Venice in BrizVegas – QAGOMA’s 2025 program revealed
Archie Moore’s award-winning Venice Biennale work is just one of a range of impressive exhibitions to be held at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art in 2025.
The recent debacle over the Venice Biennale is a bad look for Australian art. The art community was plunged into chaos recently with the cancellation of artist Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s representative to the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Better to think of more positive things such as Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore’s award-winning Venice Biennale project kith and kin.
This work will be a highlight of the recently released 2025 program for the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA). Moore, a Queenslander, worked with QAGOMA curator Ellie Buttrose on the artwork, so it seems fitting that from September 27 QAGOMA will be the first venue to present the Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist’s work following its debut at La Biennale de Venezia 2024, where it secured the prestigious Golden Lion Award for Best National Participation.
kith and kin comprises a vast genealogical chart capturing Moore’s First Nations Australian connections spanning more than 2400 generations over 65,000 years. At the centre of the installation, a reflective pool memorialises First Nations people who have died in police custody.
QAGOMA director Chris Saines says the gallery is proud to be showing Moore’s work following its presentation in Venice last year and its gifting to QAGOMA and Tate by Creative Australia on behalf of the Australian Government.
“This remarkable and deeply affecting installation confronts the ongoing legacies of Australia’s colonial history, with a focus on the over-incarceration of First Nations peoples and the severing of familial ties,” Saines says. “It evokes the vastness of First Nations Australian history, while speaking to the connectedness of the human family.”
Archie Moore’s kith and kin was in the Australia Pavilion of the 2024 Venice Biennale. Photo: Andrea Rossetti, courtesy of the artist © Archie Moore
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kith and kin will be shown alongside inscribing a life, an exhibition celebrating the intensity and wonder of existence, histories and time through the act of mark making. It includes work by Hossein Valamanesh, Shirley Macnamara, Georg Baselitz, Simryn Gill, Gulumbu Yunupingu and others.
Meanwhile, the 11th edition of the gallery’s free flagship contemporary art series, the Asia Pacific Triennial, will continue until April 27.
Other treats for 2025 include Wonderstruck, an awe-inspiring collection exhibition featuring works by Yayoi Kusama, Nick Cave, Patricia Piccinini, Lindy Lee and Ron Mueck; Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950; solo exhibitions by Queensland artists Danie Mellor and Pat Hoffie; and a major solo exhibition with globally renowned Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson.
Eliasson’s work will close QAGOMA’s 2025 program with a dynamic exhibition of new and existing works. Opening December 6 and running until July 12 , 2026, the exhibition will span GOMA’s ground floor galleries and invite audiences to discover the creative potential of perception.
“Olafur Eliasson’s artworks suggest new ways of seeing and experiencing,” Saines says. “His practice, spanning diverse installations and other works, invites reflection on our relationships – with ourselves, the environment, culture, and society.
“The exhibition will feature a range of artworks – many never before seen in Australia – and will include two new site-specific installations created especially for our expansive galleries. The notable QAGOMA collection works by the artist, The Cubic Structural Evolution Project 2004, a Lego city perpetually rebuilt by visitors; and Riverbed 2014, a vast, rocky landscape with a primeval spring of water running through it, will be shown, along with Eliasson’s celebrated early installation Beauty 1993, bringing a rainbow suspended in mist into the gallery.”
You’ll have to wait for that one but, not to worry, there’s plenty happening sooner and from March 15 to August 3 QAGOMA will present marru/the unseen visible, an exhibition of new painting, photography and moving image works by Queensland artist Danie Mellor, whose multidisciplinary practice explores Australia’s shared history through the lens of his Ngadjon-jii, Mamu and Anglo-Celtic ancestry and celebrates his ongoing connections to Country in the rainforest areas of far-north Queensland.
Danie Mellor’s Dark star waterfall (still) 2025, two-channel video projection. Image courtesy of the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne © Danie Mellor
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Wonderstruck is on from June 28 until October 6 and will explore themes related to collective and personal experiences of awe and wonder. It will also be presented across GOMA’s ground floor. With more than 100 artworks and interactive projects by more than 70 international and Australian artists, it will feature spectacular large-scale installations through to captivating small treasures and immersive experiences. Highlights will include Michael Parekowhai’s The Horn of Africa, 2006, Nick Cave’s HEARD, 2012, and Yayoi Kusama’s much-loved interactive sticker installation, The obliteration room, 2002-present.
At the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) from June 21 you can see Great and Small, an exhibition exploring the central role animals have played in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, culture and spiritual beliefs, featuring work by artists Alex Baker, Naomi Hobson, Mabel Juli, Illuwanti Ken, Teho Ropeyarn, Joe Rootsey, Thanakupi and others.
Also at QAG from June 21 is The God of Small Things: Faith and Popular Culture. Centred on a rare collection of embellished oleographs by Raja Ravi Varma (India, 1848-1906), the exhibition also includes major works by Natee Utarit and Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan. Delving into the intersection between devotional imagery and popular culture, it aims to capture the divine as a living part of everyday life across time and cultures.
From August 16 until January 26, 2026, Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s – 1950s will showcase significant works by leading Queensland artists and other major Australian artists working here in the middle decades of the 20th century. Considering the development of modernism in the state, the exhibition will include artworks by Kenneth Macqueen, Vida Lahey, William Bustard, Gwendolyn Grant, Joe Rootsey and Sidney Nolan, among others.
Gwendolyn Grant’s Winter sunshine, 1939, oil on canvas, part of the QAGOMA collection. © Gwendolyn Grant Estate
Championing indigenous self-representation, Snap Blak: Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island photography from the Collection is on from August 30 and includes work by Tony Albert, Michael Cook, Brenda L. Croft, Destiny Deacon, Fiona Foley, Genevieve Grieves, Tracey Moffat, Michael Riley, Darren Siwes, Leah King Smith, Christian Thompson and others.
Also from August 30 until February 2026 the gallery presents Pat Hoffie: I have loved/I love/I will love, an exhibition of new works on paper by the Queensland artist. Experimenting with the enduring power of the printed image, Hoffie transforms scenes she has witnessed through the media, inviting discussion and connection.
There will be cinema programs and kid’s exhibitions, too, throughout the year.
Minister for the Arts John-Paul Langbroek says QAGOMA’s 2025 program focused on highlighting the incredible work of Queensland artists, complemented by celebrated global creators.
“From the internationally significant Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art through to the much-anticipated Australian debut of Archie Moore’s kith and kin, QAGOMA has curated a vibrant program to captivate visitors of all ages and interests,” he says.