"The Brisbane Line: Queensland Women Artists of the Early Twentieth Century"
2003-12-12 until 2004-03-07
QUT Art Museum
Brisbane, QL, AU Australia

Discover the dynamic work of a group of rarely exhibited women artists in a new QUT Art Museum exhibition, The Brisbane Line: Queensland Women Artists of the Early Twentieth Century at QUT Cultural Precinct. Queensland-based women artists are less familiar than their Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide contemporaries, yet many had a significant impact on the Brisbane art scene and were well known in Europe and the United Kingdom where they studied or worked. The Bisbane Line focuses on nine women artists and though some are known through solo exhibitions, such as Vida Lahey, Bessie Gibson and Daphne Mayo, this will be a rare opportunity to view their works alongside their contemporaries Josephine Muntz-Adams, Anne Alison Greene, Rose Simmonds, Gwendolyn Grant, Caroline Barker and Frank Payne.

The exhibition, which provides a diversity of inspiration from nineteenth-century moody impressionism and urban spaces of Brisbane to portraits of fashionable women of the ‘flapper’ era, has been co-curated by Robyn Daw, Manager, Education, National Gallery of Australia and Alison Kubler, Curator (Public Programs), QUT Art Museum. Alison Kubler commented that each of these women had a particular approach that was a result of their training, search for knowledge and experience. “It is fascinating to realise that many knew each other, working, travelling and studying together, sharing studios in Brisbane city or elsewhere,” Ms Kubler said. Sue-Anne Wallace, director, QUT Cultural Precinct says “these women set precedents for Queensland artists through the diversity of their approaches in a period of great creative development in Australia”. Among the earliest works on display is Care, by Victorian-born Josephine Muntz-Adams, the first painting by an Australian to be purchased by the fledgling Queensland National Art Gallery, which later became the Queensland Art Gallery.

IMAGE
Rose Simmonds
The Queen’s Chair, Mt Buffalo 1937
Bromoil print
QUT Art Collection

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Australia

Other Important Exhibitions in Australia