A place where eyes once averted

Two remarkable paintings by Australian artist Anne Wallace draw attention to a dark chapter in Brisbane’s history. With compassion and respect, these works tell the stories of women who suffered institutional abuse at Goodna’s Wolston Park psychiatric facility, and Wallace focuses on their hard-won resilience while demanding that we not look away. Anne Wallace Contemporary…

Judy Watson: Collecting Australia

The Indigenous voice of Australia is over 65 000 years old. During NAIDOC Week 2019, with the theme of ‘voice, treaty and truth’, we invited award-winning author and Mununjali woman Ellen Van Neerven to develop a series of written responses entitled ‘Collecting Australia‘, which draw inspiration from works featured in our Australian Art Collection. This…

Michael Cook introduces us to his dream-journey

Michael Cook’s photographs have become well known for a whimsical and unique interplay of surrealism and political potency. The ‘Broken Dreams’ series 2010 was one of the Queensland Indigenous photographer’s most important breakthrough works, produced in the first year of his artistic practice. Coming from a commercial background, Cook had long entertained moving into art photography and had been incubating many…

Vale: Mavis Ngallametta

On 28 January, Mrs Waal-Waal Mavis Ngallametta (1944–2019), one of Queensland’s most esteemed senior artists, passed away at the age of 74, surrounded by family at her home in Aurukun, in far north Queensland. A traditional owner, elder of the Putch clan and cultural leader of the Wik and Kugu people, Mavis Ngallametta is remembered…

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…

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…