2007-08 Report

QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY ANNUAL REPORT 2007–08

COLLECTION

ASIAN AND PACIFIC ART

The acquisition of major sculpture and installation works,

including outstanding pieces by Anish Kapoor and

Michael Parekowhai, have strengthened holdings of Asian

and Pacific art.

Anish Kapoor's

Untitled

2006–07 is a magnificent resin

fibreglass and lacquer sculpture. The scale and saturated

colour of the work, its highly reflective surface and

monumental form engage the viewer both physically and

psychologically. Currently living and working in the United

Kingdom, Kapoor is one of the most influential artists

working today.

The Horn of Africa

2006 by New Zealand artist Michael

Parekowhai is a large-scale sculpture depicting a life-size

seal balancing a concert grand piano on its nose.

Spectacular in appearance and complex in its allusions,

the work exemplifies Parekowhai's ingenious and

conceptually motivated practice. This is his most

ambitious work to date.

Zhu Weibing and Ji Wenyu's

People holding flowers

2007

is an early Chinese acquisition for the next Asia Pacific

Triennial of Contemporary Art. It is comprised of 400

individual figures measuring roughly a metre in height,

each holding a large pink flower above their head. Their

colourful faces are blank and expressionless, although

a sense of dynamism and movement is created by their

poses and the lush, tactile fabric of the flowers. Designed

as an installation, the effect of encountering this field of

human figures is mesmerising.

The contemporary Chinese collection was further

augmented with the addition of Wang Jin's

Ice 96 Central

China

1996, printed 2005. The seven photographs record

a performance project that critically responds to the

transformations of Chinese culture and society during

the 1990s, particularly the emergence of a Westernised

consumer society.

During the year a group of significant works by

contemporary Chinese artists was gifted from the

collection of Professor Nicholas Jose and Dr Claire

Roberts. Marking the second round of a generous gift

and acquisition package, most of the works date from

the 1980s and 1990s — a significant period in the

relationship between China and Australia and in the

history of the Avant-garde in China.

Matthew Ngui, one of Singapore's most prominent artists,

has lived and worked in Singapore and Perth during the

past two decades. Moving between two cultures has

formed a key reference for his work: his performances,

installations, drawings and video works consistently

question perception and the singular point of view.

Swimming: at least 8 points of view

2007 is one of the

few stand-alone video works in Ngui's oeuvre. A dramatic

four-channel video installation, it transforms an everyday

action into a sublime visual experience and augments the

Gallery's growing collection of major video works.

Three photographs from Malaysian artist Yee I-Lann's

2007 'Kinabalu' series represent her most recent works,

drawing on her own cultural heritage. Using digitally

manipulated photographs, Yee has created a narrative

series which reflects on identity and land, modernisation

and the power of myth. It is a substantial addition to the

holdings of contemporary Asian photography.

Lisa Reihana is recognised as one of the major Maori

contemporary artists in New Zealand, where she has

played a pioneering role in the development of film and

multimedia art. The five photographs from her 'Digital

Marae' series are a continuation of a project begun in

2001 of which the Gallery owns a complete set. These

new, intriguing portraits present male Maori ancestors in

various guises and settings.

A significant addition to the Asian art collection was the

acquisition of

Pair of six fold screens: Scenes from the

Genji Monogatari (Tale of Genji)

from the late seventeenth

century (Edo period), attributed to the Hasegawa School.

Following traditional pictorial conventions, the artist has

created a beautifully balanced composition with superbly

detailed imagery, conveying the restrained emotion and

graceful sentiment of the

Tale of Genji

INTERNATIONAL ART

The Gallery's collection of international art was

significantly enhanced with the acquisition of Australian-

born artist Ron Mueck's

In bed

2005. After working as a

puppet-maker for children's television and working in the

United States with Jim Henson (

The Muppets

), Mueck

gained recognition as a visual artist with his inclusion in

the 1997 Royal Academy exhibition 'Sensation: Young

British Artists from the Saatchi Collection'.

Untitled

2007 featured in Katharina Grosse's exhibition,

'Picture Park', at GoMA. This significant work by Grosse

is emblematic of the artist's ongoing concern with the

interactions between different disciplines, including in

particular painting, architecture and history. Its spherical

forms comprise what might be thought of as enlarged

versions of the atomised particles of paint emitted by

the spray gun.

Kota Ezawa has described his practice as a form of 'video

archaeology'. Drawing on video footage from sources as

diverse as the 1990s OJ Simpson trial to the 1969 moon

landing, Ezawa recasts his subjects as graphically

simplified animations.

Lennon Sontag Beuys

2004 is a

three-channel animated video projection based on

footage of well-known public speeches by John Lennon,

Susan Sontag and Joseph Beuys — three ideologues of

different art forms (music, literature and visual art

respectively), and representatives of three nations

whose entangled modern histories have shaped the

contemporary Western world.

Brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman came to promience in

the mid 1990s alongside their so-called 'YBA' (Young

British Artist) peers Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Sam

Taylor-Wood. An underlying philosophy for the Chapman

brothers has been their disavowal of the idea that art

emerges from unique and original creative thoughts.

Instead they regard their art practice as situated within an

ongoing process of exchange with existing images and

forms found in both contemporary and historical visual

culture.

Etchasketchathon

2005 derives its title from the

popular children's drawing toy of the 1980s. It 'rectifies'

idyllic childhood scenes by transforming them into

nightmarish visions populated by smiling children,

dismembered bodies and rotting flesh.

Jan Nelson

Australia b.1955

Walking in tall grass, Martin

2007

Oil and liquin on linen

83 x 60cm

Purchased 2007. The Queensland

Government's Gallery of Modern Art

Acquisitions Fund

Viscopy, Sydney, 2008