Queensland Art Gallery Annual Report

highlights and achievements / QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY ANNUAL REPORT 05/06 7 6 QUEENSLAND ART GALLERY ANNUAL REPORT 05/06 / highlights and achievements JULY 2005 ‘The Art of Fiona Hall’, organised by the Queensland Art Gallery, opens at the Art Gallery of South Australia, in Adelaide, on 8 July; this exhibition is the first survey of this leading artist’s work to be staged by an Australian gallery in more than a decade. ‘Press Pause: Recent Australian Video Installations’ featuring Susan Norrie’s Enola 2004, David Rosetzky’s Untouchable 2003 and Daniel von Sturmer’s The Truth Effect 2003 opens in Gallery 4. The inaugural lecture in the Perspectives: Asia series of free public seminars is presented by Professor Michael Wesley, Director of the Griffith Asia Institute, and Doug Hall, AM , Director, Queensland Art Gallery. The series is a joint initiative of the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University, and the Gallery’s Australian Centre of Asia–Pacific Art. AUGUST ‘Sparse Shadows, Flying Pearls: A Japanese Screen Revealed’ — an intimate exhibition focusing on a pair of seventeenth-century Japanese screens by Unkoku To- eki gifted to the Gallery by James Fairfax, AO — opens in Gallery 14. The Gallery’s magazine Artlines is relaunched — now a 48-page magazine with national distribution, it features themed issues, specially commissioned writing, and art news from the Asia–Pacific region. SEPTEMBER The Gallery Foundation’s Blackman Art Appeal is launched to raise funds for the acquisition of City lights 1952 by distinguished Australian artist Charles Blackman. JANUARY 2006 The Children’s Arts Centre is announced as a major initiative of the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) by the Honourable Rod Welford, MP , Minister for Education and Minister for the Arts; with the opening of GoMA on 2 December 2006, the Children’s Arts Centre will have a permanent base, with a dedicated exhibition space, teacher resources and workshop facilities. Box City — the largest scale interactive art work for children to be commissioned by the Gallery — is created by children and their families working with over 30 artists as part of the ‘Made for this World’ Summer Family Day on 15 January. FEBRUARY ‘Margaret Preston: Art and Life’ and ‘Grace Cossington Smith: A Retrospective Exhibition’, travelling exhibitions from the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Australia respectively, open at the Gallery — the exhibitions are on show together for the first time on their national tours. ‘Queensland Live: Contemporary Art on Tour’ begins an eight-venue Queensland tour at the Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum; this exhibition tour is the first regional Queensland activity which is part of the Gallery of Modern Art opening celebrations. MARCH The annual ‘Education Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Art’ exhibition opens in Gallery 6 and displays outstanding work by 29 students from secondary schools throughout Queensland. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Installation view of ‘Sparse Shadows, Flying Pearls: A Japanese Screen Revealed’, held at the Queensland Art Gallery 27 August – 27 November 2005. Box City, under construction on 15 January 2006 as part of the exhibition ‘Made for this World’. The travelling exhibitions ‘Margaret Preston: Art and Life’ and ‘Grace Cossington Smith: A Retrospective Exhibition’ were held at the Queensland Art Gallery 18 February – 1 May 2006. Installation view of ‘Barbara Heath: Jeweller to the Lost’, held at the Queensland Art Gallery 15 October 2005 – 26 March 2006. OCTOBER ‘Barbara Heath: Jeweller to the Lost’, a survey exhibition of one of Australia’s foremost jewellers, opens in Gallery 17. The Gallery’s Sculpture Conservator, Amanda Pagliarino, is named the Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material Conservator of the Year 2005. NOVEMBER The Gallery of Modern Art’s Australian Cinémathèque is launched by the Honourable Rod Welford, MP , Minister for Education and Minister for the Arts, at the opening of the inaugural Australian Cinémathèque exhibition and film program, ‘Kiss of the Beast’. Developed around the theme of the built environment, ’Made for this World: Contemporary Art and the Places We Build’ opens and continues the Gallery’s presentation of contemporary art for contemporary kids. DECEMBER Work commences on the Gallery’s new entrance and foyer on the existing building’s northern aspect. The new entry will link to the Gallery of Modern Art via the Stanley Place public plaza. From their home computers, young visitors explore Kusama’s World of Dots — an online children’s interactive developed by the Gallery in collaboration with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. The ten-day ‘Kiss of the Beast’ film program opens at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne. APRIL Jonathan Jones is announced as the inaugural winner of the ‘Xstrata Coal Emerging Indigenous Art Award’ — an annual, acquisitive art award of $30 000 for Indigenous artists; his winning work lumination fall wall weave 2004/2006 is displayed in Gallery 2 as part of the Award exhibition featuring the work of all ten short-listed artists. MAY At the 2006 Museums Australia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards, the Gallery wins first place in the small exhibition catalogue category for Sparse Shadows, Flying Pearls: A Japanese Screen Revealed , and first place in the multimedia category for Kusama’s World of Dots children’s interactive. JUNE 26 716 people visit Queensland Art Gallery travelling exhibitions in regional Queensland in 2005–06. The Provenance Research Project — initiated in 2001 to confirm the Gallery’s good title to works of European origin that may have been confiscated during the 1933–45 period of Nazi rule — is completed, and the results published on the Gallery’s website. Preparations intensified for the public opening of the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), the refurbished Queensland Art Gallery and ‘The 5th Asia–Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ (APT5); APT5, to open on 2 December 2006 in both the Queensland Art Gallery and GoMA, will feature 37 artists and 2 multi-artist projects, as well as curated programs of performance, film and video, and a summer festival for children. HIGHLIGHTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS