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.
In May 2022, the QAGOMA Trustees announced the first artworks to be acquired through The Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Charitable Trust, established in 2018 with the extraordinary $35 million bequest of the late Win Schubert AO (1937–2017). Here, we introduce these landmark acquisitions.
Win Schubert AO was one of the Gallery’s greatest supporters during her lifetime, enabling the acquisition of over 100 works of art. A carefully planned gift in her Will — and the most substantial philanthropic gift in the Gallery’s history — established The Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Charitable Trust to enable the acquisition of major Australian and international artworks, created in or after 1880, for the advancement of art education in Australia. Thanks to Mrs Schubert’s inspiring generosity, two ambitious large-scale works by internationally renowned artists Olafur Eliasson and Tacita Dean CBE, and two series of intricate and enthralling low-relief sculptures by senior Australian artist Fiona Hall AO, have now found a permanent home at QAGOMA.
Watch | Olafur Eliasson ‘Riverbed’ 2014
Visitors to the Gallery’s 2019 exhibition ‘Water’ will recall Olafur Eliasson’s spectacular indoor landscape of rock and flowing water. Riverbed 2014 welcomes us to a space of play and imagination. Within this Icelandic-inspired terrain, we become conscious of how we walk, of the path we choose, the sound of our footsteps, the musical resonance of stone upon stone, and the pace of our journey.
Eliasson gives no instructions to the visitors to his work. Rather, we are invited to cross the landscape on our own terms. Some will follow other people in the space, others might climb straight to the water source, and many will find their own path across the rocks. Riverbed quietly reveals these small, individual decisions, while also reflecting how well we navigate communal space within a group.
Eliasson asks: ‘When is the work contemplative and when is it disturbing?’Is Riverbed a primordial landscape, anticipating life on Earth, or might it be the last precious water source in a barren, post-apocalyptic future? Either way, the trickling stream reminds us of water’s vital importance to all ecologies, now and into the future.
Olafur Eliasson ‘Riverbed’ 2014
Watch | Tacita Dean ‘Chalk Fall’ 2018
A precipice between land, sea and air is the subject of Tacita Dean’s Chalk Fall 2018. In this monumental chalkboard drawing, Dean details the iconic White Cliffs of Dover on England’s southern coastline, themselves largely composed of chalk.
At first glance, the rock face seems solid, a natural fortress. Looking closely, however, we see the ocean waves churning at its base, the central portion of which is giving way to the force of the waves and falling into the water. The white of the foaming waves intermingles with the white dust of the fragmenting cliff.
Chalk Fall considers other types of fragility. The famous cliffs are increasingly affected by climate change and rising sea levels, and their natural pace of erosion has multiplied tenfold over the last 150 years. Created in 2018, two years after the Brexit referendum, the work also reflects on the dissolving connections between the United Kingdom and Europe. The cliffs face the northern coast of France, which lies only 34 kilometres away. In Chalk Fall, we see this outward-facing edge crumble.
For Dean, the creation of this chalkboard drawing was intensely personal. Made over a period of months, she worked from top to bottom using a cherry picker. At the beginning of the process, her close friend Keith Collins was diagnosed with a tumour: ‘Every day, I wrote the date on the board, chalking chalk with chalk in a sedimentation of time and emotion that had a terrible constructive intensity’. Chalk Fall is a landscape, a history painting, a journal, and a record of a friendship.
Tacita Dean ‘Chalk Fall’ 2018
Fiona Hall ‘Australian set’ 1998–99 and ‘Sri Lankan set’ 1999 (from ‘Paradisus Terrestris’ series)
Leading Australian artist Fiona Hall uses a range of mediums to explore the nexus between nature and culture, creating complex artworks that tackle compelling contemporary concerns. In these interrelated works, she asks us to consider ourselves in relation to others across both human and natural domains.
Diminutive and intellectually ambitious, these artworks epitomise Hall’s dedication to expanding the capacity of her materials. In this case, she has repurposed aluminium from soft-drink cans, pressing the metal into shape with a repoussé technique to create low-relief sculptures of human body parts and sexual organs, and encasing them in sardine tins crowned with culturally significant flora. The unexpected couplings suggest connections between the reproductive systems of humans and plants, acknowledging the botanical classification system developed by Carolus Linnaeus around 1735.
The series title ‘Paradisus Terrestris’ (‘Paradise of the Earth’) is the collective name for a body of work that occupied Hall for ten years from 1989. The sculptures acquired through the Trust are the third and fourth iterations in the series: the Australian set addresses debates around native title; while the Sri Lankan set alludes to the civil war that afflicted Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009.
Referencing the postcolonial histories of these two countries, the title of each sculpture includes the respective Indigenous Australian or Sri Lankan (Tamil and Sinhala) names for the species depicted, its corresponding Linnean classification, and its common English name. Hall has commented on this multilingual methodology in relation to her earlier work Paradisus Terrestris Entitled 1996–97 (National Gallery of Victoria), explaining:
this land [Australia] and the plants that grow in it and the people whose land that it originally was, have together a very long history of co-existence that must be acknowledged and respected. The multiple parallel systems of names seems to eloquently indicate widely different outlooks and levels of awareness.
Exploring the fragility of the natural world and our relationship to it, these significant acquisitions are a fitting testament to Mrs Schubert’s tremendous generosity and desire for art to inspire curiosity, prompt contemplation and enrich the...
Looking for a free weekend outing for the family, a spot to socilaise with friends, or maybe a relaxing space to spend some 'me time'? Head to Brisbane's most visited galleries — the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) and Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) are both nestled beside the Brisbane River and just a short stroll along the river-front from the South Bank Parklands.
QAG and GOMA are just 150 metres apart — each has a distinct artwork display focus and unique architectural personalities. QAG's characteristic concrete brutalist exterior, emerging from the modernist movement, won the most outstanding public building in Australia when it opened in 1982. GOMA, on the other hand, is defined by a dual black box/white box architectural arrangement, with a bold pavilion-style design influenced by the traditional ‘Queenslander’ home. It won both National and State awards for Public Architecture when it opened in 2006. Both buildings, in their own way, changed the face of the city’s South Bank waterfront.
What they have in common, however, is together they offer a creative and cultural hub for Brisbane and Queensland — a place where people come together to relax, to be inspired and where imagination and creativity spark as visitors young and old, from different walks of life, enjoy a stunning mix of Australian, Pacific, Asian and International art.
Queensland Art Gallery
Gallery of Modern Art
These adjacent buildings are easy to wander through, their spacious interiors exuding calm and allowing rejuvenating daylight to stream inside. QAG speaks to the Brisbane River, with its spectacular cavernous interior and central Watermall parallel with the river just outside, while GOMA and it's vast central Long Galley, is about connecting with the city, every time you step out of an exhibition space you re-engage with the Brisbane skyline and its multiple river vistas.
So now it’s up to you to choose your weekend escape — QAG, GOMA, or maybe both? Visit QAG to reacquaint yourself to our Collection favourites on permanent display — maybe it's the Picasso, Degas or Toulouse-Lautrec, or our best-loved Australian artists, or the exhibitions currently installed at GOMA.
Queensland Art Gallery
Collection highlights: International art
Surrounded by works from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Camille Pissarro (illustrated), and Edgar Degas (illustrated), La Belle Hollandaise (The beautiful Dutch girl) 1905 (illustrated) is a key painting by Pablo Picasso, the work donated to the Gallery in 1959, at the time this major work by one of the greatest living twentieth century masters set a world record price at £55,000. Watch the auction to go back in time before you visit.
Pablo Picasso La Belle Hollandaise 1905
Camille Pissarro La lessive à Éragny (Washing day at Éragny) 1901
Edgar Degas (Dancer looking at the sole of her right foot, fourth study) c.1882-1900
Collection highlights: Australian art
The work of Australian artists have been collected by the Queensland Art Gallery since its foundation in 1895, however few works in our Collection have enjoyed as much popularity as Under the jacaranda 1903 by R Godfrey Rivers (illustrated).
R Godfrey Rivers Under the jacaranda 1903
Sydney Long Spirit of the Plains 1897
E Phillips Fox The end of the story c.1911-12
Collection highlights: Contemporary Australian art
The Contemporary Australian Art Collection is rich in paintings, major installation, cross-media and moving image works which are central to contemporary art practice. The Collection includes an outstanding group of works by major Queensland artists.
Jeffrey Smart The reservoir, Centennial Park 1988
William Robinson Rainforest and mist in afternoon light 2002
Fiona Hall Australian set (from ‘Paradisus Terrestris Entitled’ series) (detail) 1998–99
Collection highlights: Indigenous Australian art
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.
Walangkura Napanangka's Untitled (Tjintjintjin) 2006 (illustrated) depicts the rockhole and cave site of Tjintjintjin, to the west of Walungurra (Kintore) in Western Australia. The symbols in this painting map out the area's geographical features, through which ancestor figure Kutungka Napanangka passed on her travels across the Gibson Desert during the creation time.
Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa's Goanna Story c.1973-74 (illustrated) is from one of the traditional dreaming stories, and this work shows four of the reptiles moving towards a waterhole.
Walangkura Napanangka Untitled (Tjintjintjin) 2006
Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa Goanna Story c.1973–74
Drawing from the Collection
On any day at QAG, get creative and pick up our free drawing materials and draw from your favourite works on display. Just grab a drawing board, paper and pencil, then take inspiration from the art around you in either the permanent Australian or International Art Collections.
QAG Cafe
If you work up an appetite on your visit, enjoy a bite to eat at the QAG Cafe. Perfect for some quiet contemplation beside the Watermall's Dandelion fountains, reflection pond and Sculpture Courtyard or head inside beside Tamika Grant-Iramu's striking landscape mural of frangipani and bougainvillea.
Gallery of Modern Art
Collection highlights: Contemporary Asian & Pacific art
Lê Thuý is a skilled practitioner of the traditional Vietnamese arts of silk and lacquer painting, the multi-part installation Echo 2024 (illustrated) evokes a ruined house.
Haji Oh's textile installation Seabird Habitats 2022 (illustrated) is a single tableau of seven suspended woven panels that map the entanglement of Korean labour in the history of colonialism in the Asia Pacific region.
Jasmine Togo-Brisby is a fourth-generation Australian South Sea Islander whose research-driven practice examines the historical practice of ‘blackbirding’, which is a romanticised colloquialism for the Pacific slave trade.
View these works until 13 July 2025
Lê Thu Echo 2023
Haji Oh Seabird Habitats 2022
Jasmine Togo-Brisby Copper Archipelago 2024
Free children activities
Children are our future appreciation group, we welcome families with children of all ages to the Children’s Art Centre. Visit GOMA to experience activities in collaboration by artists.
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