From ancient vessels to figurines revealing the daily lives of people from antiquity, ceramics have been integral to cultures worldwide for millennia. Ceramics have stored our most precious resources, have been vehicles for knowledge and traditions, and passed between generations as heirlooms.

Clay: Collected Ceramics is a celebration of ceramics from two collections: Museum of Brisbane’s and Kylie Johnson’s. It is accompanied by Commune, a display of single pieces contributed by more than 300 makers responding to MoB’s largest community callout to date.

With pieces spanning 60 years of creativity, including fresh works never before displayed, Clay sparks a conversation about the relationship between potters and their visions. From functional wares of the 1970s to conceptual creations by iconoclastic makers of today, this exhibition will speak of the meaningful processes of making and collecting.

The many highlights of Clay include a bold grouping selected from the MoB Collection to represent the many shades of brown, featuring works by ten renowned makers including Carl McConnell, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Milton Moon, Lyndal Moor and Kevin Grealy. In stunning contrast are newly commissioned and acquired pieces by diverse contemporary makers Bonnie Hislop, Nicolette Johnson, Jane du Rand, Kenji Uranishi and Steph Woods. Flowing throughout is an evolving performative installation by Artist in Residence Jody Rallah. A generous array of objects gleaned from years of collecting speaks of the life of Kylie Johnson, author, poet, traveller and founder of Brisbane treasure-trove, paper boat press. A film commissioned for the exhibition insinuates the viewer into intimate spaces of ceramics themselves. Woven throughout are many makers’ ruminations on how they lost their hearts to this most elementary, seductive material.

Slip into an exhibition that turns the wheel on how we perceive Clay.

Clay: Collected Ceramics Exhibition
Museum of Brisbane
13 May – 22 October 2023
www.museumofbrisbane.com.au

Throughout her 2017 Q ANZAC 100 Fellowship at the State Library of Queensland, Greer researched the experience of soldiers and servicepeople during the First World War. Accessing photographs, letters and diaries from the library archive allowed Greer to develop a deeper insight into the lives of Queensland soldiers, reverends and other wartime workers. Greer continues to translate these stories into her artworks today.

This series encourages us to remember and reflect upon the profound effect of war on soldiers and service people.

Artworks by Greer Townshend will be on display at Museum of Brisbane in the Adelaide Street Gallery.

Here I Came to the Very Edge 2020 Exhibition
Museum of Brisbane
11 November 2020 – 31 January 2021
www.museumofbrisbane.com.au

Dress Code features newly commissioned work by Hannah Gartside, Emily McGuire and Grace Lillian Lee. The new works extend each of the artists’ ongoing investigations of collaboration, consumerism and identity within the context of fashion through artwork, installation and photography.

The exhibition will also showcase signature works from Gerwyn Davies’ decade-long career, alongside an installation by Lisa Hilli.

Gerwyn will be Artist-in-Residence at the Museum from 29 October – 23 November 2018. During his residency he will create a series of costume and still-life photographic works in response to the Museum of Brisbane Collection. Visitors are encouraged to engage with Gerwyn, to debate and discuss the social and cultural dimensions of fashion and identity.

Dress Code is part of the Museum’s celebration of art / fashion / culture this summer, complementing our major exhibition The Designers’ Guide: Easton Pearson Archive by revealing how contemporary designers and artists are responding to topics of slow fashion, ethical collaboration and sustainability.

Dress Code
3 November 2018 – 28 January 2019
Museum of Brisbane
www.museumofbrisbane.com.au

For the first major exhibition from Museum of Brisbane’s Easton Pearson Archive, we worked together with Pam and Lydia to select the designs they felt highlighted the greatest innovations of their design practice and to share the stories behind the evolution of each garment: the design process, techniques, collaborations, experimentation’s, successes and set-backs.

The garments will be showcased on more than 60 forms in Gallery One, alongside accessories, look books, sketches and range plans.

Slow fashion, sustainability, design practice and experimental future fashion will also form the basis of the exhibition’s public programs to begin in December.

The Designers’ Guide: Easton Pearson Archive
23 November 2018 – 22 April 2019
Museum of Brisbane
www.museumofbrisbane.com.au

Inspired by Vanity Fair’s bitingly satirical 1930s series ‘Impossible Interviews’, nine Brisbane residents shared the conversations they would like to have with their chosen figure from Italian history.

Sam has interpreted these conversations through a series of watercolour paintings.

Because the historical figures are unable to take part in the conversations, Sam’s paintings hover in the space between question and answer. He offers glimpses of the conversations through imagery and text, inviting us to weave our own narratives.

About the artist – Sam Cranstoun
Sam is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice experiments with incomplete, unusual and ambiguous ways of viewing and participating in history. His paintings prompt us to notice how imagery drawn from visual systems such as pop culture, art history and the natural environment inform our sense of the world.
About the project

Real people, historical figures, imagined dialogues …
Museum of Brisbane  partnered with QPAC to create a series of Impossible Conversations, connecting contemporary Australians living in Brisbane with celebrated figures from Italian history.

After a community call-out, nine individuals were selected and over a period of months shared their imagined conversations, their questions and sense of connection and interest with Sam, writer Mary-Rose MacColl  and photographer Jacqueline Bawtree, who then realised these cross-cultural, cross-continental and cross-generational conversations in words and images.

To produce Impossible Conversations, Museum of Brisbane partnered with Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) to celebrate their 2018 QPAC International Series featuring Italy’s iconic Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company. You can read the full conversations in the QPAC tunnel at the Cultural Precinct from November. Find out more about Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company’s season at QPAC.

The participants and their chosen historical figures
Marie Kathleen Fitzgibbon with film and stage actress Giulietta Masina
Sara Capacci with astronomer and scientist Galileo Galilei
Liana Cantarutti with adventurer and author Giacomo Casanova
Massimo Ficca with poet Dante Alighieri
Kira Boardman with painter and architect Giorgio Vasari
Dominique Rizzo with Saint Agatha, the saint of Siciliy
Mihai Romanciuc with politician, journalist and activist Marco Pannella
Jacqueline Bawtree with Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi
Canio Muscillo with his Nonno Michele Romano

Sam Cranstoun: Impossible Conversations
10 October 2018 – 31 March 2019
Museum of Brisbane
www.museumofbrisbane.com.au

It also irrevocably changed the life of the Aboriginal peoples on whose Country the colony was built.

This exhibition offers a rare chance to view some of the few remaining official documents from the Brisbane penal colony.

Presented in partnership with Queensland State Archives, these priceless pieces comprise: 5 hand-written registers from 1824-1842 that detail rations and harvests, illnesses and death,  employment and transgressions; the original architectural plans and maps, many prepared by convict George Browne, that show the footprint of the penal settlement prior to the reopening of Brisbane Town as a free settlement in 1842; and the Book of Trials which logs the crimes and punishments meted out within the settlement.

These historically significant documents are listed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register.

Life in Irons will feature an extensive MoB Learn program, children’s activities, public programs, tours of the Queensland State Archives and performances.

Life in Irons: Brisbane’s Convict Stories Exhibition
18 May 2018 – 28 Oct 2018
10am – 5pm, daily, 10am-7pm Friday
www.museumofbrisbane.com.au

The artwork is a fully immersive experience, inviting visitors inside a four-metre high, 15-metre wide dome created from 370 brightly coloured star garlands, forming a kaleidoscopic effect accompanied by a soundscape created by artist Michelle Xen.

Open all day and night during the festival, visitors can walk in and out, stay a while and reflect on the light filtering through the iridescent star strings, run your hands along the stars and think about the many hearts and hands that have been part of its creation.

The One Million Stars installation will be lit at night, creating a true beacon of peace for the Commonwealth Games and Brisbane.

Maryann created the first ‘stars’ following a tragedy in her local community, determined to counter violence with peace, darkness with light. Since 2012, thousands of people have come together to weave stars and meet the target of creating one million stars to realise this artwork as part of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games. Stars were received from 15 countries including Nigeria, USA, Canada, Kenya, Fiji, Barbados, Tonga, Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, Samoa, Scotland, England, Cook Islands and Australia.

Presented as part of Festival 2018, a celebration of arts and culture taking place in Brisbane, across the Gold Coast, Cairns and Townsville during the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games. Supported by the Queensland Government and designed and developed by Museum of Brisbane in collaboration with Lumen Cloud.

One Million Stars public art installation
29 March – 15 April 2018
King George Square, Brisbane
www.museumofbrisbane.com.au

Scott Wilson studied ballet as a child in Brisbane. Her first performance was in Christmas in Storyland at Brisbane City Hall in 1960 and she was a member of Queensland Ballet before her family moved to Melbourne.

Her works integrate video, photography, performance, sound, and installation to immerse the viewer in an almost physical experience that elicits a sense of what it is to move like a ballet dancer –weightless motion camouflaging the often painful and arduous practice of ballet technique.

Every Day I Wait – Anne Scott Wilson Exhibition
11 Nov 2017 – 8 Apr 2018
Museum of Brisbane
www.museumofbrisbane.com.au

After becoming one of China’s first cultural exchange students, Li made world-wide headlines in 1981 when he fell in love with an American dancer and decided he wanted to stay to the United States. With his Chinese citizenship revoked and unable to return to his home country, he danced with the Houston Ballet for 16 years. He enjoyed international success, which continued when he joined the Australian Ballet as a principal artist in 1995.

Today Li lives in Brisbane with his wife and children where he is Artistic Director of the Queensland Ballet. His story of resilience and determination continues, influenced by his passion for dance and strong family values.

The inspiring story of Li Cunxin has been translated into a best-selling novel and award-winning film. This world-first exhibition is an opportunity for audiences to intimately discover both his moving personal narrative and his remarkable artistic achievements. The exhibition also brings audiences up to date with Li’s life in Brisbane today and the extraordinary impact he continues to have on the lives of so many within and outside the dance community.

Featuring never before seen interviews of Li’s family and colleagues from the ballet world, original objects and documents from Li’s personal archives, and footage of Li at the height of his career.

Mao’s Last Dancer the exhibition: A portrait of Li Cunxin
Museum of Brisbane
1 December 2017 – 29 April 2018
www.museumofbrisbane.com.au

Stacey uses one of the oldest photographic techniques invented more than 1,000 years ago, the camera obscura. She gives this technology a bold and surprising reinvention as her work turns entire rooms into the surface of a photograph, casting the view from the outside in.

Her dreamlike works capture a moment in time, exploring both the history of the location and the personal stories of the subjects featured within these unique landscapes— offering an intimate and provocative look at our city.

Discover the changing nature of Brisbane’s landscape through Robyn Stacey: Cloud Land.

Robyn Stacey: Cloud Land
18 Sep 2015 – 3 Apr 2016
Museum of Brisbane,
www.museumofbrisbane.com.au