Fairy Tales: ‘The Nightingale & the Rose’ reimagined

Youthful transgressions and immaturity play out in many fairy tales, but few are as heartbreaking as Oscar Wilde’s original tale, ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, one of five stories in The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), his collection written for children. This affecting tale exploring themes of unrequited love, sacrifice and superficiality is captured…

Isaac Walter Jenner’s grand history mystery

Australian artist Isaac Walter Jenner (1836–1902) painted Cape Chudleigh, Coast of Labrador in 1893 and reworked it in 1895 (illustrated). The grand history painting depicts the search led by British naval officer, hydrographer, and explorer Sir Edward Belcher (1799–1877) to rescue the ill-fated 1845 British expedition by Sir John Franklin (1786–1847) which set out to…

The artist as aggregator

From urinals and Brillo boxes to ballerinas and Polar Bears, throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, artists have used everyday objects to challenge our perceptions of what art can be. Appropriation, a term used to describe when artists use pre-existing images or objects with minimal transformation in their artworks, is a strategy that…

A cool thing to have

Artists’ multiples — ranging from LPs to ceramics, posters and books to clothing, mass-produced objects and toys — are a passion for Queensland artist and collector Scott Redford. Redford has been generously gifting multiples to the Gallery and the Research Library since 2008, including a major donation of over 700 objects to the Library in…

Isaac Walter Jenner: A force in Brisbane’s cultural life

The exhibition ‘A Feeling for Light’ at the Queensland Art Gallery from 2 September 2023 until 28 January 2024, explores the evocative paintings of Isaac Walter Jenner (1836–1902), a self-taught marine and landscape painter. Following his arrival in Brisbane in 1883 (illustrated), Jenner spent the last two decades of his life as a major force…

William Bustard: Australian camouflage artist

Queensland artist William Bustard (1894–1973) is well known as an artist, illustrator and stained-glass window designer whose artworks are held in Australian public collections, including QAGOMA (Brisbane townscape 1928 illustrated is on display in the Australian Art Collection, Queensland Art Gallery). Born in England in 1894, Bustard and his wife Lily migrated to Queensland in…