Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s

27 Agnes Barker , Fruit bowl 1931 William Bustard at his first solo exhibition in Brisbane, October 1931 Vida Lahey , Building the bridge (detail) 1931 These decades saw artists, who were contending with an inherently traditional constituency, make gradual inroads in their efforts to modernise art in Queensland through their use of colour and the simplification of form. Modernists’ tendencies towards Abstraction and Expressionism in Sydney and Melbourne, respectively, were regarded with suspicion by the general populace, and the subtropical image of the state that predominated at Royal Queensland Art Society (RQAS) exhibitions was, at most, mildly modern. More experimental work by the Society’s Younger Artists Group and by the breakaway Miya Studio artists (who bemoaned the prevailing lack of experimentation and social critique) were, by and large, not collected by the Gallery. Further, it was not until 1962 that the Gallery would purchase a painting by Scotland-born artist Ian Fairweather, who had settled on Bribie Island in 1953 and painted in a style influenced by European Modernism (albeit that Fairweather exhibited at Sydney’s Macquarie Galleries rather than in Brisbane). More decisive shifts in art practice in Queensland emerged in the 1940s and 1950s with the return of painters Vincent Brown, Margaret Cilento and Margaret Olley, who had spent time overseas absorbing international trends, and the arrival from Sydney of Jon Molvig, who similarly brought with him innovative ideas and approaches. Molvig, who moved to Brisbane in 1955, became a leading light in the city’s art scene, and his artworks point to the more expressive directions that painting in Queensland would follow in succeeding decades. The exhibition underscores the vital role that women artists played in fostering artistic practice in Queensland, as they worked to introduce the concepts they had encountered overseas. For example, Vida Lahey’s paintings of Brisbane’s Central Station and the Grey Street Bridge under construction foreground these subjects as symbols of a burgeoning, rapidly modernising city; while her highly coloured and patterned still lifes were a vehicle through which she similarly expressed modernist ideas. Lahey and Mayo’s works feature alongside the artworks of their peers, including painter Gwendolyn Grant, photographer Rose Simmonds, sculptor Kathleen Shillam, and women ceramicists from the Harvey School. ‘Under a Modern Sun’ includes key works by renowned Brisbane‑based painters, including Lahey, WG Grant, William Bustard and others, that spark dialogues with works by luminaries from the regions, such as Kenneth Macqueen, and Joe Alimindjin Rootsey (Barrow Point people, Ama Wuriingu clan) who captured his Country in watercolour. The exhibition explores the connections between these artists and considers the practices of those who spent time in Queensland, highlighting the work of artists who contributed to the development of a modernist sensibility here — among them, Max Dupain, Charles Blackman and Sidney Nolan.