Interested in the role of women and their historical absence from positions of power, the part-professional part-domestic setting conjured by The Interior plays with gendered power dynamics between public and private space. The couches that dot the gallery take their lush contours from the shapes of the female body, and their detailed upholstery sees motifs of eyes, rats, and snakes from Freud’s patient case studies ripple over the space in fleshy tones.

Audiences are invited to recline and be enveloped, soothed, and held by the furniture’s womanly forms while taking turns playing analyst and patient. Throughout this bodily encounter The Interior hopes to create a space where the existence of women can be reimagined on different terms in the ‘post-Me Too’ world.

Natalya Hughes is the 2022 recipient of the Michela & Adrian Fini Artist Fellowship, awarded by Sheila Foundation.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Natalya Hughes’s The Interior Exhibition
30 July – 01 October 2022
Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
www.ima.org.au

Featuring a major new commission and drawing upon existing works over the past fifteen years, the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, are collaborating to present a major survey of leading contemporary artist Yhonnie Scarce.

Scarce’s work often references the on-going effects of colonisation on Aboriginal people. Her research has explored the impact of nuclear testing and the removal and relocation of Aboriginal people from their homelands and the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Family history is central to Scarce’s work, drawing on the experience and strength of her ancestors, and sharing their significant stories from the past in the present. Her work also engages with the disciplinary forms of colonial institutions and representation—religion, ethnography, medical science, museology, taxonomy—as well as monumental and memorial forms of public art and remembrance. Her work is both autobiographical and ancestral, ensuring that her family are never forgotten or lost within the labyrinthine administration of the colonial archive.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this exhibition contains images of deceased persons.

Yhonnie Scarce’s Missile Park Exhibition
17 July–18 September 2021
Institute of Modern Art, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
www.ima.org.au/exhibitions/yhonnie-scarce/

Featuring a major new commission and drawing upon existing works over the past fifteen years, the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, are collaborating to present a major survey of leading contemporary artist Yhonnie Scarce.

Scarce’s work often references the on-going effects of colonisation on Aboriginal people. Her research has explored the impact of nuclear testing and the removal and relocation of Aboriginal people from their homelands and the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Family history is central to Scarce’s work, drawing on the experience and strength of her ancestors, and sharing their significant stories from the past in the present. Her work also engages with the disciplinary forms of colonial institutions and representation—religion, ethnography, medical science, museology, taxonomy—as well as monumental and memorial forms of public art and remembrance. Her work is both autobiographical and ancestral, ensuring that her family are never forgotten or lost within the labyrinthine administration of the colonial archive.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this exhibition contains images of deceased persons.

Developed, and with a new co-commission, in partnership with Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, where the exhibition will travel from 27 March–14 June 2021.

Yhonnie Scarce Missile Park Exhibition
17 July – 18 September 2021
Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
www.ima.org.au

In his largest Australian solo exhibition to date, Hazara artist Khadim Ali explores the normalisation of war and the experience of refugees through a series of poetic installations and textile works. Invisible Border comprises sound installation, miniature painting, and a monumental 9-metre-long tapestry, hand woven by a community of Hazara men and women, some who have lost family members in war. Featuring existing work alongside new commissions developed for the IMA, the exhibition will also feature Otherness, a major body of work developed in partnership with the IMA and Lahore Biennale Foundation.

Ali’s interest in tapestries developed soon after his parents’ home in Quetta, Pakistan was destroyed by suicide bombers. Amongst the rubble and debris left from the blast, a collection of rugs and weavings remained the only thing intact: miraculously able to withstand the reign of terror inflicted upon his family and community. In this new large-scale tapestry, and other works, Ali explores the impact of war, trauma and displacement drawing parallels from the Book of Shahnameh, a Persian literary masterpiece comprising of 50,000 couplets and written between c. 977 and 1010 CE.

Just like the many great mythic tales in the Shannameh, Ali’s intricate works depict stories of demons and angels, conquest and war through the lens of the persecuted Hazara community. Expressing the profound grief, trauma and loss experienced at the hands of modern-day warfare, Invisible Border is a necessary and vital exhibition during a time of political propaganda, violence, and fear.

Khadim Ali – Invisible Border Exhibition
10 April – 05 June 2021
Institute of Modern Art, Fortitude Valley
www.ima.org.au

On Fire: Climate and Crisis features work by 15 Queensland artists and interrogates the state’s image as a subtropical paradise by considering the themes of global warming and climate threat.

At IMA from 30 January to 20 March 2021, On Fire spans painting, sculpture, immersive installation and video, including eight new commissions, in a timely examination of the past, present and future of the planet’s precarious situation.

On Fire considers the damaging legacies of colonialism, how artists visualise experiences of environmental connection and disconnection and fire’s capacity for rejuvenation, foregrounding First Nations’ voices and addressing the burgeoning Indigenous cultural fire movement.

Collectively, the works explore the emergence of a new environmental age described by fire historian Stephen Pyne as the Pyrocene: the fire equivalent of an ice age with Australia a major epicentre.

Exhibition curator and art historian Tim Riley Walsh said On Fire was filled with moments of awe and alarm that would shake complacency from visitors and disrupt the narrative around their engagement with the natural world.

“This exhibition reflects a feeling common to many Australians after the devastating Black Summer bushfires; a stark recognition of the fragility of our environment and a building sense of the overlapping threats presented by global warming which seem to grow only more complex,” he said.

“Through the work of these exhibiting artists, I hope visitors will gain insight and perspective into how visual culture helps us to comprehend and even challenge these threats.”

Jemima Wyman’s Haze… is a large-scale digital collage printed on chiffon that collects images of smoke from recent global protests.

The powerful tapestry of activist struggle includes plumes from flares released during Black Lives Matter rallies across the US, tear gas clouds released at pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong and ceremonial smoke following the destruction of Western Australia’s Juukan Gorge by Rio Tinto.

Dale Harding’s new two-channel video documents the slow-burning and charring of Moreton Bay Ash trees, creating an abstract reflection on the important, embedded presence of fire within Australian flora and landscapes more broadly.

Michael Candy’s Azimuth is a kinetic sculpture that uses UV-C light, a sanitising technology that fights COVID-19. While it can be harmful to humans, gallery visitors will safely view the work from behind a protective screen.

Artists featured in the exhibition are Gordon Bennett, Naomi Blacklock, Paul Bong, Hannah Brontë, Michael Candy, Kinly Grey, Dale Harding, Tracey Moffatt with Gary Hillberg, Erika Scott, Madonna Staunton, Anne Wallace, Judy Watson, Warraba Weatherall, Tintin Wulia and Jemima Wyman.

On Fire will be accompanied by a new, illustrated publication, designed by Brisbane’s Studio Bland and launching in March 2021, with commissioned texts from Amelia Barikin, Shannon Brett, Chari Larsson, Kevin O’Brien, Rachel O’Reilly and Tim Riley Walsh.

On Fire: Climate and Crisis exhibition
30 January – 20 March 2021
Institute of Modern Art, Fortitude Valley
www.ima.org.au

Taking place at the Elizabeth Picture Theatre, New Farm Cinemas, the Gallery of Modern Art and the Institute of Modern Art, the festival is also proud to shine a spotlight on female talent in its fourth year — from the pioneering Věra Chytilová to the rising local talent of Alena Lodkina, more than 80-percent of the films programmed are directed or co-directed by women.

Once again offering a carefully curated, propulsive showcase of cinematic excellence, QFF 2018 opens with a night of new Australian cinema. Soda_Jerk’s controversial and acclaimed Terror Nullius will launch the festival with a film that’s equal parts political satire, eco-horror and road movie. A rogue remapping of national mythology, Terror Nullius was created through an intricate remix of Australia’s pop culture and film legacy.

Finally, the 2018 festival comes to an end with two sporting films, though of a quite varied bent. First comes the documentary John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, a study of the tennis player at the height of his career as the world champion — and facing the hardest loss of his career at the 1984 Roland-Garros French Open.

It is followed by Diamantino, QFF’s closing night film, a fictional piece that marvels as the world’s greatest soccer star loses his touch and sets off on a delirious odyssey where he confronts neo-fascism, the refugee crisis, genetic modification, and the hunt for the source of genius. The latest collaboration from QFF regulars Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, it’s in love with every form of storytelling and concocted from pure pleasure.

Queensland Film Festival
July 19 2018 ‐ July 29 2018
Elizabeth Picture Theatre, New Farm Cinemas, Gallery of Modern Art and the Institute of Modern Art
www.qldff.com

For the Brisbane iteration Goldin+Senneby invited Camila Marambio and Amaara Raheem to act as interlocutors. Marambio & Raheem responded with QUIZ which led to RESULT which led to the conception of Meth(odology) Lab. During the first week of the exhibition Meth(odology) Lab was open making TIME: an immersive set of procedures that distill and digest through lines of Goldin+Senneby’s practice.

In the main room, a plot of land acquired by Goldin+Senneby is interpreted as a stage set by artist Ryan Presley. Headless will also be activated by long-time spokesperson for Goldin+Senneby, Angus Cameron, in conversation with Mary Graham. The exhibition will conclude with a magic demonstration, Acid Money, performed by Malin Nilsson.

Goldin+Senneby: Standard Length of a Miracle (The Bootleg) Exhibition
18 November 2017-10 March 2018
Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
www.ima.org.au