Queensland Art Gallery Annual Report

initiatives and services / QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY ANNUAL REPORT 05/06 37 Gallery in Townsville, for north Queensland residents to purchase quality art books. QAG ONLINE Building on the success of the website redevelopment project undertaken in 2004, in 2005 the Design, Web and Multimedia unit designed an innovative website for the ‘Kiss of the Beast’ integrated exhibition and film program, as well as the children’s interactive Kusama’s World of Dots, for the Children’s Art Centre. Kiss of the Beast <www.kissofthebeast.com> was created to ensure both a fun and informative online presence for a project which heralded a major new direction in programming for the Gallery. Visitors could enjoy a virtual visit to the Gallery by viewing short QuickTime installation clips of the exhibition, and they could navigate an interactive calendar profiling the 30 films featured in the ten-day film program. Kusama’s World of Dots was based on Yayoi Kusama’s The obliteration room 2002 as part of ‘Made for this World: Contemporary Art and the Places We Build’, which saw children enthusiastically obliterating a white room at the Gallery with thousands of coloured dots. Similarly, Kusama’s World of Dots allowed creative kids to ‘dot-up’ a virtual space on the internet. Kusama’s World of Dots is the first in a series of children’s interactives planned by the Gallery for young visitors, and won the award of merit for digital media design, as well as the best in show design excellence award, at the 2006 Queensland Design Awards. DVD animations profiling current and forthcoming exhibitions and displays, as well as Gallery of Modern Art construction progress, were also developed by the Design, Web and Multimedia unit during the year. Displayed on screens in the Gallery foyer, these clips were based on home page animations from the Gallery’s website. To aid the work of the Gallery’s Volunteer Guides, a password- protected website was launched in early 2006. Containing important information about forthcoming Gallery exhibitions and displays, rosters and procedures, the website quickly became a valuable communication tool for volunteers and staff. Irene Entata (potter) Australia b.1946 (Arrernte (Aranda)/ Luritja people) Hermannsburg Potters (pottery workshop) Australia est. 1990 Pot: Mission days 2005 Earthenware, hand-built terracotta clay with underglaze colours and applied decoration, 41.5 x 30cm (diam.) (complete) Purchased 2005 Publication Design Competition at the 2006 AAM Annual Meeting in Boston, and was highly commended at the 2006 MAPDA Awards. The Gallery continued to distribute a wide range of high- quality promotional publications, including Preview , the quarterly guide to exhibitions and events at the Gallery and Artmail , the Gallery’s e-bulletin service. The corporate booklet series — initiated with the Asia–Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 2006 in April 2005 — continued with the publication of Australian Cinémathèque in November, Children’s Art Centre in January, and Historical Collections in June 2006. These widely distributed booklets were produced to showcase initiatives associated with the opening of the Gallery of Modern Art. The reporting period also saw work continue on three major publications — Brought to Light II: Contemporary Australian Art 1966–2006 (the companion volume to Brought to Light: Australian Art 1850–1965 ), The 5th Asia–Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art exhibition catalogue, and a publication on Ian Fairweather. GALLERY STORE Australian Art Books <www.australianartbooks.com.au > — the Gallery Store’s specialised online shop — completed its first year of operation. Some 340 customers from all points of the globe used the service in 2005–06, while the Store’s e-newsletter attracted 1115 subscribers during the year. Gallery Store staff have been planning new retail operations for the Gallery of Modern Art, together with a redevelopment of the existing Galley Store. In February, the Gallery Store Assistant Manager visited the Tokyo Gift Trade Fair, and various galleries and shops in Tokyo, to source products for the new store. The Gallery Store external sales program continued strongly with some 230 visits to schools, libraries, TAFE colleges and universities throughout Queensland and northern New South Wales. Highlights included the donation of book prizes to the young participants of Youth Arts Queensland workshops in Thuringowa; prizes were awarded for designing the best music CD cover art. On 23 October, the Gallery Store staged a temporary bookshop for a day at Perc Tucker Regional