Ten Brisbane Art Exhibitions to Brighten Up Your April

GOMA’s latest free exhibition, Sugar Spin: You, Me, Art and Everything, doesn’t hand out bags of lollies that you can take home with you (sorry) — but it does bring together more than 250 contemporary artworks exploring light, space, architecture and the senses. Expect plenty of sweetness as the collection of pieces contemplates the connection between humanity and the natural world. And, because there’s always a flipside, expect a showcase that recognises the many challenges that go hand-in-hand with out beautiful environment as well.

Taking over the gallery until April 17, 2017, one the major drawcards is Nervescape by Icelandic-born artist Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir a.k.a. Shoplifter, which is a multi-coloured landscape of synthetic hair. Yes, really. Attendees can also enjoy the return of Left/Right Slide by Carsten Höller — and of sliding and spiralling from the top floor of GOMA to the bottom.

Georgia O’Keeffe, the artist often described as the mother of American Modernism, along with her Australian contemporaries Margaret Preston and Grace Cossington Smith, will be the subject of a four-month exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery.

Running from Saturday, March 11 through to June 11 at the gallery in Stanley Place, O’Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith: Making Modernism has been curated by the team at Queensland Art Gallery along with Santa Fe’s Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Melbourne’s Heide, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and will feature more than 30 works by each of the three women created across the length of their respective careers. In doing so, it will showcase both the distinctive styles developed by the artists, as well as the similarities in their subject matter, technique and the ways in which they viewed the world.

Many an hour spent in many a school history lesson has taught us all that history doesn’t change. But, what if it does? Sure, the words written in record books years ago still remain the same today, but the past isn’t just an account of what happened — it’s shaped by our knowledge and understanding of what happened. Accordingly, unearthing new information can always cast everything we thought we knew in a different light.

With his latest exhibition taking the title Our Mutable Histories, it’s clear that Perth-born, Brisbane-based Indigenous Australian artist Robert Andrew feels the same way — and from March 3 to July 16, Brisbanites have the chance to discover why. Walking through his free showcase at the Museum of Brisbane is like stepping into a shifting landscape designed to reflect the space where the country’s Anglo-European and Australian Indigenous cultures and histories come together.

Don’t take the shifting part literally, of course. Nothing moves here other than your perception. Using materials such as natural ochres, oxides and chalks in conjunction with contemporary technologies, Andrew aims to unearth the evolving identities that lurk beneath, with his pieces acting as a response to his own once-hidden family heritage.

When you find yourself on a small island in Norway, you start contemplating how humans make sense of their place in the world. We haven’t been there and done that, but we’re not just making assumptions. Melbourne-based artist Emma Hamilton spent part of 2015 and 2016 on Sørværet in the Scandinavian country, conjuring up By Way of Navigation based on her stints there.

Hamilton’s exhibition is interested in one key line of thinking: the difference between how we actually interact with the landscape around us and the methods we use to turn what we can see, touch and experience into maps, photos and navigational calculations. Capturing the Norwegian terrain, her mix of images and sculptures attempt to blend and probe the two, and merge visual and scientific observation.

If the end result gets your brain pondering the wide world around us, then it has done its job. Get lost in thought at By Way of Navigation from March 22 to April 8 at Metro Arts.

More, less, something, nothing: whether they’re used to describe the difference between the amount of time you need and the time you have, or what you have to do and what you’d like to do, these words get bandied about with frequency these days. Have you ever wondered how they apply to artists? Is less more? When they’re trying to reflect nothing, can they truly create something?

Aaah, minimalism — that’s what we’re talking about, and it’s not a new thing. Less Than: Art and Reductionism tries to condense five decades of thinking into one exhibition. Yep, QUT Art Museum is keeping on trend.

The field of reductionist techniques — think repetition, limited or monochrome colour, geometric abstraction, symbolism and the like — is in the spotlight from March 18 to May 21; however, so is a crucial contrast. “The very nature of art is about creating something new, not reducing to less,” points out curator Katherine Dionysius.

Ceramics: they’re not just something that Demi Moore and the spirit of Patrick Swayze make in ’90s romance Ghost. Sorry, but if you’ve seen the film, you’re always going to think of it whenever pottery comes up. Perhaps QUT Art Museum’s latest exhibition will change that, with the gallery digging out a host of ceramics from their collection for Earth and Fire.

In fact, they’ve trawled through more than 300 objects dating back to the 1970s to curate the two-month-long showcase of one of the most organic forms of art. Marvel at each piece’s design and contemplate the fact that ceramics is still a rather low-tech field (the exhibition is called Earth and Fire for a reason).

If you haven’t already gotten up close and personal with pottery before, just keep one key thing in mind: imperfections are part and parcel of the process. They’re what makes each item unique, and they offer a reminder that ceramics isn’t just a form of arts and crafts — it’s both therapeutic and meditative, while creating something tangible as a result.

If you keep up-to-date with world news, it’s pretty easy to feel like you’re living in a horror, science-fiction or bleakly dystopian film these days — or, as has been pointed out more than once on social media, an episode of Black Mirror. Perhaps that’s just what being alive during a time of advanced capitalism is like? That’s the idea behind Liam O’Brien’s latest video work, Possessions.

On display at the Institute of Modern Art between April 1 and 29, Possessions appropriates parts of all of the aforementioned movie genres to probe humanity’s relationship with technology, how it influences our free will and the impact it has on our identities. O’Brien won IMA’s annual Jeremy Hynes Award for best experimental Queensland artist in 2016 — and if you’re keen to find out why, head to his website for an excerpt of the piece in question.

Since graduating from the Queensland College of Art, O’Brien has exhibited both in Australia and abroad, and won several other prizes as well. If you went along to the Gallery of Modern Art’s GOMA Q: Contemporary Queensland Art back in 2015, you’ll be familiar with his work. If not, here’s your chance to discover something new.

Artisan’s new showcase aims to achieve something that you probably don’t think is possible. Yes, it wants to make you look at coarse aggregate bonded together and hardened by cement in a completely different way. Of course we’re talking about concrete — and it’s not just the substance your daily city playground is built out of. Dating back millions of years, it’s also instrumental in human design and creativity.

Material: Concrete works through the various ways the material in the spotlight can be used, spanning the artistic and experimental as well as the industrial and everyday. You should have some idea of what’ll be on offer, but expect some surprises along the way as well. You can’t dive into all things concrete without touching upon architecture; however, concrete art and jewellery isn’t something we all come across quite as frequently.

Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is what empathy is all about. Wondering how a stranger’s life plays out is one of the most common ways to kick your imagination into gear. Combine the two with artist Fiona Tan and an exploration of the concept of representation — both how we choose to portray ourselves to the world, and the way that we perceive others — and you have the video work Nellie.

Exhibiting at the Institute of Modern Art from April 1 to 29, Nellie focuses on Cornelia van Rijn, a real-life figure largely overlooked by history. She was the daughter of seventeenth century painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, and moved to Batavia — which is now Jakarta — when she was 15. The rest of her tale, well, through a combination of film and photography, as well as research and storytelling, that’s where Tan’s piece comes in.

Always wanted to do something creative? Know what it’s like to struggle to pursue your passion — and know that, if you had a dollar for every time that someone encouraged you to get a “real job”, you’d be rather rich? A life of artistry isn’t always lucrative, and that can shape both the pieces crafted and the exhibitions curated. As UQ Art Museum’s latest showcase demonstrates, each can benefit from a giving impulse.

At Philanthropists and Collections from March 11 to June 4, the age-old arrangement of patronage in the arts is placed in the spotlight. In fact, without it, the show wouldn’t happen. As the exhibition offers a selective survey of works generously donated to the gallery, think of it as a statement of gratitude as well as a starting point for further conversation.

Indeed, whether you’re happy perusing the pieces on display or eager to engage on a broader chat on the subject, both are on the agenda. All art should make you think, but this should make you ponder not just what’s in front of you, but how it got there.