.7 x 5.5 x 1cm
Goldfields brooch (shovel with suspended nugget)
Goldfields brooch (shovel with suspended nugget) c.1880–1915 / Gold and gold nuggets / 3 x 5.5 x 1cm
Goldfields brooch (crossed pick and shovel with nuggets)
Goldfields brooch (crossed pick and shovel with nuggets) c.1880–1915 / Gold and gold nuggets with gemstone / 3 x 5.8 x 0.7cm
Goldfields brooch and chain (crossed pick and shovel with bucket and nuggets)
Goldfields brooch and chain (crossed pick and shovel with bucket and nuggets) c.1880–1915 / Gold and gold nuggets / 3.5 x 5.8 x 1.2cm
Goldfields brooch (crossed pick and shovel with bucket)
Goldfields brooch (crossed pick and shovel with bucket) c.1880–1915 / Gold and gold nuggets / 3 x 5.2 x 0.7cm
Featured image: Unknown Jeweller, Australia / Goldfields brooch (crossed pick and shovel with bucket) c.1880–1915 / Gold and gold nuggets / 3 x 5.2 x 0.7cm
All brooches purchased 2011 with funds from Margaret Mittelheuser AM, and Cathryn Mittelheuser AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
‘Strike a pose’ presents artworks made in the first decades of the twentieth century where artists assume the posture of the Grand Manner or ‘swagger’ portrait, exemplified by George Lambert’s The artist and his wife. These paintings are juxtaposed against Yasumasa Morimura’s modern-day parody Doublonnage (Marcel) which riffs on art history and the photographs of Marcel Duchamp, disrupting constructs of gender and race.
Explore the complex and fascinating subject of the self-portrait during the exhibition ‘Looking Out, Looking In’ at the Queensland Art Gallery until 6 August 2023 or follow our blog series.
George W Lambert, Australia/England 1873–1930 / Self Portrait with Ambrose Patterson, Amy Lambert and Hugh Ramsay 1901–03 / Oil on canvas / 51.5 x 177cm / Purchased 2009 with funds from Philip Bacon AM through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
In 1900, George W Lambert travelled to Europe as the inaugural recipient of the coveted New South Wales Travelling Scholarship, accompanied by his new bride Amy. The pair met painter Hugh Ramsay during the sea voyage, and later befriended fellow expatriate painter Ambrose Patterson while Lambert and Ramsay were studying in Paris. In this tableau, the artist and his circle appear as allegorical figures from history and literature. Reading from left to right, we see Lambert, Patterson, Amy and Ramsay. The identity of fifth figure is uncertain, although possible subjects include Australian painter Arthur Streeton, writer Arthur Adams or English painter Cecil Rae. While the painting is dated 1903, it was likely commenced in 1901 as Amy gave birth to her first son, Maurice, in June of that year.
George W Lambert
George W Lambert, Australia/England 1873-1930 / The artist and his wife 1904 / Oil on canvas / 81.2 x 81.5cm / Purchased 1965 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
George W Lambert painted this self-portrait, featuring his wife Amy, in the tradition of the ‘Grand Manner’ or ‘swagger’ portrait, which typified English portraiture from the 1630s to the 1930s. The style, which emphasised the subject’s stature through pose and dress, was influenced by the paintings of Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), named court painter to England’s King Charles I in 1632, and later mastered by the English portraitist Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88) and American painter John Singer Sargent (1856–1925).
Lambert in London established a reputation for portraits of public figures, including his patron, King Edward VII. In addition to these commissions, Lambert often made portraits of family and friends, such as Self portrait with Ambrose Patterson, Amy Lambert and Hugh Ramsay.
In Doublonnage (Marcel), contemporary Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura combines performance art with photography, posing himself in a highly orchestrated tableau. He assumes the guise of famous artist Marcel Duchamp’s feminine alter ego Rrose Sélavy, as captured by photographer Man Ray in his classic image from 1921. Referring to Marcel in the title, this large photograph plays with the notion of double meaning. Is the protagonist male or female? How many different disguises (or hats) can one effect? Morimura’s photograph disrupts the conventions of the self-portrait genre while assuming its effects.
‘Looking Out, Looking In: Exploring the Self-Portrait’ / 11 March – 6 August 2023 / Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery 4
With the 2023 Archibald Prize recently announced, we delve into Australia’s oldest portrait award hosted by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Since 1921 the prize has attracted National interest, controversy, court cases and continually sparks numerous debates, so to celebrate we’ve made a list of works from the QAGOMA Collection with a link to the yearly prize.
Melville Haysom originally a professional musician who played violin, clarinet and saxophone in the Melbourne Regent Theatre Orchestra and in various jazz bands, moved to Brisbane when Hoyts opened the Regent Theatre in Queen Street, in the early 1930s. In 1939 he purchased a 70-acre dairy farm ‘Merri Merri’ on Mt Cootha, then an outer Brisbane suburb. At the start of World War II he joined the full-time Volunteer Defence Force and became an instructor in bomb disposal and latter mapping and field sketching. After the war he set up a private art school on the farm using the barn as a studio. Haysom was appointed Senior Instructor in Painting and Drawing at the Brisbane Central Technical College (now Queensland University of Technology) in 1948 until he retired in 1966.
A keen equestrian his 1937 Self portrait finalist in the Archibald Prize depicts the artist in the posture of the ‘Grand manner’ or ‘Swagger’ portrait, attired in tailored riding jacket, pants with riding crop. The Sydney Morning Herald article of 16 January 1937 on the Archibald Prize stated that: ‘Melville Haysom has achieved an extraordinary dramatic effect in his self-portrait, through the use of massed blacks, with a strong outline, against a light background. Perhaps the result is a shade theatrical; but at least the method has individuality in it.’
William Bustard’s Tippo Powder, Queensland Police tracker was a finalist in the 1943 Archibald Prize. Bustard met ‘Tippo’ (Timothy) Powder and established a friendship with him while Bustard was working with a World War II camouflage unit in Rockhampton in 1942. Powder worked for the Police Department in Rockhampton in the years 1942-44 before returning to his home at Woorabinda, Central Queensland. Shortly thereafter Bustard was transferred to Townsville to work at the Garbutt Airforce Base where this portrait was probably painted. A member of the Darumbal (Jetimarala) language group, Powder was born in 1914 at Yatton Station near Marlborough. He worked initially as a stockman.
‘Tippo’ Powder is depicted in the pride of his professional capacity, glancing purposefully to the left, with his broad brimmed, practical hat shading his face and his stock-whip curled around his fingers. Though this is clearly a studio portrait, the leaves intruding from the right and the impressionistically brushed ground give the impression that Powder has been captured taking a moment of rest whilst ‘on the job’ in the bush.
A finalist in the 1945 Archibald Prize, Douglas Dundas described his portrait of David Strachan as his best ‘… he was so patient, so good a sitter. He understood what it was like to get into an interesting pose.’
Dundas was awarded the New South Wales Society of Artists Traveling Scholarship in 1927 and subsequently studied in London at the London Polytechnic in 1928-29 and briefly in Paris with André Lhote. On his return in 1929 he worked for a short time as an illustrator for a newspaper, before being appointed in 1930 to the staff of the East Sydney Technical College, later the National Art School in Sydney. He remained there until 1965 as a major force in the training of several generations of Sydney artists.
David Strachan was an accomplished artist in his own right and friend of Dundas. Author Lou Klepac, in the foreword to David Strachan (1993), describes his paintings as achieving ‘a strange charged atmosphere which has little to do with surrealism, but is nonetheless close to that strange, unreal atmosphere of dreams’. Imbued with a poetic dimension, his paintings reflect Strachan’s own introspective personality.
Winner: Archibald Prize 1955 | Ivor Hele ‘Robert Campbell’
Ivor Hele was a renowned portrait painter, who won the Archibald Prize five times in seven years. Appointed official war artist during World War II while serving in the Middle East — his paintings graphically captured the combat in which he participated as artist-soldier. Will Ashton who had been Director of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales from 1937-44 described Hele as having ‘the gift of being able, almost as though by some mental communication, to attune himself to every one of his subjects. There is no doubt that this enables him to capture ‘mood’ and this, in turn, gives his paintings vitality’.
The Melbourne Argus, Saturday 21 January 1956 reported; ‘South Australian artist, Ivor Hele today won the 1955 £500 Archibald Prize for the fourth time, and the third year in succession. The 44-year-old Hele’s winning entry was a portrait of Mr Robert Campbell, South Australian National Art Gallery director.’ Campbell also an artist, had earlier in 1949, been appointed the first director of the Queensland National Art Gallery.
Winner: Archibald Prize 1956 | William Dargie ‘Albert Namatjira’
Sir William Dargie was undoubtedly Australia’s most prominent painter of ‘academic’ portraits. He established his reputation during the 1940s and 50s, during which time he was awarded the Archibald Prize eight times. Portrait of Albert Namatjira depicting the famous Arrernte artist won the Archibald Prize in 1956.
Dargie had first encountered Namatjira in the early 1950s when he painted with him in Central Australia several times. Namatjira was ten years Dargie’s senior, and both were famous artists in Australia at the time. A mutual respect developed between the two men with Namatjira later agreeing to sit for Dargie. Dargie recalled: ‘We had agreed that he was going to sit for me. I liked his natural rebelliousness.’1 In November 1956 they were photographed in a Sydney art supply shop holding tubes of paint. The press eventually pursued Namatjira to Dargie’s studio where, half a dozen times over a fortnight, he sat in the early mornings while Dargie worked on the canvas.
Endnote 1 Stephen, Ann. ‘Namatjira in the guise of an elder statesman: William Dargie ‘Portrait of Albert Namatjira’, in ‘Brought to light; Australian art 1850-1965’, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1998, p. 253.
Jon Molvig’s Self-portrait was a finalist at the 1956 Archibald Prize. Brooding and intense, the painting is a remarkable distillation of Molvig’s steely nature and reputation as an outsider. Painted with a palette knife, Molvig’s sculptured image is seated cross-legged on a chair with his folded arms held defiantly across his torso. Behind the chair is the guitar that he liked to play.
Although Molvig entered the Archibald Prize from 1952 onwards, it was not until 1955 that his work first appeared in the accompanying finalist exhibition. Reviewers such as Robert Hughes considered that Molvig had merited the prize on numerous occasions; however, his first and only win was his thirteenth attempt in 1966 with Charles Blackman, his lifelong friend and fellow artist. He ceased entering the Archibald after this win.
Finalist 1960 | Andrew Sibley ‘Dr Gertrude Langer’
Andrew Sibley’s portrait of Dr Gertrude Langer was a finalist in the 1960 Archibald Prize. Dr Langer was the first professionally qualified art historian to reside in Queensland. She obtained her PhD in Art History from the University of Vienna in 1933 and after Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938, she and her husband, a qualified architect, left for Australia. They arrived in Brisbane the following year. Langer joined the Queensland Art Gallery Society in 1952 and served on the Committee between 1956 and 81. She was president of the Society in 1965-66 and 1974-75. Langer was President of the Queensland Branch of the Arts Council of Australia for 14 years and was art critic for the Courier Mail 1956-84. This work gives a clear indication of Dr Langer’s character when she was a figure of considerable influence in the art scene in Brisbane.
Sibley stated that: ‘Dr Langer was quite pleased with the portrait; only she wondered why I had taken only three actual sittings — whereas [another artist] had asked her to pose 157 times.’ In painting portraits, Andrew Sibley was unusual in seldom having sittings. The rationale behind this was that what you remember of a person is often more true to them than what you see. ‘Also it is more simplified — less clouded with miscellaneous detail’. Before he began to paint a portrait, he would get to know the person and memorized the structure of their face. He then made a few sketches, not of the whole picture, but studies of hands, eyes and posture. These were mainly to remind him of characteristic features and gestures: ‘Of course, I make things easy for myself by only choosing people who are definite types, archetypes almost.’
Artists Russel Drysdale and William Dargie thought that Sam Fullbrook’s portrait Ernestine Hill should have won the 1970 Archibald Prize in which it was a finalist.
Shy and self-conscious like many writers, Ernestine Hill, author of The Great Australian Loneliness and the novel My Love Must Wait, had refused earlier requests from William Dobell and others to paint her portrait. Her agreement to sit for Fullbrook (then a fellow resident of Buderim) shortly before her death in 1972 was influenced by their good rapport.
Isolated against a yellow field, the three-quarter figure seems to float upwards, an image of dignity and frailty, more spirit than substance. The delicateness of the body contrasts with the strength of the head with its shock of dark hair, piercing gaze and gash of red lipstick indicating a certain tenacity and strength. Independent, and a chain-smoker to the end, Ernestine Hill protested to the artist that she never wore gloves.
Explore the complex and fascinating subject of the self-portrait during the exhibition ‘Looking Out, Looking In’ at the Queensland Art Gallery until 6 August 2023, or follow our blog series that delves into why some artists look inwards to reflect on themselves in self-effacing ways, while others seek to project a more flamboyant image.
British painter John Opie’s Self portrait c.1780 (illustrated) dates from a time when portraits were judged by their supposed capacity to evoke a sitter’s ‘likeness’ and assumed to reveal something of their character. In the twentieth century, modern artists tested these assumptions, moving away from representation as an ideal.
John Opie
John Opie, England 1761–1807 / Self portrait c.1780 / Oil on canvas / 54 x 43.2cm / Purchased 1952. Maria Theresa Treweeke Bequest / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
Cornwall-born painter John Opie made this self-portrait when he was about 19 — a considerable achievement for an artist who was largely self-taught. Having developed a capacity for drawing in childhood, he came to the attention of the political satirist John Wolcot, also known by his penname Peter Pindar. Wolcot provided Opie with elementary lessons in painting and access to engravings after the Old Masters, and introduced him to artistic circles in London as ‘The Cornish Wonder’.
Opie quickly found success as a painter of portraits and historical scenes, being described by the distinguished portraitist Joshua Reynolds as ‘like Caravaggio and Velazquez in one’. Opie’s early works are characterised by a freshness and immediacy that is apparent here. The painting displays a virtuosic use of light and shade reminiscent of one of his earliest influences, the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69). Like Rembrandt, Opie saw his self-portraits as a means of self-promotion.
In 1913, the Japanese painter and printmaker Tsugouharu Foujita migrated from Tokyo to Montparnasse in Paris, France, drawn to the enclave’s reputation as a creative hub. Initially knowing no one, he soon formed friendships with renowned French artists such as Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Jacques Cocteau (with whom he shared a love of cats), and became a celebrated artist in his own right.
Foujita developed a unique style influenced by the art of his homeland and developments in modern French art, many of which had themselves emerged in response to Japanese ukiyo-e printmaking. His paintings, drawings and prints of elegant nudes and his numerous self-portraits — many featuring cats — such as Self portrait with cat 1930 (illustrated) proved immensely popular. Foujita’s Book of Cats, which was published in the year this self-portrait was made, is now a sought-after rare book.
Nora Heysen’s self-portraits are striking images of independence and determination. Painted in 1938, the year that she became the first woman to win the coveted Archibald Prize, her self-portrait (illustrated) became a direct way for Heysen to affirm her identity as an artist: ‘I painted myself because I knew her . . . [Painting self-portraits] is the one time when you can be with yourself absolutely and just paint’.
The pronounced brushstrokes and heightened colour tones reflect the optimism that fuelled Heysen at this point of her career. Gone are the early influences of Italian Renaissance art and classicism. Here she looks forward as a modern woman, committed to her art and painting in a modern idiom. Soon after making this portrait, Heysen moved from Adelaide — and the shadow of her famous father, Hans Heysen — to Sydney, where she quickly established herself as a distinguished portrait painter in her own right.
‘Looking Out, Looking In: Exploring the Self-Portrait’ / 11 March – 6 August 2023 / Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery 4
QAGOMA’s campaign to ‘Unlock the Collection’ publicly launched in early 2021, with the goal of raising $5 million to increase digital access to the Collection and position the Gallery as leader in digital content creation. In late 2022, the QAGOMA Foundation successfully achieved this fundraising target, thanks to the generous support of more than 660 donors who have helped the Gallery open the doors to our storerooms and accomplish significant progress in making the entire Collection available to audiences.
The transformative ‘Unlock the Collection’ project encompasses several activities, with digitising the Collection to contemporary standards being the largest undertaking, including the goal of exceeding 95% digitisation in 2024. Philanthropic support from QAGOMA’s giving community has made a significant impact in this area, enabling over 5200 artworks to be digitised to date. With work continuing, the project is on track to exceed this digitisation target next year.
A new Collection Online platform launched in November 2021 after extensive development and beta-testing by the Gallery community, has also been realised to make artworks, images and content more easily discoverable and accessible to audiences everywhere. QAGOMA’s Collection Online now consists of over 100 000 pages, including more than 20 000 object pages, with weekly releases of new content and monthly releases of additional features, including digital stories, behind-the-scenes content, artist videos and high-resolution imagery. Since its launch, visitor access to the Collection has increased fivefold.
In addition to providing greater access to the Collection online, the Digital Transformation team are also developing applications for visitors to make finding artwork information on-site as easy as taking a photo on their device A pilot version of artSEEker — QAGOMA’s art recognition app — was launched on 22 April to coincide with the opening of the 2023 Creative Generation Excellence Awards in Visual Art at GOMA. The app can recognise artworks directly through the camera of a mobile phone, without the need for a wall label or QR code, linking through to additional information, supporting content and interactive elements. Following the official launch, the app will be scaled to recognise all Collection based exhibitions and Collection objects, offering visitors an exciting new level of engagement and opportunities for access on site.
A pilot version of artSEEker — QAGOMA’s art recognition app — was launched on 22 April to coincide with the opening of the 2023 Creative Generation Excellence Awards in Visual Art
Donors to the ‘Unlock the Collection’ campaign have also supported the employment of 12 staff positions across key project areas, with a focus on providing paid internships and fostering graduate and early-career opportunities in a major arts institution. The campaign has also supported three Digital Residencies. 2021 Digital Resident, Queensland University of Technology’s Associate Professor of Digital Pedagogies Dr Kate Thompson’s research revealed how digital experiences can best engage virtual and onsite visitors. 2022 Digital Resident, prominent creative technologist and artist Jessie Hughes, researched the role of emerging technologies, including Web3, NFTs and the Metaverse, to determine their potential to impact major collecting institutions like QAGOMA. The 2023 Digital Residency will commence later this year.
(Left) Dr Kate Thompson / (Right) Jessie Hughes with Morgan Strong, Digital Transformation Manager, QAGOMA
The campaign also funded two significant First Nations research programs: one focused on the untitled ceremonial figure attributed to Fred Embrey (Kabi Kabi people) and its contribution and role to culture, which, with deep consultation with Fred Embrey’s family, will digitally capture the full presence of this rare and remarkable work, and share personal community-based stories that link the significance of the object to its place, its maker and its people; and the other to enable the digitisation of QAGOMA’s Hermannsburg collection and associated research material, including production of video interviews with community and descendants. QAGOMA holds one of Australia’s strongest collections of works from the Hermannsburg School, including some 230 items comprised of watercolour paintings, synthetic polymer paintings and pottery objects. Through this project, photogrammetry techniques will be utilised to represent the pottery in 3D and make them viewable from 360 degrees. These works will be captured and digitised, sharing this significant holding of contemporary Indigenous Australian pottery with the world through a dedicated digital story.
Thanks to the ‘Unlock the Collection’ campaign, QAGOMA is setting the industry standard for Collection accessibility and digital development through these digitisation projects. By collaborating with Queensland Government agencies to push mixed-reality and extended reality art projects and move QAGOMA’s key digital content into other Queensland spaces, and by establishing its Digital Reference Group, QAGOMA is engaging key members of Queensland’s digital and tech community to advise on future projects, advocate for the Gallery’s digital programs and help foster new digital partnerships.
This work has resulted in members of the Digital Transformation team being invited to speak at industry conferences and events, including DrupalSouth 2022, Networx and Fotoware and being appointed to mentoring roles within the sector and in wider industry through initiatives such as the Australia Council and ACMI’s CEO Digital Mentoring Program.
In June 2022, the QAGOMA Foundation hosted a panel discussion ‘A New Frontier for AI and the Arts’, engaging representatives from Brisbane’s technology in a discussion exploring the convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and cultural practice, and shared research and outcomes of the ‘Unlock the Collection’ project.
In just over three years the ‘Unlock the Collection’ campaign raised more than $5 million and engaged audiences, donors and industry professionals with the Gallery’s digital transformation project. QAGOMA warmly acknowledges Trustee and Foundation Committee member Paul Taylor for his leadership as Chair of the project’s fundraising reference group and thanks all members of this group for their outstanding efforts to realise this major initiative.
While the ‘Unlock the Collection’ campaign has concluded, the project continues, with funds supporting the resources required to achieve the goal of making the entirety of the QAGOMA Collection available to audiences and to creating even more engaging digital resources that bring to life the extraordinary stories within it. We sincerely appreciate the Gallery’s giving community’s support of this vital project and will continue to publish updates on milestones and achievements, which are transforming the way visitors experience our galleries and exhibitions on-site and online.
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We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
