Contemporary Australia: Women Exhibition @ GoMA

Contemporary Australia: Women Exhibition @ GoMA

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Posted 2012-04-22 by Jacqui Schneiderfollow

Sat 21 Apr 2012 - Sun 22 Jul 2012

Yikes – someone has been scribbling white graffiti all over the glass front doors of "our" GoMA !
But wait, no-one else seems to notice. Or care! So I enter casually through said glass doors up past the cloak room, look around and am visually taken aback by this amazing – thing. It has grown up from the ground and reaches up to the ceiling where it extends along a bit as though trying to slither up to the next level, and it's made of bits of brightly coloured wool and felt and other random bits and pieces, all wrapped around on itself to resemble tentacles. It has openings on the sides, and people are going in and staying there. Intrigued, I follow.

Inside they're laughing and smiling and feeling the soft weird things sticking out all over the place of artist Hiromi Tango's "Pistil".

I love it. And it seems everyone else does too.

If ever an exhibition was going to make you smile, this is it. It's whimsical and fanciful and deep and touching and it sneaks out of its confines and extends to the glass front doors and up to the ceilings and it takes you aback and it's colourful. It plays with light and shade and it's not just for the sophisticated adult art-lover in you.

It's sensual and funny and it's a great ride. Take the kids, they'll have a ball and be taken out of the everyday, and so will you.
I can't praise the inspired curating of GoMA's latest exhibition, Contemporary Australia: Women enough. I have a deep admiration for those who make art accessible. Let's face it, sometimes modern art is not always something everyone can relate to. So it's an important (and often overlooked) skill to engage your general public. The art here is top notch – Australia's great contemporary women artists are represented, but it's not just pieces whacked on a wall with a boring blurb to read as you wander past, and that is where the art of curating comes in.

The way this exhibition is put together showcases Australian women artists in a way that involves the viewer and entices you to marvel at the way the artists envisioned and realised their art. From the "graffiti" on the front doors to the tentacled and brightly coloured "thing" in the foyer.

My personal favourites included the huge "I FORGIVE YOU" statement by Bindi Cole, in soft speckled feathers taking up a whole wall, as her response to the long-awaited apology to the stolen generation. Wow. A touching and feathery reply to the "Sorry" speech.

And then the whole room of paintings by Amata women artists from the Pitjantjara people of north-western South Australia, working in contemporary and luminescent reds, that jump off the wall out at you but are unmistakeably feminine in their ovoid shapes and depictions of the tales of Seven Sisters and journeys to the stars and sacred places.

It all hits you on an emotional level, and isn't that just the whole point? I mean, the point of art and of the feminine?

Another favourite was the shiny gold tinsel curtain hung in long strips like a grass skirt lifting in the breeze from the rotating fan and that children just want to run through and feel with their hands. But I stood there too and admired the inspired playfulness of the gold shininess, enticing you into the bold colours of the artworks in the long brightly lit hall beyond.

I stopped to admire Louise Weaver's lovely "Bird Hide", enhanced by the soft lighting that showed up the intricate detail.

But for me, the absolute favourite was the pink fishing line strung in the corner in a stunning fishnet geometric pattern and 3-D shape with swirling lines that made you want to walk under it, and look at it from all angles, and then made you step back again to see it from another perspective. It had me enthralled, but I wasn't the only one. Hard to describe, even harder to photograph.

So you'll just have to go and check the Contemporary Australia: Women exhibition out for yourself!

You've got until 22 July.

#exhibitions
#brisbane_city
#south_brisbane
#galleries
!date 21/04/2012 -- 22/07/2012
%wnbrisbane
165371 - 2023-06-15 01:24:40

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