2013-14 Report

10 Queensland Art Gallery Board of Trustees Annual Report 2013–14

OUTCOMES

Develop the Queensland Art Gallery

Collection (‘the Collection’) in accordance

with our acquisitions policy.

The Gallery’s Collection was central to the exhibitions and

programs presented this year. Collection development,

following the acquisitions policy, saw 465 works acquired,

bringing the total number of works held by the Gallery to

16 550.

Australian Art

This year, 242 works were acquired for the

Australian Art to

1975

collection, including numerous works on paper by Lloyd

Rees and photographs by Queensland photographer Richard

Stringer. Significant acquisitions included Dick Watkins’s major

abstract painting

The Mooche

1968, often cited as the artist’s

best work, which was gifted by James C Sourris,

. Prized

for its historic significance to Queensland, Sidney Nolan’s

painting

Platypus Bay, Fraser Island

1947 complements the

Gallery’s existing works on the subject of Fraser Island and

the associated story of Eliza Fraser.

The

Queensland Heritage

collection grew with the addition

of a remarkable set of postcards from the 1880s to 1920s

featuring images of Queensland.

The

Contemporary Australian Art

collection was strengthened

with the acquisition of 46 works; nine of the artists whose

works were collected were from Queensland. Highlights

included a major new work by Fiona Hall,

Ghost net

2011,

and an important late work by the infuential potter Gwyn

Hanssen Pigott,

Trail with dark beakers

2008–13. The QAGOMA

Foundation’s Annual Appeal successfully raised funds to

acquire

Sergeant P, after Afghanistan

2012 by Ben Quilty.

For the

Indigenous Australian Art

and

Indigenous Fibre Art

collections, 31 works were acquired, among them works by

five Queensland artists. Important acquisitions included Fiona

Foley’s word sculpture

DISPERSED

2008, which challenges

the viewer to refect on a dark chapter in Queensland’s history,

and Shirley Macnamara’s

Skullcap

2013, purchased with

funds from Gina Fairfax. Based on customary funerary regalia

worn by Aboriginal women,

Skullcap

honours the Aboriginal

men who fought and died for Australia in two world wars.

Commissioned with funds from Anne Best, Dhuwarrwarr

Marika’s hollow log memorial pole

Larrakitj — Milngurr

2014

depicts Milngurr, the sacred well at Yalangbarra in north-

eastern Arnhem Land where the Djang’kawu ancestors

created fresh water, life, sacred law and language.

Asian and Pacific Art

The

Asian Art

department developed focus areas of Japanese

art and artworks exploring religion and faith. A diverse group

of 17 works was acquired, including a Thai Buddhist bronze

bust from the fifteenth century, two Indian miniature paintings

depicting scenes from the Ramayana, and seven prints by the

renowned Japanese artist Ichiryusai Hiroshige.

Among 48 works acquired for the

Contemporary Asian

Art

collection was Cai Guo-Qiang’s extraordinary

Heritage

2013, commissioned for the artist’s solo exhibition at GOMA

and acquired with funds donated by Win Schubert,

and the QAGOMA Foundation. Works by Nobuyoshi Araki,

Yoko Asakai, Chim↑Pom, Teppei Kaneuji, Sachiko Kazama,

Meiro Koizumi, Daido Moriyama and Tomoko Yoneda were

acquired in preparation for a major exhibition profiling the

Gallery’s collection of contemporary Japanese art. Yasumasa

Morimura’s photograph

White Darkness

1994–2008 was

acquired for inclusion in the forthcoming ‘The 8th Asia Pacific

Triennial of Contemporary Art’.

The

Pacific Art

collection was augmented with 31 new

acquisitions, including works by leading New Zealand

artists as well as works referencing customary practices in

Melanesia. Highlights included two groups of photographs by

New Zealand photographer Ans Westra documenting Māori

communities in the 1960s, two large photographs by New

Zealand artist Greg Semu, and a painting by Simon Gende

for inclusion in an upcoming exhibition focusing on the art

of Papua New Guinea.

International Art and Australian Cinémathèque

Some 26 works were acquired for the

International Art

to 1975

collection, notably twentieth-century modern art

photography, eighteenth-century earthenware and porcelain,

and French post-impressionist prints.

The Gallery actively pursued the acquisition of 24 works by

International Contemporary

artists from Africa, the Middle

East, and Central and South America. These included a

large watercolour by Barthélémy Toguo, three paintings

and a photograph by Otobong Nkanga and photographs by

Yto Barrada, François-Xavier Gbré, Kiluanji Kia Henda and

Uche Okpa-Iroha, all acquired with the generous support

of Tim Fairfax,

. Four

Biosphere

works by Argentine artist

Tomás Saraceno, which were displayed in ‘Harvest’, and

Sports

Internationaux

by Bodys Isek Kingelez from the Democratic

Expand, exhibit, publish on and care for our Collection

HIGHLIGHTS

• 465 works were acquired for the Collection.

• ‘My Country, I Still Call Australia Home:

Contemporary Art from Black Australia’ was

the Gallery’s largest exhibition of contemporary

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art to date.

• Cai Guo-Qiang’s

Heritage

2013 was acquired

for the Collection.