Ah Xian: Accomplished artist & generous donor

Australian artist Ah Xian has been awarded the 2019 Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Medal in recognition of his enduring and impassioned contribution to the Gallery. We honour and celebrate the highly acclaimed artist and benefactor for his outstanding contribution to the QAGOMA Collection. His sustained and exceptional patronage places him among…

Shirley Macnamara: Respect, balance and belonging

Indjalandji artist Shirley Macnamara weaves the Queensland desert landscape into the very fabric of her work, creating exquisite sculptural forms and vessels from spinifex and other natural materials. Anneke Silver offers a personal reflection on the artist’s practice and explores how her works evoke both the resilience and the colours of the environment they spring…

The story of Judy Watson’s ‘tow row’

The story of Judy Watson’s tow row transcends its physical form and speaks of cultural retrieval and community activation. This stunning work, generously funded by the Queensland Government, the Neilson Foundation, Cathryn Mittelheuser AM and others, is a fitting acknowledgment of the ancestor spirit of Kurilpa. Public art has the power to change the cultural…

Inge King and Bea Maddock: Respected figures in Australian art

The recent passing of Inge King AM, and Bea Maddock AM saw the loss of two significant and highly respected figures in Australian art. We commemorate these great women in the Collection. Inge King Ingeborg Viktoria (Inge) King AM (1915–2016) was a leading non-figurative sculptor in Australia for more than five decades. Born in Berlin,…

Watch as we install Huang Yong Ping’s spectacular ‘Ressort’

Huang Yong Ping’s spectacular Ressort 2012 is part of a series of large-scale sculptures that depict a snake or dragon, a central symbol in Chinese culture, as well as in many other countries around the world. The work plays on different interpretations of the snake, from creation and temptation to wisdom and deception. Symbolically linking sky and…

Everyday materials transformed into a large-scale sculpture

In Future Remnant, Australian artists Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro transform everyday materials into an extraordinary, large-scale sculpture. In a deliberately absurd juxtaposition, a large dinosaur skeleton, meticulously constructed, climbs over makeshift Ikea storage furniture — the ubiquitous kind that appears in many households and magically reappears on the street whenever the city council collects…