Category: Australian Collection

Mysterious and mundane: The art of Jeffrey Smart

Posted by QAGOMA   ●   13 Dec 2021

Australian artist Jeffrey Smart (1921-2013) is one of Australia’s most celebrated artists, seeking inspiration from the world around him. Smart portrays the sinister cheerfulness and bright sterility of a modern, progressive, industrial society with gem like clarity and precision. Early in his painting career he found a particular personal vision of the world and carefully refined…

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Ceramic installations evoke the landscape from which they are produced

Posted by Ellie Buttrose   ●   23 Nov 2021

Australian artist Yasmin Smith is known for her research-based ceramic installations that formally and chromatically evoke the landscape from which they are produced. As part of her investigative method, Smith gathers natural materials and, through analysis, determines how she can harness their chemical properties. Key to the artist’s process is burning plant material as a…

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Contemporary Ceremonial art from Aurukun

Posted by Sophia Sambono   ●   18 Nov 2021

In the early 2000s, senior Wik and Kugu law men from the Aurukun region on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, Far North Queensland, pioneered a significant contemporary movement: They reimagined their ceremonial visual traditions as contemporary art. Embodying ancestral narratives in a way that maintains spiritual and historical connections between the past and…

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Go back in time to Max Dupain’s Anzac Square, Brisbane

Posted by Elliott Murray   ●   11 Nov 2021

In 1928 a competition for the design of a Shrine of Remembrance (illustrated) in Brisbane was won by Sydney architects Buchanan and Cowper. Construction proceeded over the following two years with Anzac Square opening on Armistice Day in 1930. The Shrine honours the men and women of Queensland who served abroad and at home in…

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One moment in time which cannot be repeated

Posted by Ellie Buttrose   ●   1 Nov 2021

Brisbane-born Lindy Lee’s engagement with Buddhist thought has become increasingly important to the way that she both conceptually and physically approaches the creation of new works. Reflecting upon the inspiration for her bronze sculptures, Lee cites her desire to extend the traditional Chinese meditation technique of flung ink calligraphy, ‘in which you meditate, then take…

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Clouds of purple blooms, a quintessential image of Brisbane

Posted by QAGOMA   ●   31 Oct 2021

Few works in our Collection have enjoyed as much popularity as Under the jacaranda by R (Richard) Godfrey Rivers. Painted in 1903, some twelve years after the British-born artist arrived in Queensland, the image depicts Rivers and his wife Selina sitting in the shade of a large jacaranda tree, at that time a landmark in Brisbane’s…

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