2 Queensland Art Galleries

The forecast for this morning called for steady rain in Brisbane. Consequently, I thought it best to plan for indoor activities. I chose two recommended institutions, the Queensland Art Gallery and the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art.

(Brisbane is the capital of Queensland, one of Australia’s states.)

The two galleries reside on either side of a short, pleasant promenade. Both are free. Unfortunately, neither offers seniors discounts. I was hoping to make some money off my visits.

The forecast may have called for rain in the morning, but either the Weather God didn’t hear the call or It didn’t like being bossed around. In any case, the sky remained heavily overcast, but it didn’t rain on my walk over to the galleries or the walk back. And, judging from the dryness of the sidewalks and roads when I came out, it likely didn’t rain when I was in the Queensland art galleries either. Had I known that, I might have done something outside instead.

There ought to be a law against inaccurate forecasts wherever I am when I’m travelling.

Queensland Art Gallery

The Queensland Art Gallery is not large. Which is to say it’s the perfect size for someone who bores quickly and easily at art galleries. Someone such as say, oh, I don’t know, perhaps, for example, me.

The gallery divides its displayed collections into three categories: indigenous art, non-indigenous Australian art, and international art.

Yesterday, I commented on the drunken path of the Brisbane River. A regular reader replied that maybe the course only seemed weirdly shaped because of my exhaustion due to jet lag. She suggested I look at it again today and see if it still seemed wonky to me after some sleep.

Walking to the Art Gallery I crossed the river, but I didn’t walk alongside it for any length. So I didn’t get a chance to assess its route first-hand. However, the gallery’s Australian art section provided proof of the accuracy of my initial judgment.

An 1880 painting by J.A. Clarke titled “Panorama of Brisbane” shows the Brisbane River’s hairpin turn. In addition, a 2014 painting by Noel McKenna titled “Brisbane: My Home 1956 – 1979” is essentially a hand-drawn map of the river’s course through Brisbane with some hand-printed annotations. I dare you to look at those paintings and tell me that the course of the river is not besotted.

As to the other paintings, I recognized none of the names of the indigenous and non-indigenous Australian artists, and only three from the international collection: Tintoretto (“Cristo risorgente,” circa 1555), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (“Coco et Jean,” circa 1904-1905), and Pablo Picasso (“La Belle Hollandaise,” 1905).

I didn’t read all of the labels, so I might have missed a few, but those were the only names familiar to me on the walls. So if you’re looking for a lot of art by famous artists you won’t find it here. This is not to say that the art there is unworthy. With better PR the other artists might have also achieved renown. But c’est la vie.

I make this statement of a dearth of art by famous artists and the worthiness of the art as someone with a well-deserved reputation as an art-history idiot savant, but without the savant part. So if you’re in Brisbane you should visit the Brisbane Art Gallery and judge for yourself.

Most of the art at the gallery is relatively modern. I only spotted a few pieces from before the eighteenth century and most were much newer than that. The oldest painting I saw was the Tintoretto.

Queensland Gallery of Modern Art

The exhibit space at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art is somewhat smaller than at the Queensland Art Gallery, so it’s even closer to the perfect size for my tastes.

Despite being smaller, the art at the Gallery of Modern Art is much more eclectic as to media and styles than that at the Queensland Art Gallery.

One whole exhibit area was labelled “Gone Fishing.” All of the works in it are related to fishing in some way — fishing culture, fishing equipment, fishing environments, etc. One of the pieces I liked the most was a collection of hand-made fishing traps suspended artistically from the ceiling. Different people made each of the traps, with appropriate attribution on a sign on the floor.

Another beautiful piece was “Wotje Weavers.” In the 1930s the Wotje Atoll in the Marshall Islands was used as a military base by Japan. Korean forced labourers worked there. As part of the base, there was a lot of copper wire buried underground. During the Second World War, Allied bombing destroyed the base.

Today, women from the atoll dig up the copper wire and form it into blossom shapes, turning the materials of war into art. A large piece of that work hangs in the Gallery of Modern Art.

Another large room in the gallery is a darkened space. In it are three large screens with films or videos projected on them. There are also some smaller videos on the walls.

When I walked in, the mostly black-and-white silent videos on the three screens did not seem connected in any way. I thought I was supposed to watch them independently. But, after a while, they all faded to black simultaneously. When the videos started up again, all three screens displayed the same cinderblock wall, or possibly identical-looking cinderblock walls, painted white, before diverging off into separate videos of different things. (One of the three screens had a small white circle superimposed on a part of the wall for a while, but I think the walls were identical other than that.)

The room also contained some speakers sitting on spinning square pillars. The sound coming out of the speakers was very subtle.

If the exhibit was supposed to convey a meaning, it escaped me. Completely.

The gallery also contains two regular theatres with raked seating.

One of them didn’t display films at times that worked for me. And I don’t think people are allowed to enter during the films.

The other theatre played a single film on a loop and people can walk in at any time. The film is called “Paint Drying.” The title is literal.

In 2015, a British filmmaker, Charley Shackleton crowdfunded the money he needed to make “Paint Drying.” He intended it to be viewed only once, by a single audience, the UK’s film censorship board. According to signage at the gallery, the board was hated by filmmakers and many others. At the time, the board charged for its services by the minute. Shackleton wanted to force the board to sit through his boring film.

So he made the film as lengthy as he could afford based on the money he raised through crowdfunding. In the end, 686 people donated and Shackleton made a 607-minute, single-shot, fixed-camera film of white paint drying on a brick wall.

The film board watched it over the course of two days and rated it “U” for “no material likely to offend or harm.” The Queensland Gallery of Modern Art is displaying it in a continuous loop during its “Cinema Obstructed” exhibit. I don’t know how long that lasts.

When I went into the theatre, just one couple was sitting in the theatre. I stood to the side rather than taking a seat, watched for less than a minute, and left. The couple was still there, apparently enjoying watching a film of paint dry. I find it somewhat buoying in a schadenfreude sort of way to learn that there are people even more mundane than I am.

By the way, I think many, and maybe all, of the exhibits at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art are temporary. So, if you go, you might see completely different stuff there. (You know I’m an art expert when I confidently toss around terms like “stuff.”)

Lunch

I had lunch in the cafe back at the Queensland Art Gallery. It was nothing special. Just a toasted ham and cheese sandwich and a fruit bowl. But it gave me the energy I needed for my afternoon activity, which I’ll describe in a subsequent post.