The Gallery recently acquired this subtle yet powerful work by Yael Bartana, whose statements on the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians have come to characterise her practice. Yael Bartana uses photography and video to explore Jewish identity. Born in Afular, Israel, in 1970, to whom she describes as very Zionist parents,(1) Bartana characterises herself as…
Continue reading » “Highlight: Yael Bartana ‘The Missing Negatives’”
Jeffrey Smart was Australia’s pre-eminent painter of the contemporary world. Born in Adelaide, in 1921, his first ambition was to be an architect, and though he eventually trained as an artist his love of the created environment remained. He taught art in Adelaide from 1941 until 1948, when he left Australia for London, travelling via…
Death and Life: rakuny ga walnga focuses on the universal regenerative cycle of death, engendering new life. Included are more than 70 bark paintings, memorial poles, sculptures and weavings by 34 artists from Arnhem Land in northern Australia. The works reflect the languages, moieties, clan affiliations and connections of the artists with their country: from…
From June until late October, the Gallery presents its largest exhibition of contemporary Indigenous Australian art, which aims to facilitate what Carly Lane describes as a ‘truly national conversation about nationhood’. Celebrate the opening weekend on Saturday 1 June by enjoying a day of discussions, workshops and talks by artists, performers, writers and curators ending with with…
Edmund Rosenstengel, the most highly regarded furniture maker in Brisbane from the 1920s to the 1950s, provided the benchmark of excellence in his field for several generations. This acquisition, purchased for the Collection with the generous assistance of Valmai Pidgeon, AM, is a piece that Rosenstengel made for himself. Edmund Rosenstengel (1887–1962) was born in Toowoomba,…
Continue reading » “Edmund Rosenstengel provided the benchmark of excellence in his field”
In 2011, curator Robert Leonard, summed up Michael Zavros’s art practice in an erudite article for the journal ‘Art & Australia’. It is often said that Zavros’s subject is beauty itself, but it is, more generally, symbols of status. His canon of beauty is aspirational – keyed to notions of privilege, tradition and the faux-aristocratic…
Continue reading » “Everything, beautiful or not, is fleeting.”
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