Artlines Issue 3 | 2025

qagoma.qld.gov.au/eat Enjoy the best of spring with our delightful menu in a serene setting. QAG CAFE OPEN 10.00AM – 4.00PM DAILY QAG Cafe, Queensland Art Gallery / Photograph: Joe Ruckli, QAGOMA

QAGOMA FOUNDATION ANNUAL DINNER 2025 Guests at the Foundation Annual Dinner, QAG, October 2023 / Photograph: Claudia Baxter SATURDAY 25 OCTOBER Join us for this very special occasion as we celebrate the tremendous contribution that QAGOMA’s giving community makes to the Gallery. Gather your guests to enjoy an exquisite three-course dinner in the Gallery’s iconic Watermall, a captivating performance and the awarding of the 2025 QAGOMA Medal. Foundation members will receive invitations to this special event in September. CONTENTS 05 MESSAGE 08 NEWS 17 UNDER A MODERN SUN Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s Samantha Littley 24 I HAVE LOVED/I LOVE/I WILL LOVE In conversation with Pat Hoffie Grace Jeremy 31 CHILDLIKE THINGS Destiny Deacon snaps blak Keemon Williams 35 THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS Reuben Keehan 38 KEN UNSWORTH Grace Jeremy, Emily Poore 42 SPECTRUM Emily Poore 47 THE NEILSON FOUNDATION Caitlin Morgan 50 DISABILITY AND INCLUSION AT QAGOMA Terry Deen 52 CONTEMPORARY PATRONS ON TOUR Kerry Gillett 54 PLANNING, INTUITION AND CHANCE Cosima Scales 57 WONDERSTRUCK WORKS BY SANDRA SELIG Tamsin Cull 58 WHAT’S ON 66 EVENTS CALENDAR 72 LAST WORD Above A young visitor to ‘Wonderstruck’ participating in Yayoi Kusama’s The Obliteration Room 2002–present, GOMA, July 2025 / Photograph: Katie Bennett

5 4 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 MESSAGE EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Chris Saines, Simon Wright, Simon Elliott, Tarragh Cunningham, Judy Gunning, Michael O’Sullivan PROJECT TEAM ARTLINES EDITOR / Stephanie Kennard DESIGNER / Jenna Hoskin SENIOR EDITOR / Mark Gomes SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER / Jenna Hoskin SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER / Nicholas Umek ISSN 1325-8842 3–2025 (SEP OCT NOV) Artlines is published quarterly (March, June, September and December) QAGOMA, PO Box 3686, South Brisbane Qld Australia 4101 [email protected] | qagoma.qld.gov.au © Queensland Art Gallery Board of Trustees, 2025 This work is copyright and all rights are reserved. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this magazine may be reproduced or communicated to the public in any form or by any process without prior written permission from the publisher. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Gallery, its Trustees or staff. QAGOMA MEMBERS Members of the Gallery receive Artlines as a benefit of their membership. T: +61 (0)7 3840 7278 E: [email protected] W: qagoma.qld.gov.au/members CONTACT US Information Desk | T: +61 (0)7 3840 7303 QAGOMA Foundation | T: 61+ (0)7 3840 7262 GOMA Cafe | T: +61 (0)7 3842 9916 QAGOMA Store | T: +61 (0)7 3840 7290 OPENING HOURS Open daily 10.00am – 5.00pm Open 12 noon – 5.00pm Anzac Day Closed Good Friday, Christmas Day and Boxing Day ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF COUNTRY The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Gallery stands in Brisbane. We pay respect to Aboriginal peoples, Torres Strait Islander peoples, and Elders past and present. In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge the immense creative contribution that First Australians, as the first visual artists and storytellers, make to the art and culture of this country. CULTURAL WARNING This publication may contain, with permission, the names and photographs of the deceased. Care and discretion should be exercised in using this publication in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. M MEMBERS F FOUNDATION G GENERAL ADMISSION A ACCESS C CHILDREN L LEARNING & EDUCATION QAGOMA EVENTS & PROGRAMS KEY We’ve created this key to identify when our exhibitions have related events or programs. They appear throughout the magazine, so look for your icon to find out what’s on just for you. Above Visitors to the Wonderstruck Festival on Maiwar Green, GOMA, June 2025 / Photograph: Katie Bennett Front cover Vida Lahey’s Building the bridge 1931 / Gift from the estate of Mrs Gladys Powell 1941 Back cover Olive Ashworth’s Textile sample: Great Barrier Reef (detail) c.1956 / Purchased 1996. QAG Foundation Printed with vegetable oil-based inks by Printcraft, Brisbane, on acid- and chlorine-free FSC® Mix Certified Paper. 100% recyclable. MESSAGE Visitors to the Gallery are spoiled for choice with a wealth of exhibitions having recently opened across QAG and GOMA. ‘Under a Modern Sun’ has debuted at QAG, tracking the development of Modernism in Queensland from 1930 to the 1950s through the works of renowned Australian artists Vida Lahey, William Bustard, Kenneth Macqueen, Joe Rootsey, Sidney Nolan, Max Dupain and more. The exhibition also features a rich seam of sculpture, textiles and decorative arts that further contextualise this dynamic period in the rapidly urbanising state. Curator of Australian Art Samantha Littley writes about the exhibition in these pages. Also in this issue, Grace Jeremy (Assistant Curator, Australian Art) interviews Brisbane artist and academic Pat Hoffie, who ventures into the medium of intaglio printmaking for the first time with her new body of work for the solo exhibition ‘I have loved/I love/I will love’. Meanwhile, at GOMA we present ‘Snap Blak’ — a rich display of contemporary photography from the Collection by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists: Keemon Williams (Assistant Curator, Indigenous Australian Art) contributes a focus piece on works by artist Destiny Deacon that feature in the exhibition. Of course, ‘Wonderstruck’ continues at GOMA, and we catch up with artist Gemma Smith about the drawing project central to this celebration of the extraordinary within the ordinary. At the end of June, the Gallery farewelled the longstanding Chair of its Board of Trustees, Professor Emeritus Ian O’Connor AC. Overseeing periods of record attendance and strong acclaim, Ian’s astute contributions in times of organisational change have been invaluable, as has his advocacy with an extensive network of stakeholders throughout his eight-year tenure. We are very pleased to welcome Paul Taylor, a great supporter of the Gallery who has also served on the board since March 2017, to this vital role. Paul is deeply engaged with the visual, literary and performing arts in Brisbane, and has a long record of leadership in finance and philanthropy. We wish Ian all the best in his future endeavours, and warmly welcome Paul’s elevation to Chair. This issue also celebrates the work of senior Australian artist Ken Unsworth, a decade of the Gallery’s relationship with generous benefactors the Neilson Foundation, and the first stage of ‘The God of Small Things’, a Collection-based exhibition on the many ways faith intersects with daily life. Heading into the final stretch of 2025, it’s a very exciting time for the Gallery, as we prepare to present Archie Moore’s Venice Biennale project kith and kin 2024; launch our long-awaited play sculpture, Tony Albert and Nell’s The BIG HOSE; and open a world-exclusive solo exhibition of works by leading Icelandic–Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. Chris Saines CNZM | Director

Gallery visitors during the Wonderstruck Festival, with Ngarrindjeri artist Yvonne Koolmatrie’s Bi-plane and Hot-air balloon, both 2006 (Purchased 2006 with funds from Cathryn Mittelheuser AM through the QAG Foundation); and the interactive installation In flight (Project: Another Country) 2009 by Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan, GOMA, June 2025 / Photograph: Katie Bennett

8 9 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 NEWS Local, regional and international news about QAGOMA, the Collection and its artists This summer, Icelandic–Danish artist Olafur Eliasson will invite you on an expansive, multi-sensory journey to the edges of perception in the Gallery’s major exhibition, ‘Presence’. The Brisbane exclusive will draw on Eliasson’s three-decade career as one of the world’s most influential living artists, providing opportunities for visitors to pick their way through a rocky, primordial landscape, navigate an optical puzzle, and envision the future form of the city, among other experiences. Spanning GOMA’s ground floor, the exhibition will include important early works as well as expansive site-specific installations, many on display for the first time in Australia. One early career highlight, Beauty 1993, which suspends a rainbow in a veil of mist, has recently been acquired through the Gallery for the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Charitable Trust Collection. ‘Presence’ will include From top Tromarama’s stop-motion Wattt?! (still, detail) 2010 / Purchased 2011. QAG Foundation / © Tromarama; a view of Vipoo Srivilasa’s Garden of Love 2021 interactive during APT10 Kids, GOMA, April 2025 / Courtesy: The artist / Photograph: Katie Bennett; and Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore’s kith and kin 2024 in the Australia Pavilion, Venice Biennale, August 2024 / Photograph: Andrea Rossetti / Courtesy: The artist and The Commercial / © Archie Moore UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS A suite of intriguing exhibitions opens at GOMA this quarter. ‘Archie Moore: kith and kin’ presents the Queensland artist’s Golden Lion-winning Venice Biennale project in Australia for the first time, accompanied by ‘Inscribing a Life’, a complementary exhibition that also explores how the act of mark-making can register existence, histories and time. From October, ‘Contraptions’ considers how artists use machines for play, experimentation and the hands-on exploration of ideas, eschewing digital production for the mechanical qualities of contraptions and the analogue nature of often handmade forms. Whimsy and absurdity abound in this exhibition, which is accompanied by a film program in the Australian Cinémathèque. In the Children’s Art Centre, artist Vipoo Srivilasa implores the visitor to ‘Express Yourself’ in a project reprising his 2021 Asia Pacific Triennial Kids dancing interactive Garden of Love along with new activities that explore the spectrum of human emotion. ‘Archie Moore: kith and kin’ and ‘Inscribing a Life’ are at GOMA from 27 September 2025 to 18 October 2026. ‘Contraptions’ is at GOMA from 4 October 2025 to 22 February 2026, with accompanying screenings in the Australian Cinémathèque. ‘Vipoo Srivilasa: Express Yourself’ is in the Children’s Art Centre at GOMA from 11 October 2025 to 13 September 2026. Above Olafur Eliasson / Pluriverse assembly 2021 / Installation view: The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, 2024 / © 2021 Olafur Eliasson / Courtesy: The artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles / Photograph: Zak Kelley NEWS two much-loved existing Collection works: the rocky landscape and trickling stream of the immersive installation Riverbed 2014; and The cubic structural evolution project 2004 — an all-white Lego cityscape, perpetually built and rebuilt by visitors throughout the exhibition. ‘Olafur Eliasson: Presence’ opens at GOMA on 6 December. A major publication will accompany the exhibition, available from the QAGOMA Store. OLAFUR ELIASSON: PRESENCE

11 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 10 NEWS DRAWING FESTIVAL In early May, QAGOMA’s Drawing Festival built on the success of its inaugural presentation in 2023 to deliver an even more dynamic and inclusive hands-on celebration of drawing and sketching. The 2025 edition gave visitors a creative outlet with skill- building opportunities in an environment that fostered shared experiences and wellbeing. With a relaxed, drop-in approach, simple and accessible materials, and an opportunity for visitors to see their work displayed, the festival was a smashing success and saw more than 3000 visitors create 6500 drawings. Musicians from Griffith University’s Queensland Conservatorium, drawing students from the Queensland College of Art, and community group Urban Sketchers, added to the energy of the day, which centred on an at-capacity workshop on the Watermall delivered to 500 attendees by Dr Bill Platz and Vanessa Allegra. Tony Albert and Sophia Sambono, GOMA, June 2025 / Photograph: Katie Bennett ARTWORKS IN FOCUS: HERMANNSBURG POTS At a special event in June, Future Collective members were treated to the premiere screening of ingkwia tjaiya, lyaartinya tjaiya (old way, new way), a documentary about the Hermannsburg Potters, produced by the Gallery as part of a First Nations digital project funded through the ‘Unlock the Collection’ campaign. Following the screening, guests enjoyed a conversation between contemporary artist and Future Collective member Tony Albert and Sophia Sambono, Associate Curator, Indigenous Australian Art, and a viewing of the accompanying display in GOMA’s Foyer Cabinet (pictured), which celebrates 30 years of Hermannsburg pottery in the Collection. WONDERSTRUCK FESTIVAL Held across the first weekend of the mid-year school holidays, the Wonderstruck Festival welcomed more than 11,600 visitors to over 30 free events, involving dozens of artists and performers in this joyous celebration of the opening of ‘Wonderstruck’. Following a Welcome to Country by Tribal Experiences, highlights of each day included storytelling sessions by Gordon Hookey, Kate Foster, Rachel Burke and Sharon Orapeleng; and music from Joe Tee and Afrodisa, Sharron Mirii Bell, and Zindzi and the Zillionaires. Eleven passionate teen acts, who won the opportunity to perform at the festival, also took to the stage. Hands-on workshops created by artists Brian Robinson and Pip & Pop were popular, alongside free rainbow face-painting and food trucks. In the gallery space, exhibition co-curators Tamsin Cull, Head of Public Engagement, and Laura Mudge, Senior Program Officer, Children’s Art Centre, were joined by artists Brian Robinson, Craig Koomeeta and Madeleine Kelly for a series of fun pop-up talks. The festival was designed for accessibility, with a calm room available and Auslan interpretation for Saturday’s performances on the Maiwar Green Stage to support members of the d/Deaf Community. At the Drawing Festival, visitors study Giacomo Ginotti’s nineteenth-century marble Lucretia (Gift of Mr Justice Adrian Clark and Mrs Fitzmaurice Stacke 1933), QAG, May 2025 / Photograph: Katie Bennett At the Wonderstruck Festival, GOMA, June 2025 / Photograph: Cian Sanders

12 13 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 NEWS ART STUDENTS PAY ATTENTION AT DESIGN TRACKS The Gallery’s Design Tracks program returned to Cairns in May. This two-day immersive residential program builds career pathways and creates networking opportunities for First Nations senior secondary art and design students. This year, students from five Far North Queensland schools were mentored by artists Aven Noah Jr (Komet people, Mer (Murray Island)), Darren Blackman (GurengGureng/Gangalu/South Sea Islander people from Vanuatu); Peggy Kasabad Lane (Saibai Koedal Awgadhalayg/ Sager Gubalayg people from Guda Maluylgal Nation in Zenadth); and Sheryl J Burchill (Kuku Yalanji/Kuku Nyungkal people). The program included visits to galleries and art centres in Cairns, as well as trips to culturally significant sites like the Babina Boulders. Students worked in groups on projects centred on the theme of the 2025 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair: ‘PAY ATTENTION’. CHANGING OF THE GUARD FOR GALLERY BOARD At the end of June, the Gallery farewelled longstanding Chair of its Board of Trustees, Professor Emeritus Ian O’Connor AC. Over three terms and more than eight years, the Gallery has benefited immeasurably from Ian’s steady counsel and untiring advocacy in support of its role in the community. His astute backing has been invaluable, as have his thoughtful relationships with government, donors, corporate partners, and many other stakeholders. Gallery highlights during this period have included the record-breaking ‘Marvel: Creating the Cinematic Universe’ and weathering the COVID-19 pandemic, during which major exhibitions ‘The Motorcycle’ and ‘European Masterpieces from the Met’ were successful even amid challenging circumstances. During this time, he also steered the Gallery during three editions of the Asia Pacific Triennial and the presentation of a a roster of stellar Australian and international artists from Gerhard Richter to Judy Watson. He was critical to the establishment of the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Charitable Trust, a truly transformative bequest that has bolstered Queensland’s collection with works by Tommy Lowry, Fiona Hall, Tacita Dean and Olafur Eliasson. As Professor O’Connor departs, the Gallery welcomes its new Chair, Paul Taylor. A great supporter of QAGOMA, and one who has also served on the board since 2017, Paul is deeply engaged with the visual, literary and performing arts in Brisbane. He has long a record of leadership in finance and philanthropy, including his role as Chair of the QAGOMA Foundation’s ‘Unlock the Collection’ campaign, which successfully raised over $5 million to increase digital access to the Collection. Paul’s great generosity is recognised with the Eric and Marion Taylor Gallery at GOMA, named for his parents, and he was the recipient of the 2022 Philanthropy Leadership Award from Creative Partnerships Australia. The Gallery looks forward to working even more closely with Paul in his new role. Paul Taylor / Photograph: Natasha Harth Participants in Design Tracks, Cairns, May 2025 / Photograph: Chloë Callistemon FUTURE COLLECTIVE ARTIST DINNER: CELEBRATING TEN YEARS The Future Collective gathered in July to toast to a decade of impact at a special anniversary artist dinner in GOMA’s Long Gallery. Guests took in a curatorial overview and exclusive after-hours access to ‘Wonderstruck’, with a making activity, artwork activations, and exclusive dinner in the Long Gallery. THE ART OF BEQUEST PLANNING In June, members of the Gallery community attended a panel discussion and information session exploring the significant impact of well-planned bequests on arts organisations and how these generous legacies are stewarded and acknowledged by QAGOMA. The session was followed by morning tea overlooking the river in GOMA’s River Lounge. The Schubert Circle, named in honour of Win Schubert AO, one of the Gallery’s greatest supporters, recognises those who have notified the Gallery that they have generously left a gift to QAGOMA in their Will. For further information on including a gift to the Gallery in your Will, please contact [email protected]. Kenneth Macqueen’s The tank c.1950 (Purchased 1999. Ivy Lillian Walton Bequest) features in ‘Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s’, currently on display at QAG Future Collective members and their guests at the Future Collective 10th Anniversary Artist Dinner, GOMA, July 2025 / Photographs: Claudia Baxter

Visitors animated the Gallery’s Sculpture Courtyard during the Drawing Festival, QAG, May 2025 / Photograph: Katie Bennett

16 17 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 FEATURES UNDER A MODERN SUN ART IN QUEENSLAND 1930s–1950s This new QAG exhibition celebrates a transformative time of creative practice, showcasing the work of leading Queensland artists and other major Australian artists working here in the mid-twentieth century. Together, writes curator Samantha Littley, their artworks present a light-filled vision of the state and, occasionally, the flipside of that picture. UNDER A MODERN SUN On 8 April 1930, Queensland governor Sir John Goodwin officially opened Brisbane’s City Hall, unveiling an exciting new chapter in the city’s history. The iconic structure — then the second tallest in Australia after the Sydney Harbour Bridge — immediately assumed pride of place as the state capital’s seat of civic power and a cultural hub. Crowning the edifice was Daphne Mayo’s grand sandstone tympanum, in the final stages of its completion. While anachronistic in its depiction of First Nations peoples by today’s standards, the relief remains a remarkable achievement that confirms Mayo’s status as one of Queensland’s leading sculptors. ‘Under a Modern Sun’ takes the opening of City Hall as its starting point, locating it as a marker for an age of flourishing artistic activity spurred on by this public affirmation of art’s value to the community. The exhibition spans the ensuing three decades, with the end of the era coinciding with the publication of painter Vida Lahey’s foundational text Art in Queensland 1859–1959. This period represented a vibrant phase during which Queensland’s creative landscape began to shift to accommodate fresh ideas, despite resistance from a traditional constituency. Showcasing more than 140 paintings, sculptures, photographs and works of decorative art from the QAGOMA Collection, the exhibition underscores the vital role that women artists such as Lahey and Mayo played in fostering art in Queensland, as they worked to introduce modern concepts. For example, Lahey’s waterolours of the Grey Street Bridge under construction symbolised a rapidly modernising city. Their artworks feature alongside those of their peers, including painter Gwendolyn Grant, photographer Rose Simmonds, sculptor Kathleen Shillam, and women ceramicists from the ‘Harvey School’ — one of the largest schools of art pottery in Australia in its time, founded by renowned sculptor and potter LJ Harvey. ‘Under a Modern Sun’ highlights artworks by renowned Brisbane-based painters such as William Bustard and WG Grant that spark dialogues with those by luminaries from the regions, including Kenneth Macqueen on the Darling Downs and Joe Alimindjin Rootsey (Barrow Point people, Ama Wuriingu clan), who captured the rich tones of his Country in the state’s north. The exhibition explores the connections between these artists and those from interstate who contributed to the development of a modernist sensibility here, among them Charles Blackman and Sidney Nolan. A later group of paintings by Margaret Olley and Margaret Cilento, who each returned to Brisbane from Europe in the 1950s, and by Jon Molvig, who moved to the capital in 1955 and invigorated the city’s art scene, point to the expressive directions that art in Queensland followed in succeeding years. Kenneth Macqueen / (Great Barrier Reef) c.1938 / Gift of Marion and Tom Sharman through the QAG Foundation 2008. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program

18 19 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 UNDER A MODERN SUN 1930s In 1929, painter and critic Gwendolyn Grant observed wryly that ‘Queensland artists have yet to be infected by the so-called ‘modern art’ movement’.1 Against the backdrop of the Depression and associated hardships, established Queensland artists did adhere to a benign version of Modernism, experimenting with colour and the simplification of form rather than challenging modes of representation. Their position was unsurprising, given the resistance to change expressed within the Royal Queensland Art Society (RQAS), which, at the time, provided the main arena in which to exhibit work. For example, the decorative arts were only included in RQAS exhibitions from 1929, following the appointment of LJ Harvey as a Trustee and at the urging of influential members such as Mayo, Lahey and Bustard. Innovation in painting was similarly mistrusted. For instance, Miles Evergood’s gently experimental postimpressionist landscapes caused unease when they were shown at the Gainsborough Gallery in 1932, despite being modestly priced in deference to the economic downturn.2 Conversely, Bustard’s Summer haze 1937 — featuring an impression of Brisbane bathed in humidity — and Charles Lancaster’s A corner of Brisbane 1937 — with its simplified blocks of colour and strong treatment of light and shade — represented the acceptable face of modernism in Queensland. On the Darling Downs, Kenneth Macqueen brought a contemporary eye to the Australian landscape tradition with crisp, clear watercolours that reflected his commitment to a modernist aesthetic. And in the state’s north, South Australian-born painter Noel Wood, who moved to Bedarra Island in 1936, quickly established a reputation for his light-infused paintings, with the critic for the Cairns Post declaring that Wood had conveyed ‘the dazzling sunlight of the North as no other artist has ever succeeded in doing’.3 Clockwise from top left Charles H Lancaster / A corner of Brisbane 1937 / Purchased 1937; Rose Simmonds / (Grey Street Bridge, Brisbane) c.1933 / Gift of Dr J.H. Simmonds 1982; and Noel Wood / The pathway to Banfield’s old home (Dunk Island) c.1940 / Purchased 1940 Clockwise from top left Gwendolyn Grant / Winter sunshine 1939 / Purchased 1939; Vida Lahey / Calendulas c.1936–37 / Gift of Mrs Maria Theresa Treweeke 1937; Vida Lahey / Building the bridge 1931 / Gift from the estate of Mrs Gladys Powell 1941; and Marjorie Dunstan / Inlaid vase c.1930 / Gift of the artist 1983

20 21 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 UNDER A MODERN SUN 1940s In Queensland, the early 1940s were marked by the social upheaval that accompanied World War Two. Brisbane’s City Hall served as ‘a hub for civil defence activities’ and the capital became host to upwards of 80,000 United States’ servicemen, while north Queensland became, in the words of official war artist Robert Emerson Curtis, ‘the frontier state in the Pacific War most vulnerable to attack’.4 Allusions to the war were scarce in exhibitions at the RQAS, causing younger artists, such as Laurence Collinson of the breakaway Miya Studio, to rail that: ‘While literally millions of starving and tortured people in Europe are breathing their last, what do we see on the walls of our local galleries? Vases of flowers’.5 The paucity of war-related artworks in this context may have been more a consequence of artists wishing to provide relief from the realities of the conflict, than a denial of its existence. In some instances, however, the war created opportunities. For example, Bustard and his Sydney-based contemporaries Douglas Annand and Max Dupain were each employed as camouflage officers for the Royal Australian Air Force. Stationed variously in North Queensland, the Torres Strait and New Guinea, their roles afforded them the chance to capture new environments. From top Vincent Brown / Back of houses, Spring Hill c.1945 / Gift of Frank and Elizabeth Grigg through the QAG Foundation 2011; and Leonard Shillam / Reclining woman 1942 / Purchased 1994 with funds from Grace Davies and Nell Davies through the QAG Foundation Opposite, clockwise from top left Sidney Nolan / Mrs Fraser 1947 / Purchased 1995 with a special allocation from the Queensland Government. Celebrating the Queensland Art Gallery’s Centenary 1895–1995; Max Dupain and Jill White / Anzac Square c.1940–45, printed 1992 / Purchased 1992; and Charles Blackman / (Self-portrait in front of a boarding house, Spring Hill) 1951 / Purchased 2011. QAG Foundation In Brisbane, artists such as Vera Leichney continued to paint in a measured style that stood in stark contrast to the paintings of Vincent Brown, who had studied in London and was familiar with the European styles of Cubism and Fauvism. With his brilliant, non-representational use of colour and his emphasis on the underlying geometry of natural and built structures, Brown’s paintings were immediately perceived as revolutionary. More revolutionary still were the expressive paintings of Melbourne artist Sidney Nolan, who travelled to Brisbane in 1947 and embarked on a series of paintings inspired the tale of Mrs Eliza Fraser, who survived a shipwreck off K’gari (referred to as Fraser Island from 1847 until 2023) in 1836. The visceral qualities of Nolan’s paintings represented a new and stimulating aesthetic that would influence the practice of artists such as Sydney painter Charles Blackman, who saw Nolan’s artworks in Brisbane at the Moreton Galleries in 1948 and would soon form his own associations with Queensland. Sculptors Kathleen and Leonard Shillam progressed contemporary styles in their practices after they established themselves on Brisbane’s bayside. Their work revealed the influence of British modernist Henry Moore, whose sculptures Leonard had encountered during his studies in England in the late 1930s, and which Kathleen had seen in Melbourne in 1948.6 Through their work, their support of younger artists, and the support they received from gallerists Brian and Marjorie Johnstone, the Shillams became Queensland’s most prominent sculptors.

22 23 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 UNDER A MODERN SUN 1950s The 1950s saw significant shifts in artistic practice and appreciation in Queensland. An influential factor was the 1951 appointment of Robert Haines as director of the Queensland National Art Gallery. Haines was responsible for the Gallery’s major purchases of early modern European art, such as Pablo Picasso’s La Belle Hollandaise 1905. Moreover, the arrival in Brisbane of painters such as Blackman and Jon Molvig, the return of Margaret Cilento and Margaret Olley from overseas, and the emergence of new artistic voices, including that of watercolourist Joe Alimindjin Rootsey, enlivened visual culture in the state. A member of the Ama Wuriingu clan, Traditional Owners of the lands around Barrow Point in north Queensland’s Cape Melville National Park, Rootsey had worked for decades as a stockman and knew the route linking Laura, Lakeland and Cooktown intimately. While he was hospitalised in Cairns in 1954 with the tuberculosis that would eventually end his life, Rootsey’s skill as an artist came to the attention of medical social worker Joan Innes Reid, who became an advocate for his art. The following year, Rootsey’s work featured in the Royal Queensland Show, and in the Cairns Show in 1957. Two years on, his paintings of Country — informed by a deep, personal knowledge — were shown alongside works by other significant Queensland artists, including Kenneth Macqueen and Margaret Olley, at the Caltex Centenary Art Competition held in Brisbane’s City Hall. At the conclusion of Vida’s Lahey’s survey Art in Queensland 1859–1959, she remarked on the ‘static ideas of the past and the kaleidoscopic changes at present’. Her comment was perceptive, given the developments that occurred in the last three decades of this period. Advances were stimulated by public works that generated a sense of civic pride, and by the work of artists committed to contemporary practice. Through their efforts, art in Queensland advanced steadily through the 1930s and 1940s, with new ideas from Europe gradually finding acceptance; and then more rapidly in the 1950s. Significantly, the late 1950s saw broader recognition of Indigenous Australian artists through the work of painters like Joe Rootsey, whose artworks stand as testament to the resilience of his people. Through this multiplicity of voices, art in Queensland was enriched and expanded and continued to diversify over the coming decades. Samantha Littley is Curator, Australian Art. This is an edited adaptation of Samantha’s curatorial essay ‘Modernism comes to Queensland’, featured in the exhibition’s accompanying publication, which is proudly supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation. Endnotes 1 Gwendolyn Grant, from an unattributed press clipping dated 1929, quoted in Keith Bradbury and Glenn R Cooke, Thorns and Petals: 100 Years of the Royal Queensland Art Society, Royal Queensland Art Society, Brisbane, 1988, p.76. 2 Keith Bradbury and Glenn R Cooke, p.81. 3 ‘Tropic North Presented in Art’, Cairns Post, Cairns, 10 December 1940, p.9. 4 See Kylie Hadfield, ‘A road trip through wartime Queensland’, RSL Queensland, Brisbane, 3 August 2002, <https://rslqld.org/news/latest-news/aroadtrip-through-wartime-queensland>, viewed January 2025; and Robert Emerson Curtis, quoted in Michele Helmrich and Ross Searle, ‘The canvas of war’, Defending the North: Queensland in the Pacific War [exhibition catalogue], University Art Museum, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 2005, unpaginated. 5 Laurence Collinson, quoted in Bradbury and Cooke, p.88. 6 Stephen Rainbird, Breaking New Ground: Brisbane Women Artists of the Mid Twentieth Century [exhibition catalogue], Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Art Museum, Brisbane, 2007, p.57. From top WG Grant / Venetian blinds c.1946–51 / Purchased 1954; and Jon Molvig / The cattle grid 1958 / Bequest of Errol Blair de Normanville Joyce OBE 1983 From top Joe Rootsey / Barrow Point people, Ama Wuriingu clan / (Eastward from Bathurst Head) 1958 / Purchased 1993. Queensland Art Gallery Society; and Margaret Cilento / The immigrants 1951, reworked 1952 / Gift of the Margaret Olley Art Trust 1993 The richly illustrated 280-page publication Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s is now available from the QAGOMA Store and online at qagoma.qld.gov.au/store RRP $49.95 | Members $39.95

24 25 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 I HAVE LOVED/I LOVE/I WILL LOVE I HAVE LOVED/I LOVE/I WILL LOVE IN CONVERSATION WITH PAT HOFFIE Ambitious and expansive, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, Australian artist Pat Hoffie’s career spans more than five decades. Through her practice, Hoffie frequently addresses themes of power and postcolonial legacies, consistently centring aspects of the human experience. Recently, curator Grace Jeremy spoke with the artist about the new QAG exhibition ‘I have loved/I love/I will love’. Queensland-based artist Pat Hoffie’s ‘I have loved/I love/I will love’, now open at QAG, presents her first extensive body of work in intaglio printmaking as an immersive installation. Drawing inspiration from a long line of artists who have used the print medium to respond to human conflict and its consequences, Hoffie shares a selection of dramatic works on paper, transforming scenes she has witnessed in the news and on social media. By translating them to print, the artist hopes to encourage the slow viewing of such images, which, despite the significance of their content, are often only fleetingly glimpsed in today’s overwhelming digital landscape. Grace Jeremy: Pat, the works in your QAGOMA exhibition ‘I have loved/I love/ I will love’ stem from your residency at Cobalt Editions, Griffith University, in 2024, which you were invited to undertake by Dr Tim Mosely. Had you ever considered working with print before? Pat Hoffie: Right up to a month ago, I would have said ‘no’, but more recently, thinking back on past work, I realised I’ve been interested in different aspects of print media for some time. I mean, it’s no surprise that print has maintained a formidable grassroots, community and political edge throughout history, since the first book was printed in China around 868 CE. Since then, various incarnations of print technology have heralded times of enormous change. Without the invention of the printing press, for example, there would have been no Reformation in the fifteenth century. Changes in print and image production can be linked to subsequent shifts in world orders. When colour laser copiers were first introduced in Australia in the late 1980s, I was offered an artist-in-residency opportunity at Canon’s Brisbane-based office. My exhibition ‘Gender/Nature/Culture’ was one of the outcomes. Held at CACSA [Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide] in 1989, it responded to the influence of the so-called Golden Age of advertising in commercial print media and publishing that had determined stereotypical gender roles. That same year, I worked with fax machines in a two-way performance with Japanese-based artist Akira Komoto, for the ‘Eastern Ways, Western Means’ exhibition at QAG. For ‘Home and Away’ at the IMA [Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane] in 1990, I used computer prints in an installation that addressed Australia’s relationship to the United States during the Gulf War — the international conflict triggered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. My installation for the ‘Instant Imaging’ exhibition at QAG in 1991 highlighted the close association of computer imaging technology with weapon development in ‘smart bombs’ during that conflict. Opposite and above Pat Hoffie / Images from ‘I have loved/I love/I will love’, 2025 / Courtesy: The artist / © Pat Hoffie / Photographs: Nina White

26 27 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 I HAVE LOVED/I LOVE/I WILL LOVE There’s more, and I guess the thing that all of these print-referencing works hold in common is my ongoing interest in the impact that the massive shifts in print media have had, on both the production and reception of visual imagery: the speed, the sheer scale, the association with technological developments that have all been part of military expansion. Also, the capacity of print to shatter ideas about the ‘authenticity’, ‘originality’ and ‘uniqueness’ of ‘handmade’ art production. The seriality and speed of print also challenges notions of truth, while the communal nature of print production challenges ideas about the isolation and heroic nature of the artist–genius. For this current series, I’ve been using printing materials and processes that are extremely old. Old and simple. Old and slow to make. Also slow to look at . . . and they require the support of a close community to bring them into being. For this project, you have worked with found images of current global conflicts that you have witnessed through the media, and you must have seen thousands of images during your research. Were there any kinds of images you were particularly drawn to? What stuck in your mind? Well, it didn’t take any effort to ‘find’ them! No one could have escaped the relentless onslaught of these images of crisis and warfare over the past eighteen months. When I started the residency in 2024, I had a very different idea in mind . . . But I just couldn’t move away from the images that were haunting every aspect of life during that time. I can’t say I was drawn to any of them; rather, I was appalled by what was happening, and how quickly those images were disposed of as ‘yesterday’s news’. Images that were incredibly challenging and harrowing became instantly forgotten, replaced by the mounting rubble of the following day’s image onslaught. And the next and the next. The slew of images became an ongoing part of the fabric of daily lived experience — a kind of emotional incarceration that kept building up, in a suffocating way, above and around the banality of quotidian life. Those of us who are a long way from what’s called ‘the front line’ are nevertheless implicated in these zones of global conflict, and we’re all part of what seems like unbearable grief, and a sense of utter powerlessness to affect any positive change. The overwhelming inundation of that visual onslaught moves people to either ‘take sides’, in reductive and, ultimately, dangerous ways, or to go numb. Above Pat Hoffie / Image from ‘I have loved/I love/ I will love’, 2025 / Courtesy: The artist / © Pat Hoffie / Photograph: Nina White Opposite Pat Hoffie / Images from a limited edition of 5 from the MMXXIV folio box, printed at Cobalt Editions, 2024 / Courtesy: The artist / © Pat Hoffie / Photographs: Nina White

28 29 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 I HAVE LOVED/I LOVE/I WILL LOVE This current body of work is richly attuned to a long, entangled history of art and conflict. Are there any artists or moments in art history that you feel have informed it? While I’m troubled by the fact that each image from the world’s current conflicts, seen via social media, can be disposed of so immediately, I also realised that, equally, I can’t ‘un-see’ a single image of Goya’s Disasters of War series, for example. There are more. Plenty more. Picasso’s Guernica 1937, Beckmann’s The Departure 1932–35 and so on. Those images seem to somehow live viscerally in the body. They kind of hang around and infect and influence our capacity to think more deeply, or more slowly, about conflict and suffering. The realisation made me wonder whether art might still retain a capacity to slow down how we apprehend imagery, how we take it in for questioning, as it were. So, I became interested in attempting to decelerate the processes of both making and viewing images of these contemporary crises and conflicts. As an artist, you’ve mentioned that you create art to work through your questions and emotions in response to confronting events like war. Have your feelings about war and conflict changed throughout this project? Has this body of work caused any internal shifts for you? On a personal level, I can say that this series has taken its share of emotional skin, but it’s too early to say whether it’s changed my feelings in any way. I mean, there are artists and writers who’ve taken me closer to apprehending the full horror of conflict. Cormac McCarthy stands preeminent there, for me. His capacity to look directly at the horror of what we’re capable of as a species is extraordinary. In his 1985 novel Blood Meridian, the character Judge Holden says: ‘War is the Finally, your work invites viewers to pause on images they are used to seeing, albeit fleetingly in the media, and to foster emotional reflection and empathetic connections. How do you hope viewers of ‘I have loved/I love/I will love’ think about human conflict after seeing your work? How would you like them to approach war imagery in future? I guess I just leave it up to the art to either do the work or not, as the case may be. Once I’ve made an artwork, I don’t have any control about what it might be capable of doing when it’s ‘out in the world’. But I’m interested in whether art retains the capacity to hold a viewer for a bit longer, curious to see whether the ‘slowness’ of gallery-viewing might afford the viewer a little more time to see continuities between things that might once have seemed divisive. In terms of ‘hope’, my hope is that the art might provide a kind of punctum — a ‘pierce-through’ that makes you stop for a bit, makes you slow down — and that it suggests a space in which people can turn towards each other and take up a dialogue, converse, discuss. To question and ponder. To realise that we can each be identified as a perpetrator or a victim, depending on the point of view. And, maybe, to realise that beyond all this, there’s a deeper level, at which we all share each other’s grief. Grace Jeremy is Assistant Curator, Australian Art. She spoke with Pat Hoffie in March. ‘Pat Hoffie: I have loved/I love/I will love’ is in Gallery 14, QAG, until 1 February 2026. See the exhibition in more detail via its digital exhibition story at collection.qagoma. qld.gov.au/page/hoffie Above, from left Francisco Goya / ‘Nada. Ello dira’ (plate 69 from ‘Desastres de la guerra’ series) (‘Nothing. It speaks for itself’ (plate 69 from ‘The disasters of war’ series)) 1810, published 1863 / Purchased 1989. QAG Foundation; and Pat Hoffie / Image from ‘I have loved/I love/I will love’, 2025 / Courtesy: The artist / © Pat Hoffie / Photograph: Nina White ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god’. McCarthy’s convictions are difficult to face down. Then there’s Dostoevsky. Conrad. Melville. The Old Testament. The Qur’an. History. Conflict of some kind is central to all of them. Although Sun-Tsu’s The Art of War was written somewhere between 475 and 221 BCE, it remains pertinent today. The more I keep reading and looking, the more complex things seem, and the more difficult it is to take any single fixed position. Art still retains a power to shift me to see things in ways that are infinitely more nuanced than my initial knee-jerk reactions; and art furnishes me with information that makes it far less likely to reduce issues into simple binaries, like ‘us and them’. Like [North American painter] Leon Golub said, ‘I am both the aggressor and the victim’ in these works. Right, from top Pat Hoffie / Image from ‘I have loved/ I love/I will love’, 2025 / Courtesy: The artist / © Pat Hoffie / Photograph: Nina White; and artist Pat Hoffie with Samantha Shellard, Conservator (Works on Paper), in the conservation lab at QAG, July 2025 / Photograph: Joe Ruckli

30 Childlike things 31 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 CHILDLIKE THINGS DESTINY DEACON SNAPS BLAK Featuring artists such as Fiona Foley, Brenda Croft, Nici Cumpston, Michael Cook and more, ‘Snap Blak’ — a new Collection exhibition of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island photography, at GOMA — shows works seeking to subvert the disempowering, misrepresentative settler–colonial legacy of photography of this country’s First Peoples, and to assert identity, cultural continuity and belonging. Here, photographic artist and QAGOMA curator Keemon Williams takes a personal approach to selected works in the show by the late Kuku and Erub/Mer artist Destiny Deacon. Like cautionary tales told with a wicked smile and a winking eye, Destiny Deacon’s catalogue of works is a wealth of material for the photographer in me. Her visions arrive like candid memories preserved in an old family photobook. They responsibly wield potent political context without the burden of needing to satiate anyone. Deacon’s bluntness is punctuated by the respect she has for the childhood subject. While so many lens-based artists attempt desperately to take ‘good’ photos, a rare few like Deacon succeed in capturing truthful ones. Freefall 2001, from her ‘Forced into images’ portfolio, shows an Aboriginal baby doll whose separated head and arms appear to emerge, unnaturally posed, from a white cloud. Deacon’s deliberate choice to frame this image so tightly suggests that the atmospheric shroud is not contained in the immediate view but potentially infinite. It reminds me of ‘the Nothing’, from Wolfgang Petersen’s cult classic film The Neverending Story 1984: a featureless, ever-expanding darkness that encroaches on the land, manifesting as storm clouds. Deacon’s composition wields a similarly ambiguous form. Uncertain if the disconnected doll is in pain or accepting of its fate. The doll’s eyes are merely painted on, but she returns the viewer’s gaze with a knowing glance, mid-flight; Deacon seizes that gaze the same way one would a real-life subject. Anything but gentle, the ‘fall’ appears more like a violent expulsion. To my mind, the scene veers between being a cherub evicted from the heavens, and the sight of a crash-test dummy blown asunder by explosives. Deacon’s polaroids often weaponise items she has referred to as ‘Koori kitsch’ — including fake cultural objects and stereotyped figurines produced for the tourist market from the mid-twentieth century on — to subvert the lens through which Blakness is perceived and reacted to. In Dance little lady 1993, a doll wearing an Aboriginal flag t-shirt is seen across a series of four images. The title implies that the character might be swaying side to side to the 1971 Tina Charles track ‘Dance, little lady, dance’; its disco aura is palpable. Unlike Freefall, however, this ‘little lady’ is thrust into a pitch-black arena. Although the image threatens to be quite sinister, suggesting that she’s ‘performing’, perhaps unwillingly, for the viewer, I read her exertions as a small, shadowy rebellion — Previous pages Destiny Deacon (Creator) / Kuku & Erub/Mer people / Roger Moll, Colour Factory, Melbourne (Printer) / Freefall (from ‘Forced into images’ portfolio) 2001 / Purchased 2004. QAG Foundation

32 33 ARTLINES 3 | 2025 a moment of pure blak splendour. I like to think its darkness is not an absence of light but rather the presence of peace, a moment away from the cultural continuums that label Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as ‘subhuman’. I’m reminded of how, in times of stress, when I really need to kick into gear, I might listen to Donna Summer’s ‘On the radio’ from 1979. Suddenly, I’m not a subject or an identity to be debated, simply a body in motion. Much of Deacon’s artistic charisma derives from the masterful tension in her scenes, often fuelled by deadpan humour. In Being there 1998, a duo of dolls sits against a darkened corner wall, evoking the image of two cheeky children sitting curbside. One stares deep in thought to the left of frame, while the other looks as though it’s chuckling at a passerby. To their right sits a haphazard scattering of matchsticks. Are these babies in imminent danger? Perhaps they’re the ones in control here. Either way they seem to be having fun, and the artist does love a good bit of mystery. After all, these plastic actors have deceptive range: they can masquerade as anything from players in an Aboriginal tragicomedy to lovable, self-aware little brats. Like Rorschach tests, their perceived motives can change tone with multiple visits. There’s an admitted agony to Deacon’s works, but also the potential for finding something precious in the hurt. Her vignettes remind me to maintain a dialogue with my inner child and to reclaim the immutable optimism the world so easily steals away.1 There’s something heartening about the ability to pick up conversations with artists across time. Destiny Deacon’s artworks feel like precious inheritances that unravel a plethora of visual, material and cathartic blueprints to withstand the crushing weight of life in this country. Across her almost 40-year practice, she generated an unapologetically blak canon, which has inspired so many First Nations artists. I never had the privilege of meeting the artist myself, but I’m immensely Childlike things thankful for her teachings. I often wonder what the studio she toiled away in would look like, or what she would get up to with an impassioned visitor. I like to think we would have boogied. Keemon Williams is Assistant Curator, Indigenous Australian Art, QAGOMA. ‘Snap Blak: Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Photography from the Collection’ is on display in the Margaret Mittelheuser AM and Cathryn Mittelheuser AM Galleries (3.5), GOMA, until 13 September 2026. Endnotes: 1 Natalie King, ‘Episodes: A laugh and a tear in every photo’, in Destiny Deacon: Walk + don’t look blak [exhibition catalogue], Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2004, pp.19–20. Above Destiny Deacon / Kuku & Erub/Mer people / Being there 1998 / Purchased 1998. QAG Foundation Grant Opposite Destiny Deacon / Kuku & Erub/Mer people / Dance little lady 1993 / Gift of Timothy Morrell through the QAGOMA Foundation 2020

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