If you’re a local or visiting Brisbane, whether you have a spare 30 minutes to drop in for a dose of art at either of our neighbouring buildings — the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art — or a leisurely 3 hours to wander both sites, here are some suggestions to make the most of your visit.
Pick and choose your preferences from the range of contemporary and historical Australian, Asian, Pacific and international art on display.There’s something for everyone, whether you’re aged 3 or 103.
Queensland Art Gallery
The Queensland Art Gallery building opened in 1982 as part of the first stage of the Queensland Cultural Centre at South Bank; until then, the Gallery never had a purpose-built permanent home. Designed around the Brisbane River, the spectacular Watermall’s cavernous interior runs parallel to the waterway threading its way through the ‘River City’.
Collection highlight: 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). Considered a quintessential image of Brisbane, the clouds of purple blooms capture the attention of Gallery visitors and has ensured the painting’s enduring appeal. Hanging alongside is Monday morning 1912 by Vida Lahey (illustrated), another of the Gallery’s most loved works. The painting of two young women doing the family wash, once a common sight in Australian households, now a recording of a by-gone era.
Interesting facts: Under the jacaranda depicts the first jacaranda tree grown in Australia, planted in Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens in 1864; while the laundry room depicted in Monday morning was located in the artist’s home, at the time piped water and built-in concrete troughs were considered modern conveniences!
Location: Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries (10-13)
R Godfrey Rivers Under the jacaranda 1903
Vida Lahey Monday morning 1912
Collection highlight: Contemporary Australian art
The jewellery-like intimacy of Fiona Hall’s Australian set (from ‘Paradisus Terrestris Entitled’ series) 1998–99 (illustrated) is a juxtaposition between culture and nature; human body parts combine with native botanical species.
Interesting fact: The artist has transformed humble disposal sardine-tins by engraving, chasing and burnishing in the tradition of the colonial silversmith.
Location: Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries (10-13)
Fiona Hall Australian set 1998–99
Collection highlight: 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. Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa was a well-known artist and respected Elder of Anmatyerre/Arrernte heritage. Goanna Story c.1973-74 is from one of the traditional dreaming stories, and this work shows four of the reptiles moving towards a waterhole.
Interesting fact: The artwork has a strong sense of symmetry; one half is a mirror image of the other.
Location: Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries (10-13)
Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa Goanna Story c.1973–74
Collection highlight: International art
Surrounded by works from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (illustrated) and Edgar Degas (illustrated), La Belle Hollandaise (The beautiful Dutch girl) 1905 (illustrated) is a key painting that marks a transition from the subdued hues and emaciated figures of Pablo Picasso’s ‘blue period’ to the serenity and warmth of the ‘rose period’. Picasso must have been pleased with the result — he inscribed the work at the top left as a gift to Paco Durio, his dear friend and neighbour in the Parisian suburb of Montmartre.
Interesting fact: Pablo Picasso's La belle Hollandaise was 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.
Location: International Art Collection, Philip Bacon Galleries (7-9)
Pablo Picasso La Belle Hollandaise 1905
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Tete de fille (Head of a girl) 1892
Edgar Degas Three dancers at a dance class c.1888-90
Exhibition highlight: The Asia Pacific Triennial
For more than three decades, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art has showcased an evolving mix of the most exciting and important developments in contemporary art from across Australia, Asia and the Pacific. During the 11th chapter, wander through Thai artist Mit Jai Inn’s suspended canvas tunnel in the Watermall (illustrated), its immense hanging ribbon panels inhabit a space between ground and ceiling; then onto Papua New Guinea’s display by collective Haus Yuriyal (illustrated).
Interesting fact: The inaugural Asia Pacific Triennial in 1993 was the first project of its kind in the world to focus on the contemporary art of Asia and the Pacific. ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ which features the work of 70 artists, collectives and projects from 30 countries is at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art until 27 April 2025.
Location: Queensland Art Gallery
Mit Jai Inn Tunnel #APT 2024
Haus Yuriyal 2024
Roy and Matilda
For those visiting with children of all ages, drop by the home of Roy and Matilda, two mice who one day decided to visit the Queensland Art Gallery, loved it so much, they decided to say. Just look for the letters 'R' and 'M' carved into their beautiful wooden front door.
Interesting fact: One day, a man who worked in the Galley’s workshop restoring and carving frames found they were living here and decided to make them a special little front door.
Location: Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries (10-13)
Watermall & Sculpture Courtyard
The Queensland Art Gallery’s grand Watermall — a visitor favourite for both regular art lovers and tourists — extends far beyond the Gallery’s interior; past the Dandelion fountains (illustrated) through to the reflection pond and Sculpture Courtyard. Why not relax and enjoy a quiet moment of contemplation at the adjoining QAG Cafe.
Interesting facts:...
Opening on Saturday 30 November 2024, the 11th chapter of the Gallery’s flagship exhibition series — the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art — will feature seventy artists, collectives and projects from more than 30 countries.
We look back at all ten of the previous Triennial’s memorable installations on the Queensland Art Gallery Watermall, dating back to the first Triennial in 1993 — and give you a peek at the current installation by Thai artist Mit Jai Inn, featuring in our 11th Triennial.
The Queensland Art Gallery was designed in harmony with the Brisbane River, and the Watermall runs parallel to the waterway that threads through the city. This grand indoor water feature is a visitor favourite — the perfect backdrop for spectacular contemporary art installations. Do you have a favourite Watermall artwork from the Triennial?
11th Asia Pacific Triennial | 30 November 2024 – 27 April 2025
Now on display for the 11th chapter of the Triennial, Thai artist Jai Inn has carefully orchestrated a series of works to inhabit the Watermall. Drawing on the structures of suspended ‘totems’, a scroll and a tunnel, Jai Inn’s response to the space’s unique architecture explores time and transformation. With these large-scale sculptural works, the artist has created layered views that reveal and conceal to enact portals between worlds.
10th Asia Pacific Triennial | 4 December 2021 – 25 April 2022
Kamruzzaman Shadhin has been at the forefront of developing new possibilities for contemporary art in Bangladesh. Suspended over the Watermall for the tenth Triennial in 2021, The fibrous souls was a collaborative installation with the Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts. Constructed with 70 giant shikas — embroidered, reticulated bags typically made of jute strings that are tied to an exposed beam — the installation explores part of Bengal’s colonial history, inspired by the families that followed the railway tracks after the British East India Company established the Eastern Bengal Railway. Shadhin worked with 13 women along with a handful of local craftspeople to create the pots and connecting jute ropes that laid out a map of the historic railway.
9th Asia Pacific Triennial | 24 November 2018 – 28 April 2019
My forest is not your garden was a collaborative installation by Singaporean artists Donna Ong and Robert Zhao Renhui. A critical take on attitudes towards the natural world of the tropics, this work for the ninth Triennial in 2018 integrated Ong’s evocative arrangements of artificial flora and tropical exotica — titled From the tropics with love — with Zhao’s The Nature Museum, an archival display narrating aspects of Singapore’s natural history, both authentic and fabricated.
8th Asia Pacific Triennial | 21 November 2015 – 10 April 2016
South Korean artist Haegue Yang transforms spaces through light, colour, objects and movement to ensure a constant shift in perception and experience. Installed for the eighth Triennial in 2015, Sol LeWitt Upside Down — Open Modular Cubes (Small), Expanded 958 Times consists of 1012 white Venetian blinds, arranged into grids and suspended from the Watermall ceiling in an inverted and expanded rendition of the ‘open modular cube’ structures, signature works of American conceptual artist Sol LeWitt (1928–2007). Yang has created an arrangement of ready-made household blinds whose overlapping slats may be read as either open or closed, depending on the position of the viewer.
7th Asia Pacific Triennial | 8 December 2012 – 14 April 2013
Ressort by Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping, was one of the signature works of the seventh Triennial in 2012. The gigantic aluminium snake skeleton dominated the Watermall as it spiraled 53 metres from the ceiling to the floor, coming down from the sky with its skull floating just above the water, metaphorically linking sky and water. 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.
6th Asia Pacific Triennial | 5 December 2009 – 5 April 2010
Pakistani artist Ayaz Jokhio’s major architectural project in the Watermall for the sixth Triennial in 2009, entitled a thousand doors and windows too…, took the form of an octagonal building, with each wall containing a mihrab, the niche in a mosque that points toward Mecca. The soaring structure takes its inspiration from a verse by Bhittai, the great Sindhi Sufi poet of the late Mughal era. Jokhio considers the work a piece of ‘conceptual architecture’; a physical translation of Bhittai’s expression of the omnipresence of God.
5th Asia Pacific Triennial | 2 December 2006 – 27 May 2007
Composed of 270 000 crystal pieces, Boomerang — first exhibited in the fifth Triennial in 2006 — is an imposing example of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s strategy of working playfully across cultural contexts. Shaped after the iconic Australian Aboriginal throwing tool, this oversized, intensely lit, waterfall-style chandelier filled the soaring space above the Watermall as if it were in a hotel’s grand foyer. Ai Weiwei has a history of bringing everyday things into art museum settings. He has long acknowledged the influence of early-twentieth-century artist Marcel Duchamp, who famously brought otherwise banal objects into a gallery and declared them art, thereby creating the ‘readymade’. Accordingly, Boomerang takes the chandelier, with its connotations of wealth and opulence, and enlarges it to absurd scale, shaping it into the motif of an object associated with exotic conceptions of Australia.
4th Asia Pacific Triennial | 12 September 2002 – 27 January 2003
Narcissus garden is an incarnation of the reflective work that has held Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s attention for many years. Kusama creates a floating carpet of mirrored spheres, the balls reflecting the building’s architecture back onto itself from an infinite number of angles, creating a world that is both trapped and indefinite. Comprising approximately 2000 mirrored balls, the spectacular and mesmerising installation is shaped by both the currents and the limits of the water.
3th Asia Pacific Triennial...
