Passionate and rebellious, Helge John ‘Jon’ Molvig (1923–70) was a relentless artistic innovator, who, in the 1950s and 1960s, attained national recognition. Newcastle-born, Molvig moved to Brisbane in 1955 and dominated the city’s art scene until his death just before he turned 47. With great energy, he created figure studies, portraits and landscapes, making radical…
QAGOMA conservators collaborated with specialist East Asian Art Conservator Jennifer Loubser to assess the conservation repairs necessary to stabilise an unusual 8-panel Japanese folding screen, Scenes from Genji Monogatari to allow its safe handling and display – in assessing the condition of the work when it came into the Collection it was found that hundreds…
Continue reading » “Autumn breezes fortified for an abundance of winters to come”
Emily Wakeling continues her conversation with Kim Barrett, Conservator, Works on Paper with a focus on displaying and caring for Japanese Scrolls. The exhibition ‘A fleeting bloom’ at the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) includes a number of hanging scrolls, and we prepared these delicate works for display. Japanese scrolls are long works on paper that…
The exhibition ‘A fleeting bloom’ focuses on the moments of distinct and transient beauty found in the portrayals of nature, history and spirituality in Japanese art. This display of historic works features screens gifted from the James Fairfax AC Bequest 2018. The wide planes of folding screens (byōbu) – a painting format at its peak…
Pakistani artist Aisha Khalid’s site-specific triptych Water has never feared the fire is a set of hanging textiles embedded with millions of long, steel and gold-plated pins commissioned for ‘The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT9). This remarkable sculptural textile presented unique unpacking and documenting challenges upon its arrival at the Gallery. Emily Gray takes us behind-the-scenes…
Continue reading » “Installing Aisha Khalid’s steel and gold-plated pin tapestry”
‘A fleeting bloom: Japanese Art from the Collection’ is the debut exhibition for a number of historical folding screens that recently entered the QAGOMA Collection as part of the James Fairfax AC Bequest. The Curatorial team for Asian art worked closely with Conservation staff on this project and Emily Wakeling recently met behind-the-scenes with Kim…