QAGOMA is home to more than 20 000 artworks from Australia and around the world, in every imaginable medium. The Collection is a cultural record shaped by the Gallery’s history and an expression of its aspirations to connect people with the enduring power of art and creativity.
The Gallery’s globally significant collection of contemporary art from Australia, Asia and the Pacific has been developed over more than 30 years as part of the research and relationships built through The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art.
Each work that enters the Collection is considered for how it might contribute to conversations between works, and enrich the visitor experience.
Artistic expressions from the world's oldest continuing culture are drawn from all regions of the country in the Gallery's holdings of Indigenous Australian artworks, especially the rich diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and experiences in Queensland.
The work of Australian artists has been collected by the Gallery since its foundation in 1895. These works date from the colonial period onwards, with rich holdings of paintings and sculptures by Australian expatriate artists living in the United Kingdom and France at the turn of the twentieth century. The Australian art collection tracks developments in the modern movement of the 1950s and 1960s, including abstractions and assemblages and conceptual/post-object art of the late 1960s and 1970s.
QAGOMA’s Contemporary Asian art collection is among the most extensive of its kind in the world, comprising over 1000 works from the late 1960s to the present which shed light on modern historical developments, current environments of social change and evolving models of artistic production. Our contemporary Asian holdings have been shaped by the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art since 1993, reflecting the diversity of art-making contexts in the region and including major new commissioned works.
The Gallery's collection of contemporary Pacific art is the broadest in Australia. With the establishment of the Asia Pacific Triennial (APT) in the early 1990s, the Gallery recognised the importance of actively developing the Pacific collection.
The Gallery's collection of works from Europe, Africa and North and South America includes early European paintings and works on paper, with an emphasis on the Northern Renaissance; British art from the late-18th to late-19th century, including Victorian and Edwardian painting; and modern European and American painting, sculpture, photography and prints from the late 19th century to the second half of the twentieth century.
R. Godfrey Rivers, England/Australia 1858-1925 / Under the jacaranda 1903 / Oil on canvas / 143.4 x 107.2 cm / Purchased 1903 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / View full image
Artists & Artworks
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Find out more about the work of our conservation specialists, the depth of our Asia Pacific research, or explore the extensive collection of art resources in our Research Library.
The Australian Centre of Asia Pacific Art (ACAPA) examines the artists and artwork of QAGOMA's focus region and holds an extensive and ever-growing Asia Pacific resource archive in our Library.
QAGOMA's Research Library has an extensive collection of art resources that can be enjoyed by visitors to the Gallery. We hold over 50 000 books and exhibition catalogues and close to 250 current journal titles.
This is the first time kith and kin — the much-anticipated Australian debut — of the installation by Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore, has been displayed since it secured the prestigious Golden Lion Award for Best National Participation at La Biennale de Venezia in 2024. You have the opportunity to experience this internationally significant work in Brisbane before it’s shared with the UK’s Tate.
Commissioned by Creative Australia and curated by Ellie Buttrose, Curator of Contemporary Australian Art, QAGOMA for the Australian Pavilion at Venice, the work was subsequently gifted to the collections of both QAGOMA and Tate in the UK by Creative Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.
This is not a work that you see, kith and kin is an experience of total immersion. In depicting his own family tree, the artist has provided a window to the nation with our success, our failures and our challenges. In 2024, Moore took his Australian story to Venice, it's now back home in Queensland on display at the Gallery of Modern Art (27 Sep 2025 – 18 Oct 2026).
The remarkable and deeply affecting kith and kin comprises a vast genealogical chart capturing Moore’s First Nations Australian and convict British and Scottish connections spanning more than 2400 generations over 65,000 years — an extraordinary image of human connection through deep time.
Over several weeks, the artist and a team of installers have meticulously hand-drawn this ancestral map in chalk across a large expanse of four walls in a stand-alone room specially built to replicate the internal dimensions of the Australia Pavilion in Venice.
The work also confronts the ongoing legacies of Australia’s colonial history and the over-incarceration of First Nations people, with a collection of coronial reports on deaths in custody suspended above a memorial pool in the centre of the room.
This impressive and moving installation captivated the world in Venice, securing its place in history as the first Australian work to win the prestigious Golden Lion. Now Australian audiences have the chance to experience it for themselves. In collaboration with curator Ellie Buttrose, Moore has created a work that speaks with both personal intimacy and universal resonance, affirming the enduring place of First Nations stories at the centre of our cultural life.
Archie Moore kith and kin
27 Sep 2025 – 18 Oct 2026
Gallery of Modern Art
Galleries 3.3 & 3.4 (Marica Sourris and James C. Sourris AM Galleries)
Free entry
Madeleine Kelly’s Spectra of birds 2014–15 is made from repurposed Tetra Pak containers, which Kelly has crushed, manipulated and painted to look like abstracted representations of birds.
She has used encaustic, a form of painting using beeswax and pigment, to decorate the containers, which involves mixing pigment powder into molten beeswax and applying it to a surface. Each dollop of beeswax solidifies on contact, transforming from hot wax to cold surface.
Eastern Rosella
Galah
Tawny Frogmouth
Watch | Madeleine Kelly discusses the inspiration for Spectra of birds
Queensland artist Madeleine Kelly was born in Germany to an Australian-born father, a plant biochemist, and a Peruvian-born mother, a Spanish–English interpreter. After the family moved to Australia in 1980, she grew up in Brisbane and studied fine art at the Queensland College of Art, completing her PhD in 2013. She now works from her studio in Wollongong, New South Wales, and lectures in painting at the University of Sydney.
With Spectra of birds, Kelly chose colours to resemble the plumage of the various birds she spotted while walking in Wollongong, New South Wales. The work is playful and surprising, while simultaneously considering the impact of human activity on the natural world.
Spectra of birds 2014–15
View Madeleine Kelly’s Spectra of birds 2014–15 in 'Wonderstruck' at the Gallery of Modern Art or delve into the captivating works on display with our weekly highlights.
Wonderstruck
28 June – 6 October 2025
Gallery of Modern Art
Gallery 1.1 (The Fairfax Gallery), Gallery 1.2 & Gallery 1.3 (Eric and Marion Taylor Gallery)
Brisbane, Australia
Free entry
Australian artist Emily Floyd comes from a family of artisans who made wooden toys designed for imaginative play. The woodworking machines from her family’s workshop now belong in her studio, where she uses them to create sculptures. Therefore, children’s games have long been a reference in Floyd’s artwork.
The Austrian anthroposophist and social theorist Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who championed an opened ended and play driven approach to education, inspired the work and title Steiner rainbow 2006. Floyd draws a parallel between educational toys and contemporary art, as mediums that enable people to explore new ideas.
Steiner rainbow is a scaled-up version of the 1970s children stacking toy composed of colourful modular blocks — a puzzle with an infinite number of possibilities. Like the original toy, Floyd’s artwork can also be displayed in a variety of playful configurations. With this work, Floyd is interested in the idea of scale in terms of one’s childhood. When you're young, you see the things you play with as being enormous, however when you look back on them as an adult, they can actually be tiny.
View Emily Floyd's Steiner rainbow 2006 in 'Wonderstruck' at the Gallery of Modern Art or delve into the captivating works on display with our weekly highlights.
Wonderstruck
28 June – 6 October 2025
Gallery of Modern Art
Gallery 1.1 (The Fairfax Gallery), Gallery 1.2 & Gallery 1.3 (Eric and Marion Taylor Gallery)
Brisbane, Australia
Free entry
In a first for the Queensland Cultural Centre, an artist-designed play sculpture in the form of an oversized 119 metre-long garden hose has been unveiled outside Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA). The artwork alludes to Queensland’s domestic architecture, inhabiting GOMA’s 'front yard' and evoking breezy verandahs and subtropical gardens.
The Big Hose 2022–25, a collaborative creation of contemporary Australian artists Tony Albert (Brisbane, Girramay/ Yidinyji/ Kuku Yalanji peoples) and Nell (Sydney), sits on the banks of the Brisbane River at Kurilpa Point, a traditional meeting and trading place for the region’s Turrbal and Yaggera peoples.
Building on decades of experience collaborating with artists on projects for its Children’s Art Centre, the Gallery has worked closely with Tony and Nell to develop this unique addition to the precinct, and the artists in turn consulted with traditional custodians of the site on which the sculpture sits. The artwork’s acknowledgment of the Indigenous history of Kurilpa is key, as is its commitment to children’s learning.
Capturing the spirit of Queensland’s welcoming climate and laidback attitude, the playful large-scale installation will spark imaginations and delight visitors of all ages as the latest in the Australian tradition of landmark ‘big’ things.
Tony Albert said about The Big Hose:
The sculpture’s home on the edge of the Brisbane River (Maiwar) was also the Story Place of Kuril, the native water rat. The country the artwork sits on, the land between the Brisbane River and GOMA, represents a gateway between these two worlds. Many children will not have heard of Kuril, and one of the central ideas about the work is creating greater awareness of the thousands of years of Indigenous history of this site, Kurilpa. The journey of the work begins with Kuril’s ‘hose hideout’, where audiences will discover Kuril nestled in the end of the hose attachment – an urban substitute for his native burrow.
Nell also mentioned the strong environmental messages in the work:
Visitors may notice there is no tap attached to the hose, rather, the illusion of water is conveyed by the form of the hose, prompting the young viewer to ask where the water comes from. In essence, The Big Hose marries themes of nature with the urban and built environment in a uniquely Australian way. The Big Hose is also full of joy – fun to look at, fun to play on and from there fun-learning can begin.
The Big Hose 2022–25 joins five other fascinating artworks by leading Australian and international artists surrounding GOMA: Scott Redford The High/ Perpetual Xmas, No Abstractions 2008; Lee Mingwei The Bodhi Tree Project 2006; Judy Watson tow row 2016; Michael Parekowhai The World Turns 2011-12; and Martin Boyce We are shipwrecked and landlocked 2008-10. Extend your visit and explore the precinct at your leisure at any time and go on a sculpture walk at QAG or GOMA with us.
The Big Hose 2022–25 was made possible by private giving through the QAGOMA Foundation, including generous support from Andrew and Dr Susan King, the Neilson Foundation, Margaret Mittelheuser AM and Cathryn Mittelheuser AM, Gina Fairfax AC, Dr Shirley Hsieh and contributions to the 2022 QAGOMA Foundation Appeal.
Fabricated by UAP Foundry in Brisbane.
The Big Hose is on permanent display outside GOMA Bistro.
Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)
Brisbane, Australia
