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
Looking for an artwork or artist from our Collection?
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.
Ignite a child's natural curiosity when you visit. Discover a wonderful menagerie of animals, some easy to spot; others waiting to be found. Did you know there's a shark living in the art gallery? Find our playful pigs, go bird watching, or keep an eye out for a pack of polar bears!
From the earliest paintings to today's contemporary works, animals have featured in art. Go on a self-guided animal art trail with us at the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) and Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA).
Both our buildings are nestled beside the Brisbane River and are just a short stroll from each other, we're also close to South Bank Parklands to extend your day even further.
ANOTHER SELF-GUIDED ANIMAL ART TRAIL: Great and Small: Kindred Creatures in Indigenous Australian Art
Watch out for the shark!
Start your self-guided animal art trail
In this selection of animals — from the two-legged, the four-legged, to the many legged kind — you'll find QAGOMA has them all in painting, sculpture, jewellery, and decorative objects. How many more can you find?
Queensland Art Gallery
Find two mice who love art
Roy and Matilda are two mice who love art galleries. When visiting one day, they set about making a cosy home. A man who worked in the Galley restoring and carving frames found they were living here and decided to make them a special monogrammed front door. See if the're home when you visit.
Location: Gallery 11. Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries, Queensland Art Gallery
Fifteen dancing brolgas... can you count them all?
Brolgas are known for their intricate dance and trumpeting sound. This painting shows people and birds united by music.
Nearby: Find the Australian Kelpie and the shark.
Location: Gallery 11. Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries, Queensland Art Gallery
Find the restful Australian Kelpie
Locate our celestial shark
Spot our white dove
Birds regularly appear in paintings. As a child this artist was a frequent visitor to Sydney’s Taronga Park Zoo and developed a lifelong love of animals and the natural world.
Location: Gallery 12. Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries, Queensland Art Gallery
Can you locate all the camel pieces?
This work is playful and witty, the segmented 'Jumble Animals' take inspiration from the back of Kellogg’s breakfast cereal boxes which were designed to be cut out and reassembled by children, like a jigsaw. In this version, it's a little harder as you have to piece it together in your mind.
Location: Gallery 13. Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries, Queensland Art Gallery
Pick out the four goannas
This painting is from one of the traditional Indigenous Australian dreaming stories, and this work shows four goanna's moving towards a waterhole. The work has a strong sense of symmetry, one half is a mirror image of the other.
Location: Gallery 13. Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries, Queensland Art Gallery
Go bird watching
Head back down the Gallery on the way to the International Art Collection and find all the native animals carved into the sideboard, then drop by our Red-tailed Black Cockatoos.
Location: Gallery 10. Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries, Queensland Art Gallery
Search for all the birds, we count 10
This screen of birds depicts change by including all four seasons within a singular landscape — from a snowy winter scene to the blooms of spring. How many birds can you find?
Nearby: Find a little green caterpiller
Location: Gallery 7. International Art Collection, Philip Bacon Galleries, Queensland Art Gallery
Track down the green caterpillar
Watch out for the flying dragonfly
The shapes and rhythms of nature inspired the style Art Nouveau. Find our collection of glass vases featuring delicately frosted animal and insects; and jewellery that take the form of a dragonfly brooch, and a comb featuring a ladybird sitting on a leaf.
Location: Gallery 7. International Art Collection, Philip Bacon Galleries, Queensland Art Gallery.
Find the lucky ladybird beetle
Discover four pigs relaxing at home
This is definitely one of the cutest little homes you will see, substituting animals for people, with one relaxing on a couch, the others playing ball in the backyard swimming pool. Look closely at all the details from the heart shaped cushions to the white swan, green frog, and garden gnome.
Nearby: Check out the housebound tortoise who appears to carry the weight of the world on his back; the sleeping baby being cared for by a tree full of animals; and the squad of ten pink roaming polar bears.
Location: Pelican Lounge. Queensland Art Gallery
Find our housebound tortoise
How many animals can you see in the tree?
Discover our squad of pink polar bears
Visit our local water dragons
The Gallery’s Watermall extends far beyond the Gallery’s interior, past the Dandelion fountains through to the reflection pond and Sculpture Courtyard. Visit the adjoining QAG Cafe and keep an eye out for our resident water dragons, Australia’s largest dragon lizard. Native to eastern Australia, they have a life span of around 20 years, though they can grow up to a metre in length, thankfully our contented residents aren’t that big. They are especially adapted to an aquatic life, and if you’re lucky you can watch them dive into the pond from the overhanging Tipuana tree and swim off using their powerful long tail.
Location: QAG Cafe. Watermall, Queensland Art Gallery
Gallery of Modern Art
Hermannsburg Pottery
In the sweeping plains and red-hued rolling ranges of the Central Desert in Northern Territory lies Ntaria (Hermannsburg). Here, a dedicated group of artists have pioneered pottery that has a distinctive style of hand-coiled clay vessels, often adorned with animals and matching...
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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