Aisha Khalid transforms traditional miniature painting with pins

Aisha Khalid is one of a generation of artists from Pakistan who have transformed the tradition of miniature painting into an internationally celebrated form of contemporary art. In recent years, Khalid’s practice has extended to significantly larger paintings, murals, installations and tapestries. Watch | Aisha Khalid discusses her hanging tapestry In her textile works, Khalid draws…

Gavin Hipkins references a past that haunts the future

Set along the Brisbane River, the dual projections of The Precinct 2018 in ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9) continue Gavin Hipkins’s blurring of documentary and experimental narrative film structures. The double perspectives draw on and quote from the first published novel set in Brisbane, The Curse and its Cure (1894) by…

Bask in purple bloom of the jacaranda all year round

Paintings of jacarandas in bloom have become a popular and appealing subject for Brisbane artists, the most famous image of the jacaranda is R. (Richard) Godfrey Rivers’s painting Under the jacaranda, which has achieved enormous popularity since it was painted and acquired by the Gallery in 1903. The image depicts Rivers and his wife Selina…

Passage to Belle-Île: A motif for John Russell’s paintings

John Russell, like his contemporaries Claude Monet and Henri Matisse, were particularly captivated and inspired by the small island of Belle-Île, with its vivid turquoise waters, steep cliffs and craggy rock formations. Roger Benjamin visited France’s wild Atlantic coast to explore the island’s resonance as a motif in French painting. In June 2018, before the…

LJ Harvey and his school

Lewis Jarvis (LJ) Harvey (1871−1949) was the single greatest influence on visual culture in Queensland in the first half of the twentieth century, this important artist and teacher, and his students, highlights why Harvey was such an inspirational figure. Harvey was a distinguished modeller, woodcarver, potter and teacher active in Queensland during the first half…

Eight majestic rings of Tutana and Loloi commissioned for APT9

Following years of collaboration and building relationships, the Gallery recently commissioned and acquired eight majestic rings of Tutana of Loloi created by a group of Gunantuna (Tolai) men from Nangananga village in East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Designed to mesmerise their viewer, the spectacular rings are banks of shell money and objects of social value. The…