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
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NjM4NDU=