Wowee! Welcome to GOMA’s wondrous winter warmer
Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art has given us all reason to smile with glee while you ‘wow’ over its latest free blockbuster.
Turn off the news – it’s all bad anyway – and get yourself to Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art right now for a feelgood fix. And it won’t cost you anything. That’s my prescription and, don’t worry, I’m bulk billing you for this consultation!
Wonderstruck is GOMA’s winter warmer and it’s here just in time for the school holidays. A free exhibition for the whole family, it can even lift the spirits of jaded old journos. And as one of the QAGOMA staff suggested to me after a sneak peek, it’s just what we need considering the state of the world. I couldn’t agree more.
It is a journey through spectacular large-scale installations, captivating small treasures and immersive experiences that reveal how wonder abounds in many things – and it’s on until October 6, so you have plenty of time to see it. Go early and often is my advice.
‘This exhibition … also considers how wonder emerges from combinations of colour, pattern and visual illusion and an appreciation of the extraordinary within the ordinary’
“Wonder enters our world through play and imagination, and can be inspired by our interactions with nature and encounters with the intangible,” says QAGOMA director Chris Saines.
“This exhibition, drawn from the gallery’s collection and the rich catalogue of projects developed by QAGOMA’s Children’s Art Centre in collaboration with contemporary artists, also considers how wonder emerges from combinations of colour, pattern and visual illusion and an appreciation of the extraordinary within the ordinary.”
When Saines arrived to take the helm at QAGOMA some years ago he made it clear that he “wanted to work the collection harder”. This exhibition is a perfect example of that and it’s lovely to see some favourites on display again.
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I never tire of Ron Mueck’s monumental In Bed (2005) a huge sculpture of a woman in bed. It’s a work of global significance and it still exudes the wow factor and is cleverly placed so that when you walk into the gallery you only see the sheet-covered knees at first. Anyone who hasn’t seen it before will be blown away when they get closer and see the giant woman behind those knees.
Nearby, Patricia Piccini has works including The Observer (2010), a child perched precariously on a stack of chairs. These are works that do fill us with wonder. The title of the exhibition is not overreach at all.
Presented across six chapters, Wonderstruck includes more than 100 works by international and Australian artists including Ah Xian (love his ceramic heads), Nick Cave (not the singer!), Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (her wall of mirrors is incredible), Gordon Hookey, Madeleine Kelly, Yvonne Koolmatrie, Craig Koomeeta, Yayoi Kusama, Rosemary Laing, Ron Mueck, Patricia Piccinini, Brian Robinson, Sandra Selig, Gemma Smith, Yuken Teruya, Judy Watson, Louise Weaver, Jemima Wyman and others.
Wonderstruck is co-curated by Tamsin Cull, head of public engagement, and Laura Mudge, senior program officer, Children’s Art Centre, QAGOMA. They have done a brilliant job. Cull points out that the exhibition presents multiple interactive projects alongside artworks by major Australian and international artists.
“To be struck by wonder is not to escape reality, but to live with heightened awareness, and this exhibition reminds us that opportunities to experience awe and wonder are everywhere if we just stop and notice,” Cull says.
“Audiences will encounter works that transform familiar objects, such as Slovenian artist Tobias Putrih’s Connection 2004, which reconfigures humble cardboard boxes into a monumental arch, and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s display of Neolithic pottery subversively dipped in brightly coloured paint.
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“Patricia Piccinini and Ron Mueck’s hyperreal sculptures offer a window into the fragility of the human experience, inviting viewers to bring their own perspective to read the expressions of the woman in Mueck’s oversized In bed 2005, or the child perched precariously on a stack of chairs in Piccinini’s The Observer 2010. The dozens of lives represented in miniature in N.S. Harsha’s massive triptych We come, we eat, we sleep (1999-2001) remind us that life is a process, that no one exists in isolation, and that there is beauty in the perpetual cycles of life.
“We’re also thrilled Australian artist Gemma Smith — whose work explores the interaction between colour and surface, intention and chance— recently led a workshop with a small group of Brisbane State High School students to make an ambitious, large-scale painting for inclusion in the exhibition.”
It adorns a wall in GOMA’s Long gallery and it is amazing.
Laura Mudge says while many artworks in Wonderstruck capture a sense of playfulness and whimsy, others encourage taking time to look more slowly.
“The capacity of nature to fill us with awe is seen in Michael Parekōwhai’s gravity-defying sculpture of a seal balancing a baby grand piano on its nose, The Horn of Africa 2006, while Brian Robinson reminds us of the wonder found in the night skies in his large-scale print and accompanying animation Lagalgal: The Mysteries of our Land 2022,” Mudge says.
While I have seen many of these works before I’m happy to see them again. Kohei Nawa’s 2010 mixed-media sculpture PixCell-Double Deer#4, purchased in 2010 with funds from the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Diversity Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation, is always a delight and one that some gallery-goers may be seeing for the first time.
Yayoi Kusama’s Obliteration Room still makes you smile. It’s an entirely white space, furnished as a monochrome living room, that is “obliterated” with multi-coloured stickers until all the walls are covered. You get to apply the stickers and kids love this piece. It was conceived as a project for children and was first staged at the Queensland Art Gallery in 2002. It debuted at QAGOMA’s fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art and has since travelled the world. As Chris Saines points out, it has now been seen by about five million people.
Kusama has become one of the world’s best known and most popular artists, so we were well ahead of the curve. As usual.
Wonderstruck continues at GOMA until October 6, free admission.