Queensland Art Gallery Annual Report 2004-05

19 18 The Gallery’s New Wave program continued to offer tertiary students opportunities to explore contemporary art via engaging ideas and inspiring debate. The exhibitions ‘Blak Insights’, ‘White/Light’, ‘The Nature Machine’, ‘The Art of Fiona Hall’ and ‘I am Making Art’ were all accompanied by New Wave programs such as artists’ and curators’ talks, lectures and tours, screenings and discussions, exhibition previews and weekend forums. The Collection Study Program — which allows group access to art works in the Gallery’s Collection not on display — continued to increase in popularity as a teaching tool for local university staff and their students. The Gallery’s commitment to providing a quality program of travelling exhibitions and related support services continued in 2004–05. ‘Pop: The Continuing Influence of Popular Culture on Contemporary Art’ concluded its regional Queensland tour at the Ipswich Art Gallery in November 2004. A total of 40 316 people visited ‘Pop’ on its eight-venue tour. A selection of contemporary works from the Gallery’s 2003 exhibition ‘Story Place: Indigenous Art of Cape York and the Rainforest’ continued on their seven-venue regional tour, following a launch at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery in May 2004. ‘Story Place’ was Australia’s first major exhibition of historical and contemporary art from Cape York Peninsula and continued the Gallery’s commitment to profiling the work of Indigenous Australian artists. Cairns Regional Gallery’s opening celebrations featured performances, music, artist talks and workshops, and a moving opening speech by Thancoupie, a respected senior ceramic artist from the west Cape. The exhibition then travelled to Rockhampton, Gympie, Mackay, Gladstone and Townsville, where the tour concluded at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery after being seen by more than 28 000 people. ‘Streeton: Works from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection’, an intimate exhibition comprising a group of the artist’s distinctive works acquired over a 70- year period, explores the artist’s preoccupations with a national art and his relationship with the Australian landscape. The exhibition tour was launched at the Outback Regional Gallery in Winton in April 2005, before embarking on an eight- venue tour. Accompanied by an online education kit and a full-colour room brochure, ‘Streeton’ will tour to venues in Longreach, Gladstone, Noosa, Hervey Bay, Miles and Toowoomba, before it concludes its tour in Stanthorpe in July 2006. In addition to several significant exhibitions currently in development — Australia’s first comprehensive exhibition of work by Andy Warhol (2007) and a survey exhibition of contemporary Californian art (2008) — the Gallery has also been planning key programs for 2005–06. These exhibitions include ‘Sparse Shadows, Flying Pearls: A Japanese Screen Revealed’, which focuses on a pair of seventeenth-century Japanese screens by Unkoko Toeki (1591–1644) from the Gallery’s Collection; ‘Kiss of the Beast’, an exhibition and cinema program that explores the origins of the 1933 film King Kong in art, science, literature and popular culture; and ‘Barbara Heath: Jeweller to the Lost’, a survey of this Queensland jeweller’s practice from the mid 1980s to 2005. During the first half of 2005, Gallery curators undertook extensive international travel to conduct research, to consult with artists and arts workers, and to promote the fifth ‘Asia–Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT 2006). To date, 14 artists have accepted invitations to participate in APT 2006 — Ai Weiwei (China), Anish Kapoor (India/UK), The Long March (Collective, China), Ozawa Tsuyoshi (Japan), Stephen Page (Australia), Michael Parekowhai (New Zealand), John Pule (Niue/New Zealand), Kumar Shahani (India), Talvin Singh (India/UK), Michael Stevenson (New Zealand), Masami Teraoka (Japan/USA), Sima Urale (Samoa/New Zealand), Yang Fudong (China) and Yang Zhenzhong (China) — and preparations are underway to secure the involvement of up to 20 more artists for the project. In June 2005, the Honourable Anna Bligh, MP , Minister for Education and Minister for the Arts, announced that APT 2006 would open in late 2006 and would be the first major exhibition at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. trained in the installation of new video work acquired for the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. Kathryn Weir (Head of Cinema) travelled to South Korea and China to attend the Busan and Shanghai biennials and the Pusan International Film Festival. In January, Elliott Murray (Head of Design, Web and Multimedia) was awarded the 2005 Darling Travel Grant (Global). He travelled to the United States to investigate new design trends and methodologies to contribute to the design of new Gallery publications and to the Gallery’s two-site identity. In May, Suhanya Raffel (Head of Asian, Pacific and International Art) was awarded a Smithsonian Fellowship to work with colleagues at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. In June, Nicholas Chambers (Assistant Curator, Contemporary International Art) travelled to New Haven, Connecticut, to undertake a residential fellowship at the Yale Center for British Art. He also travelled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to continue research for the Gallery’s forthcoming ‘Warhol’ exhibition. Publications for educational and children’s audiences were a focus of the Gallery’s publishing unit during the reporting year, as was the redevelopment of the Gallery’s magazine, Artlines . Education resource kits were produced for ‘The Art of Fiona Hall’ and ‘Streeton: Works from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection’, while a room brochure was also published for regional audiences for the Streeton travelling exhibition. Kuril’s Deadly Insights , an activity book for children and their families, was produced in association with the ‘Blak Insights: Contemporary Indigenous Art from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection’ exhibition, while a children’s activity book and festival guide were published for ‘The Nature Machine: Contemporary Art, Nature and Technology’ exhibition for kids. In addition, the Gallery’s major exhibition for 2004–05, ‘The Art of Fiona Hall’, was accompanied by a 192-page full- colour monograph written by curator Julie Ewington (Head of Australian Art), and published by Piper Press. Artlines , formerly a 20-page members-only magazine, was redeveloped during the reporting period to inject a fresh perspective into a familiar format. The magazine will continue to feature articles exploring both historical and contemporary art but, from August 2005, it will more than double in size, feature specially commissioned issues-based writing, and be published three times annually (each with a theme). It will also be distributed nationally. The first issue will focus on the moving image in contemporary art. INITIATIVES AND SERVICES REGIONAL EXHIBITIONS EXHIBITIONS IN DEVELOPMENT PUBLICATIONS - In August 2004, under the auspices of the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art’s new centre for contemporary art conservation, the Gallery hosted 12 paper conservators from around Australia as part of the workshop Removal of Pressure Sensitive Tapes and Tape Stains. The workshop was presented by Linda Stiber Morenus (Library of Congress, Washington DC) and Elissa O’Loughlin (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore). The Gallery also hosted international conservation intern Sheila Payaqui for eight weeks, as part of the University of Delaware–Winterthur Museum graduate conservation program. To increase his knowledge of framing for the exhibition, ‘Streeton: Works from the Queensland Art Gallery Collection’, Robert Zilli (Conservation Framer) travelled to regional galleries in the Mornington Peninsula, Bendigo, Ballarat and Castlemaine, as well as to the National Gallery of Victoria, in Melbourne, to document original Streeton frames, in particular works dating from the 1880s and the 1920s. In addition, to assist with the growing conservation needs of the Gallery’s audiovisual collection, Amanda Pagliarino (Conservator, Sculpture) commenced a Graduate Certificate in Audio Visual Archiving through Charles Sturt University. Conservators assisted with research for works travelling with the ‘Story Place’ exhibition, and structural changes in contemporary Indigenous wooden sculptures were analysed for the duration of the tour. Other research projects continued, including investigating low temperature (freezing) treatments as an alternative to fumigation — to aid the eradication of pests in contemporary Indigenous sculptures made from painted, air-dried timbers originating in far north Queensland. A number of Gallery staff undertook international travel for the purposes of research and professional development, including travel specifically to research and promote the fifth ‘Asia–Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT 2006). Anne Carter (Head of Conservation) attended the International Institute for Conservation’s Modern Art, New Museums congress in Bilbao, Spain. Julie Ewington (Head of Australian Art) presented a paper on the Australian artist Fiona Hall at the annual conference of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand in Auckland. Judy Gunning (Head of Information and Publishing Services) presented a paper at the Asia Art Archive’s Hong Kong workshop, Archiving the Contemporary: Documenting Asian Art Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow. Don Heron (Head of Exhibitions and Display) travelled to England and Denmark to be The Queensland Art Gallery continued to foster research into the Collection, while the Gallery’s Research Library continued to support both Collection and program development. Results of Gallery research were made accessible to the public through a wide variety of publications, websites and online resources, wall text and information panels, room brochures, children’s activity books and video documentation. The Gallery also continued its program of regional initiatives, including exhibition tours and professional support for regional galleries, while in turn the Gallery was supported by Friends and Foundation activities — in the promotion and appreciation of the visual arts, and in the year-round fundraising supporting the Gallery’s Collection and exhibition program. CONSERVATION RESEARCH RESEARCH AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT