2004-05 Report

The Gallery’s New Wave program continued to offer tertiary students opportunities

to explore contemporary art via engaging ideas and inspiring debate. The

exhibitions ‘Blak Insights’, ‘White/Light’, ‘The Nature Machine’, ‘The Art of Fiona

Hall’ and ‘I am Making Art’ were all accompanied by New Wave programs such

as artists’ and curators’ talks, lectures and tours, screenings and discussions,

exhibition previews and weekend forums. The Collection Study Program — which

allows group access to art works in the Gallery’s Collection not on display —

continued to increase in popularity as a teaching tool for local university staff and

their students.

The Gallery’s commitment to providing a quality program of travelling exhibitions

and related support services continued in 2004–05.

‘Pop: The Continuing Influence of Popular Culture on Contemporary Art’

concluded its regional Queensland tour at the Ipswich Art Gallery in November

2004. A total of 40 316 people visited ‘Pop’ on its eight-venue tour.

A selection of contemporary works from the Gallery’s 2003 exhibition ‘Story Place:

Indigenous Art of Cape York and the Rainforest’ continued on their seven-venue

regional tour, following a launch at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery in May 2004.

‘Story Place’ was Australia’s first major exhibition of historical and contemporary

art from Cape York Peninsula and continued the Gallery’s commitment to profiling

the work of Indigenous Australian artists. Cairns Regional Gallery’s opening

celebrations featured performances, music, artist talks and workshops, and a

moving opening speech by Thancoupie, a respected senior ceramic artist from the

west Cape. The exhibition then travelled to Rockhampton, Gympie, Mackay,

Gladstone and Townsville, where the tour concluded at Perc Tucker Regional

Gallery after being seen by more than 28 000 people.

‘Streeton: Works from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection’, an intimate

exhibition comprising a group of the artist’s distinctive works acquired over a 70-

year period, explores the artist’s preoccupations with a national art and his

relationship with the Australian landscape. The exhibition tour was launched at the

Outback Regional Gallery in Winton in April 2005, before embarking on an eight-

venue tour. Accompanied by an online education kit and a full-colour room

brochure, ‘Streeton’ will tour to venues in Longreach, Gladstone, Noosa, Hervey

Bay, Miles and Toowoomba, before it concludes its tour in Stanthorpe in July

2006.

In addition to several significant exhibitions currently in

development — Australia’s first comprehensive exhibition of

work by Andy Warhol (2007) and a survey exhibition of

contemporary Californian art (2008) — the Gallery has also

been planning key programs for 2005–06. These exhibitions

include ‘Sparse Shadows, Flying Pearls: A Japanese Screen

Revealed’, which focuses on a pair of seventeenth-century

Japanese screens by Unkoko Toeki (1591–1644) from the

Gallery’s Collection; ‘Kiss of the Beast’, an exhibition and

cinema program that explores the origins of the 1933 film

King Kong

in art, science, literature and popular culture; and

‘Barbara Heath: Jeweller to the Lost’, a survey of this

Queensland jeweller’s practice from the mid 1980s to 2005.

During the first half of 2005, Gallery curators undertook

extensive international travel to conduct research, to consult

with artists and arts workers, and to promote the fifth

‘Asia–Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT 2006). To

date, 14 artists have accepted invitations to participate in

APT 2006 — Ai Weiwei (China), Anish Kapoor (India/UK),

The Long March (Collective, China), Ozawa Tsuyoshi

(Japan), Stephen Page (Australia), Michael Parekowhai (New

Zealand), John Pule (Niue/New Zealand), Kumar Shahani

(India), Talvin Singh (India/UK), Michael Stevenson (New

Zealand), Masami Teraoka (Japan/USA), Sima Urale

(Samoa/New Zealand), Yang Fudong (China) and Yang

Zhenzhong (China) — and preparations are underway to

secure the involvement of up to 20 more artists for the

project.

In June 2005, the Honourable Anna Bligh,

, Minister for

Education and Minister for the Arts, announced that APT

2006 would open in late 2006 and would be the first major

exhibition at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art.

trained in the installation of new video work acquired for the

Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. Kathryn Weir (Head of

Cinema) travelled to South Korea and China to attend the

Busan and Shanghai biennials and the Pusan International

Film Festival.

In January, Elliott Murray (Head of Design, Web and

Multimedia) was awarded the 2005 Darling Travel Grant

(Global). He travelled to the United States to investigate new

design trends and methodologies to contribute to the design

of new Gallery publications and to the Gallery’s two-site

identity. In May, Suhanya Raffel (Head of Asian, Pacific and

International Art) was awarded a Smithsonian Fellowship to

work with colleagues at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the

Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. In June, Nicholas

Chambers (Assistant Curator, Contemporary International

Art) travelled to New Haven, Connecticut, to undertake a

residential fellowship at the Yale Center for British Art. He

also travelled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to continue

research for the Gallery’s forthcoming ‘Warhol’ exhibition.

Publications for educational and children’s audiences were a

focus of the Gallery’s publishing unit during the reporting

year, as was the redevelopment of the Gallery’s magazine,

Artlines

. Education resource kits were produced for ‘The Art

of Fiona Hall’ and ‘Streeton: Works from the Queensland Art

Gallery Collection’, while a room brochure was also

published for regional audiences for the Streeton travelling

exhibition.

Kuril’s Deadly Insights

, an activity book for

children and their families, was produced in association with

the ‘Blak Insights: Contemporary Indigenous Art from the

Queensland Art Gallery Collection’ exhibition, while a

children’s activity book and festival guide were published for

‘The Nature Machine: Contemporary Art, Nature and

Technology’ exhibition for kids.

In addition, the Gallery’s major exhibition for 2004–05, ‘The

Art of Fiona Hall’, was accompanied by a 192-page full-

colour monograph written by curator Julie Ewington (Head

of Australian Art), and published by Piper Press.

Artlines

, formerly a 20-page members-only magazine, was

redeveloped during the reporting period to inject a fresh

perspective into a familiar format. The magazine will continue

to feature articles exploring both historical and contemporary

art but, from August 2005, it will more than double in size,

feature specially commissioned issues-based writing, and be

published three times annually (each with a theme). It will

also be distributed nationally. The first issue will focus on the

moving image in contemporary art.

INITIATIVES AND SERVICES

REGIONAL EXHIBITIONS

EXHIBITIONS IN DEVELOPMENT

PUBLICATIONS

In August 2004, under the auspices of the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art’s

new centre for contemporary art conservation, the Gallery hosted 12 paper

conservators from around Australia as part of the workshop Removal of Pressure

Sensitive Tapes and Tape Stains. The workshop was presented by Linda Stiber

Morenus (Library of Congress, Washington DC) and Elissa O’Loughlin (Walters Art

Museum, Baltimore). The Gallery also hosted international conservation intern

Sheila Payaqui for eight weeks, as part of the University of Delaware–Winterthur

Museum graduate conservation program.

To increase his knowledge of framing for the exhibition, ‘Streeton: Works from the

Queensland Art Gallery Collection’, Robert Zilli (Conservation Framer) travelled to

regional galleries in the Mornington Peninsula, Bendigo, Ballarat and Castlemaine,

as well as to the National Gallery of Victoria, in Melbourne, to document original

Streeton frames, in particular works dating from the 1880s and the 1920s. In

addition, to assist with the growing conservation needs of the Gallery’s audiovisual

collection, Amanda Pagliarino (Conservator, Sculpture) commenced a Graduate

Certificate in Audio Visual Archiving through Charles Sturt University.

Conservators assisted with research for works travelling with the ‘Story Place’

exhibition, and structural changes in contemporary Indigenous wooden sculptures

were analysed for the duration of the tour. Other research projects continued,

including investigating low temperature (freezing) treatments as an alternative to

fumigation — to aid the eradication of pests in contemporary Indigenous

sculptures made from painted, air-dried timbers originating in far north

Queensland.

A number of Gallery staff undertook international travel for the purposes of

research and professional development, including travel specifically to research

and promote the fifth ‘Asia–Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT 2006).

Anne Carter (Head of Conservation) attended the International Institute for

Conservation’s Modern Art, New Museums congress in Bilbao, Spain. Julie

Ewington (Head of Australian Art) presented a paper on the Australian artist Fiona

Hall at the annual conference of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand

in Auckland. Judy Gunning (Head of Information and Publishing Services)

presented a paper at the Asia Art Archive’s Hong Kong workshop, Archiving the

Contemporary: Documenting Asian Art Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow. Don

Heron (Head of Exhibitions and Display) travelled to England and Denmark to be

The Queensland Art Gallery continued to foster research into the Collection, while

the Gallery’s Research Library continued to support both Collection and program

development. Results of Gallery research were made accessible to the public

through a wide variety of publications, websites and online resources, wall text and

information panels, room brochures, children’s activity books and video

documentation. The Gallery also continued its program of regional initiatives,

including exhibition tours and professional support for regional galleries, while in turn

the Gallery was supported by Friends and Foundation activities — in the promotion

and appreciation of the visual arts, and in the year-round fundraising supporting the

Gallery’s Collection and exhibition program.

CONSERVATION RESEARCH

RESEARCH AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT