Drawings and correspondence
March 24–June 2, 2018
Prosperity
March 24–April 28, 2018
Transparency and other worries
May 5–June 2, 2018
420 Brunswick Street
Fortitude Valley
Brisbane Queensland 4006
Australia
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Tom Nicholson: Drawings and correspondence
Tom Nicholson’s solo exhibition surveys the central role drawing plays in his engagement with contemporary political realities in Australia and beyond. The show presents works from 2005 to 2018, focusing on both the histories and possibilities of drawing, and its relationship to writing. The exhibition will feature the final chapter of Drawings and correspondence: a new commission by IMA, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, and Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. The project centres upon a moment at Kwartatuma/Ormiston Gorge in Central Australia, at the outbreak of WWII, in the remarkable relationship between the non-Aboriginal watercolourist Rex Battarbee and the Western Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira. The exhibition is curated by IMA’s Executive Directors Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh. The show will be accompanied by the first monograph of Nicholson’s work, Lines towards Another, edited by Amelia Barikin and Helen Hughes, and co-published by the IMA, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, and Sternberg Press.
Nicholson lives and works in Melbourne. Recent exhibitions include Superposition: Art of Equilibrium and Engagement, 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018); I was born in Indonesia, Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne; The National: New Australian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (both 2017); Maju Kena, Mundur Kena (Neither forward nor back): Learning in the Present, 16th Jakarta Biennale, Indonesia (2015); Cartoons for Joseph Selleny, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2014). He is a lecturer at Monash Art Design and Architecture, Monash University, and is represented by Milani Gallery.
Ryan Presley: Prosperity
Brisbane-based artist Ryan Presley has produced new work as part of his ongoing project, Blood Money (2010–present), which deals with representation and exchange. In his richly layered watercolour paintings, he reimagines the figureheads on Australian banknotes as the heroes and warriors of Aboriginal history, including Pemulwuy, Dundalli, and Oodgeroo Noonuccal. Alongside these paintings, Presley is staging a participatory currency exchange where visitors are invited to exchange Australian dollars (AUD) for printed Blood Money currency (BMD). The exhibition is curated by IMA’s Assistant Director Madeleine King.
Presley’s work has been included in Trade Markings, Van Abbemuseum (2018); the 33rd Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, Darwin; Frontier Imaginaries, IMA, Brisbane; TarraWarra Biennial: Endless Circulation (all 2016). Prosperity, accompanied by a new publication, will be restaged at Melbourne Art Week in August 2018.
Lu Forsberg: Transparency and other worries
Following Ryan Presley’s show, Brisbane-based artist Lu Forsberg presents a new work that probes our distanced relationship to mining. Looking at existing extraction sites currently undergoing rehabilitation, Forsberg addresses the plight of the endangered Southern Black Throated Finch threatened by the proposed Adani Carmichael Coal mine. The exhibition is curated by IMA’s Development and Touring Manager Jenna Baldock.
Forsberg has exhibited at QUT Art Museum, Brisbane (2018); Riddoch Art Gallery, Mount Gambier (2017); and the Fu Jen University, New Taipei (2016).
About the Institute of Modern Art
Since 1975, the IMA has been one of Australia’s leading independent forums for art and its discourses. The IMA is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the Australian Government through Australia Council for the Arts, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Federal, State, and Territory Governments.
The publication Tom Nicholson: Lines towards Another is supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation and Myer Foundation. Ryan Presley: Prosperity is supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Queensland. Lu Forsberg: Transparency and other worries is supported by the IMA’s Jeremy Hynes Award, made possible by a bequest made by the Hynes family, and Arts Queensland.
