Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia - Queensland Art Gallery

Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia
18 December 2010 – 26 April 2011
Almagul Menlibayeva / Wrapping history (detail) 2010 / Purchased 2010 with a special allocation from the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

17 December 2010
Image: Leandro Erlich / Swimming
Pool 2008 / Installation view at
21st Century Museum of Art,
Kanazawa, Japan / Courtesy the
artist and Galleria Continua, San
Gimignano, Beijing, Le Moulin
‘21st CENTURY: ART IN THE FIRST DECADE’ OPENS AT GOMA
Two spiralling steel slides, a sound installation created by live finches, a
swimming pool, a room filled with balloons, and a giant installation of
coloured plastic bags are centrepieces of a major exhibition of
contemporary art from around the world at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern
Art (GoMA).
These installations by internationally acclaimed artists are among the
200-plus works produced in the past ten years by more than 140 artists
from 42 countries in the exhibition ‘21st Century: Art in the First
Decade’, on display from December 18, 2010 until April 26, 2011.
Queensland Art Gallery Director Tony Ellwood said ‘21st Century’ was
the largest exhibition of contemporary international art ever staged by a
single Australian art institution and would challenge ideas about
contemporary art and the art museum today.
‘The exhibition encompasses all of GoMA and explores the impact of
recent global political, economic, environmental and technological
issues through works by artists born in the 1920s through to the 1980s.
More than 80 per cent of works featured are drawn from the Gallery’s
expanding collection.’
‘‘21st Century’ is a multi-platform experience that includes ‘21st Century Kids’, 12 interactive projects
and a summer festival, supported by the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation; the Internet Meme Project, a
curated program of 250 screens featuring viral internet content; three Australian Cinémathèque film
programs kicking off with ‘A New Tomorrow: Visions of the Future in Cinema’ from Boxing Day; and a
range of public programs including a symposium in March,’ Mr Ellwood said.
‘‘21st Century’ showcases art works from this decade from Africa, the Middle East, Europe, the
Americas, Asia, the Pacific and Australia, across the full variety of contemporary media and
engaging in unique ways with the contemporary world.
‘Included are works by leading contemporary artists such as Ai Weiwei (China), Louise Bourgeois
(France/United States), Martin Boyce (Scotland), Tracey Emin (England), Leandro Erlich (Argentina),
Romuald Hazoumè (Benin), Yayoi Kusama (Japan), Rivane Neuenschwander (Brazil), Rirkrit
Tiravanija (Thailand) and Ricky Swallow (Australia).
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‘Central to ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’ is the Gallery’s contemporary international collection,
which had grown exponentially in recent years through strategic acquisitions, supported by leading
philanthropists and the Gallery Foundation.
‘‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’ represents the Gallery’s ongoing commitment to innovative
international collecting initiatives, diverse programming in recognition of multiple audiences, and the
use of ground-breaking technology and multimedia publishing.’
Rick Wilkinson, Vice President Queensland of the exhibition’s Presenting Partner Santos said the
company shared the Queensland Art Gallery’s vision and energy for presenting a wide range of
contemporary art and ideas.
‘It is exhibitions such as ‘21st Century’ that take a creative, multi-disciplinary approach to global issues
that Santos admires,’ he said.
Mr Ellwood said the exhibition demonstrated that contemporary art in the twenty-first century was a
very inclusive and varied experience, engaging the widest possible public through ideas, direct
experience, spectacle and narrative.
‘Twenty-first century art takes an extraordinary range of forms and approaches, and is often based on
a situation, experience or encounter, rather than a traditional art object.
‘The exhibition points to this vitality and constant innovation in the forms that art may take, and also to
the ways that art engages with the key issues of our time,” he said.
The exhibition is accompanied by a blog, education resources and a major publication with texts by
international and Australian writers and curators, as well as the Gallery’s first book for children
featuring contributions and art-making activities from 16 exhibiting artists.
With a focus on new technologies ‘21st Century’ explores the enormous potential for learning and
connecting that technology offers, with interpretive tools such as smart phone interactive tours of the
exhibition, an interactive lounge space with free wi-fi, and computer terminals and magazines.
‘As artists and audiences are embracing more participatory experiences, and as the field of
contemporary art expands across the globe, contemporary museums such as GoMA are keeping
pace with these new directions,’ Mr Ellwood said.
For more information on ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’ visit www.qag.qld.gov.au/21stcentury
ENDS
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1 December 2010
Image: Production still from Metropolis 1926 /
Director: Fritz Lang / 35mm, black and white, silent
(musical soundtrack featuring original 1927 score
by Gottfried Huppertz), 145 minutes, Germany,
English intertitles / Image courtesy: Potential Films
SCIENCE FICTION CLASSICS AT GoMA THIS SUMMER
Film classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Solaris
(1972), ET: The Extra Terrestrial (1982) and The Matrix (1999) will
be highlights of a major program of science fiction and related
genre cinema exploring visions of the future at the Gallery of
Modern Art from Boxing Day until February 27, 2011.
Tickets for ‘A New Tomorrow: Visions of the Future in Cinema’ are
on sale through qtix at www.qtix.com.
Queensland Art Gallery Director Tony Ellwood said ‘A New
Tomorrow’ was one of three specially curated film programs at
GoMA’s Australian Cinémathèque that would accompany the
upcoming exhibition ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’, a
groundbreaking and ambitious survey of international
contemporary art since 2000.
‘From science fiction favourites to cult classics, the 56 films in the program chart alternative scenarios for
civilisations to come and extraordinary explorations of new spaces, dimensions and frontiers in cinema.
They explore the consequences of environmental and biological change, anxieties over surveillance and
the collapse of social orders, and also demonstrate humanity’s capacity to adapt, reinvent itself and find
new solutions,’ Mr Ellwood said.
‘In addition to over 80 screenings of feature length and short films, ‘A New Tomorrow’ also includes a
film discussion on February 19 exploring questions of ethics, human evolution and destiny in science
fiction cinema, and a live audio-visual remix and rescoring of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece Blade Runner
(1982) by Berlin-based filmmaker and sound artist Zan Lyons on the final weekend of the program.
‘On Friday 25 and Saturday 26 February Lyons will perform with viola, foot pedals and laptop while
simultaneously remixing and reworking Blade Runner. Lyons has completely rewritten the film's
electronic score by composer Vangelis and re-edited several scenes with his own visuals to achieve a
dark and chaotic spectacle,’ Mr Ellwood said.
‘Blade Runner will also screen in its remastered 2007 “final cut” version with additional and extended
scenes and enhanced special effects.
‘The program includes a new restoration of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), incorporating over 25
minutes of lost footage discovered in Buenos Aires in 2009.
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‘Other early screen visions of the future featured in the program include William Cameron Menzies’
Things to Come (1936), Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Byron Haskin’s The War
of the Worlds (1953) and La Jetée (1962), the French film which inspired Terry Gilliam’s Twelve
Monkeys (1995).
‘On Australia Day, there will be a double bill of Australia’s most famous contribution to the genre, Mad
Max (1979) and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981).
‘Other cult favourites to screen include A Clockwork Orange (1971), Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) and
Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (2000).’
Recent titles to screen in the program will include Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006), Neil
Blomkamp’s District 9 (2009) and Duncan Jones’ Moon (2009).
Also included are a double bill of James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2:
Judgment Day (1991) and a focus on Japanese anime titles rarely screened in cinemas: Akira (1999),
Ghost in the Shell (1995) and episodes of Astro Boy from 1963 and 1980.
The Australian Cinémathèque offers a fully stocked candy bar and visitors can enjoy a drink in the
surrounding Internet Meme Project lounge, a curated part of the ‘21st Century’ exhibition which invites
interactive exploration of internet viral videos on over 200 screens.
For more information on the program and screening
times please visit www.qag.qld.gov.au/cinematheque
or pick up the new Cinema brochure.
Tickets
Adults $9 / 5-film pass $36
Concession: $7 / 5-film pass $28
Members $6 / 5-film pass $24
Zan Lyons vs Blade Runner AV
General Admission $25
Gallery Members $16.50
Tickets are available to purchase in advance through
qtix 136 246 www.qtix.com or from the GoMA Box
Office one hour prior to film screenings.
ENDS
Image: Zan Lyons / Courtesy: The artist
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17 December 2010
Image: Artist Romuald Hazoumè works with
local teenagers on the Children’s Art Centre
project (MIB) Made In Brisbane 2010.
‘21st CENTURY KIDS’ PROGAM AT GoMA
Twelve interactive activities and artworks from leading
international contemporary artists, a summer festival, a regional
touring program and the first ever publication for kids are a
selection of the Children’s Art Centre offerings at the Gallery of
Modern Art this summer.
Queensland Art Gallery Director Tony Ellwood said the ‘21st
Century Kids’ program for young visitors and families was an
integral component of ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’,
showing at GoMA from December 18, 2010 to April 26, 2011.
‘21st Century Kids’, spans both levels of the Gallery’s
dedicated Children’s Art Centre and is integrated throughout
the exhibition.
‘It’s a program that encourages children and families to discover the fresh and imaginative ways that
leading international artists consider their world in the twenty-first century,’ Mr Ellwood said.
‘21st Century Kids’ sees the introduction of all-new artist activities for the Gallery’s youngest audience,
as well as the return of favourites from previous exhibitions and key artworks in the exhibition will be
labelled with special didactics for young art lovers.
‘It includes unique activities and artworks developed by artists including Pierre Bismuth (France), Fiona
Hall (Australia), Romuald Hazoumé (Benin), Jorge Méndez Blake (Mexico) and Jana Sterbak (Czech
Republic/Canada).
‘Appearing for the first time at GoMA is Rivane Neuenschwender’s acclaimed I wish your wish 2003, a
vibrant installation of colourful silk ribbons printed with wishes inspired by Brazilian tradition. Visitors are
encouraged to tie a ribbon printed with a wish to their wrist. According to tradition, the wish is granted
when the ribbon wears away or comes off.
‘Tony Albert’s popular multimedia interactive Alien nation embassy 2008 returns along with other
favourites such as Justine Cooper’s The call of the wild 2006 and Olafur Eliasson’s epic interactive Lego
project The cubic structural evolution project 2004 installed on a bench 22 metres in length.
Mr Ellwood said the ‘21st Century Kids’ was accompanied by a 176-page hardcover full colour
publication that included contributions from 16 artists featuring in the ‘21st Century’ exhibition.
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‘21st Century Art for Kids is the Gallery’s first ever Children’s Art Centre publication. Each artist discusses
their background, inspiration and work in ways that will engage young readers and their families,’ he said.
‘In addition, we will present an action packed 11-day summer festival from January 13 to 23, with exciting
new media performances, artist-run workshops and activities and a specially curated animation program
at the Australian Cinémathèque.’
A regional program, the 21st Century Kids Summer Festival on Tour, will take place at 50 regional
galleries and other venues throughout Queensland on January 15, 2011.
For more information on children’s programs at GoMA this summer visit www.qag.qld.gov.au/kids
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EXHIBITION SUMMARY
• ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’, an ambitious exhibition of contemporary international art from the
first decade of the twenty-first century, will be presented at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA)
from December 18, 2010 to April 26, 2011.
• It is a multi-platform project encompassing the major exhibition occupying the entire Gallery of Modern
Art, interactive works for children and a summer festival, three film programs, an innovative range of
public programs, a blog, two publications (including the Gallery’s first book for children), educational and
interpretive programs and resources.
• It showcases over 220 works by more than 140 senior and emerging artists, born between 1911 and
1983, from 42 countries, with most of the work from the Gallery’s own expanding collection.
• ‘21st Century’ builds on contemporary art territory explored by the Queensland Art Gallery over the past
20 years with its Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) exhibition series, Kids’ APT
programs, and Asian and Pacific collections — and signals a new commitment to be broadly
international in contemporary art collection development.
• The exhibition highlights the Gallery’s strategic acquisitions over the past decade with works from
Australia, Asia, the Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and North, South and Central America.
• It will present a series of ambitious commissions, key loans from Australian and international
institutions, and a curated children’s program of interactive works.
• ‘The ‘21st Century’ project will explore artistic responses to the impact of global political, economic,
environmental and technological change, and current ideas about contemporary art and the role of
museums in the first decade of the new millennium.
• Major commissions for ‘21st Century’ include:
o Stockholm-based artist Carsten Höller’s installation of two spiral-shaped slides in GoMA’s foyer. The
slides will allow viewers to participate in the work – sending them hurtling from the Gallery’s third
floor to its ground level.
o Leandro Erlich’s astounding trompe l’oeil sculpture, Swimming pool, which represented Argentina at
the 2001 Venice Biennale.
o A major new installation work by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot in which visitors will share
a gallery with live finches.

o Untitled (NASDAQ) 2003 by Claude Closky (France), a wallpaper work that prefigured the financial
crisis of 2009.
o Cameroonian artist Pascale Marthine Tayou’s installation of thousands of plastic bags that form an
enormous colourful sculptural form.
o A new wall drawing related to Jules Verne’s ‘A Drama in the Air’ (1851) by Mexican artist Jorge
Méndez Blake.
• New Queensland Art Gallery acquisitions being unveiled for the first time include sculptures by Romuald
Hazoumè (Benin) and artists from Cape York’s Aurukun community; drawings by Frédéric Bruly Bouabré
(Côte d’Ivoire); photographs by Mitra Tabrizian (Iran), Guy Tillim (South Africa) and Olaf Breuning
(Switzerland); and video works by SUPERFLEX (Denmark) and Sharif Waked (Palestine).
• ‘21st Century’ also will showcase major video works by Shaun Gladwell (Australia), Isaac Julien
(England), Robin Rhode (South Africa), Aernout Mik (The Netherlands) and Ryan Trecartin (United
States).
• Popular works from the collection on exhibition include Bharti Kher’s bindi-covered elephant, The skin
speaks a language not its own 2006; Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus garden 2002 and Soul under the moon
2002; Candice Breitz’s King (a portrait of Michael Jackson) 2005; Olafur Eliasson’s participatory Lego
work, The cubic structural evolution project 2004; and Tobias Putrih’s monumental arch of cardboard
boxes, Connection 2004.
• ‘21st Century’ will be complemented by three major film and video programs, A New Tomorrow: Visions of
the Future in Cinema (December 26 – February 27, 2011, tickets on sale from www.qtix.com.au),
Unseen: New Cinema in the 21st Century (March 4 – 26 April, 2011, free admission) and Video Witness:
News from the World (March 18-27, 2011, free admission), in GoMA’s Australian Cinémathèque.
• Extensive public programs, including children’s activities, will take place throughout the exhibition.
• A major publication featuring critical texts by a range of Australian and international writers and curators
will be published to coincide with the opening of ‘21st Century’.
• A new publication, 21st Century Art for Kids will be published to coincide with the Children’s Art Centre
activities and artworks.
• The exhibition blog at www.21cblog.com features background and contextual information on artists and
works in the show, and commentary from international curators and writers including co-curators for the
2011 Istanbul Biennial Jens Hoffman (USA) and Adriano Pedrosa (Brazil), Tom Vanderbilt (USA) and
Andrew Frost (Australia).

CURATORIAL IDEAS
Several interconnected ideas run through the exhibition. They connect works to contemporary discussions
concerning art, museums, audiences and life in the twenty-first century. The question of how to respond
to realities that have confronted individuals and communities over the past decade has been taken up by
many artists in the ‘21st Century’ exhibition, as has the exploration of new ways to address longstanding
aesthetic and philosophical issues.
Key ideas which have emerged from groupings of works in the exhibition include:
THE SHARED EXPERIENCE OF ART
The last decade has seen significant changes in how audiences’ experiences of art are understood. There
has been a strong emphasis on exploring new forms of exhibition making and museum display,
particularly with regards to the viewer’s sense of being implicated in a work.
Artists have experimented with making the viewer more conscious of the way art is experienced and there
has been a move away from the emphasis on the artist as an individual and towards collaborative
processes. Art practice increasingly embraces all forms, media and strategies, and all geographies.
Formal or media-based criteria for discussing and evaluating art have been surpassed by an emphasis on
how artists enlarge the field of art, question limits and renew the relationship between art and life.
COLLECTING CONTEMPORARY ART
Drawn primarily from the permanent collection of the Queensland Art Gallery, ‘21st Century’ reflects on a
decade of both art-making and collection development. The past decade has been a period of
extraordinary development for contemporary art, and has seen the fast expansion of an international
network of biennales, art fairs, museums and galleries. This has facilitated dialogue between artists and
enhanced audiences’ awareness of art from different parts of the world. New areas of collection
development featured in ‘21st Century’ include Africa, South and Central America and West Asia.
MATERIAL WORLD
The recycling and repurposing of commonplace objects, sometimes rescued from the rubbish heap, is a
recurring strategy seen in the ‘21st Century’ exhibition, reflecting a world awash in commodities and
waste. Easily obtained and inexpensive materials such as plastic bags, fabric, cardboard boxes,
pandanus fibre and carbon paper are employed by artists in the exhibition for their physical properties as
well as for their connections to personal and cultural histories. Seemingly out of step with a world
saturated by virtual streams of data and images, these art works present us with the evidence of actions
and the labour of putting things together.
GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEMS
A concern to document and map the contemporary world and the often uneasy navigation between
‘local’ and ‘global’ runs through many works in the exhibition. Artists are responding to increasingly
interlinked geographies by producing idiosyncratic and disruptive inventories of the world. These
constitute erratic atlases of inhabited spaces which express perspectives on cultural ‘globalism’ and
economic ‘globalisation’.

MEGA CITIES, MICRO CONVERSATIONS
In 2007, the world passed a demographic milestone: for the first time in human history, more people lived
in cities than in rural areas. Many artists have responded to alienating, routine or anonymous aspects of
the experience of living in ever-larger cities. Others have emphasised the creation of relationships at a
micro level that work against the homogenisation of contemporary life.
PERFORMANCE
Over the last decade, there has been a resurgence in video art of simple performance-based acts to
camera, variously involving humour, physical gestures and feats of endurance. Using straightforward
technical means, they resonate with the beginnings of performance art and video art in the 1960s and
1970s while also connecting to the recent advent of YouTube and other online video sharing. websites.
ART HISTORIES
The idea of art history as a singular progressive current of stylistic developments has been increasingly
challenged in the twenty-first century. Rather than heralding ‘the end of art history’, this contemporary
condition is generating more complex formulations of history. In place of a unified history of modern and
contemporary art defined in Europe and the United States, there is a widening awareness of the many
historical and geographic contexts for contemporary art practice.
DEMOCRACIES
Polish artist Artur Zmijewski’s 20-channel video installation Democracies 2009 features public
demonstrations and celebrations in eastern Europe, Israel and the West Bank and problematises the idea
of democracy, revealing its contradictions and limitations. Other works in the exhibition underline fractures
in modern nation states predicated on democratic ideals, where the pursuit of equal rights continues to be
of critical importance. Political theorist Antonio Negri recently suggested that the fundamental problem is
‘how to find ways of recreating an authentic democratic circulation and free movement’.
THE ART ANIMAL
In the last decade, there has been a heightened awareness of the relationships between humans, other
animals and the environment. Many artists are contributing to contemporary art museum bestiaries of live,
dead, photographed and filmed animals, and reflecting on what our interspecies relationships reveal about
us. These animals often function as metaphors or mirrors for our own animal nature.
CONSTELLATIONS OF CULTURE AND HISTORY
Some of the key ideas emerging through artists’ works in the ‘21st Century’ exhibition include the rethinking
of history in terms of a multitude of aesthetic genealogies; the changing experiences and understandings of
geography at local, regional and global levels; and the highlighting of interrelatedness and mutual
responsibility in regard to social and environmental issues. Many of these concerns relate to how humans
share the earth with each other and with other species, and how they understand their place in history and
ecology.

MAJOR NEW COMMISSIONS
In addition to works from the Queensland Art Gallery collection and key loans, ‘21st Century: Art in the First
Decade’ presents several major commissions from national and international artists. Some of these have
been developed and commissioned through the Gallery’s Children’s Art Centre.
Brook Andrew / Australia b.1981 / Wiradjuri people / Ancestral Worship 2010
Deck chairs and mixed media installation / Commissioned for ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’
Brook Andrew often incorporates traditional carved Wiradjuri patterns into his
work. Here he combines them with images from historical post-cards, set on deckchairs
under playful trees. The work poses a sort of challenge: one can sit beside
these dignified people, rather than on them: the choice is ours. Andrew sees the
portraits as ‘ancestors’ or ‘gods’ – now gracing or haunting us with their presence.
These exquisite faces remind us how often our shared humanity is betrayed. It’s a
provocation, but importantly it’s also a memorial to our ancestors – whatever their
origins.
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot / France b.1961 / From here to ear (v. 13) 2010
Mixed media / Octagonal structures, each made in maple and plywood, harpsichord strings, piano pins,
contact microphones and broadcast system, coat hangers, metal recipients, seeds, water, nests, ground
in MDF, sand, grass, finches / Installed size variable / Commissioned for ‘21st Century: Art in the First
Decade’ Collection: The artist / Courtesy: Galerie Xippas, Paris / With thanks to the Queensland Finch
Society, www.qfs.org.au
From here to ear, (v. 13) 2010 explicitly orchestrates a space for listening and
experiencing within a technical and organic apparatus of sound production.
‘Instruments’ have been constructed and tuned to create an environment for finches
to feed, fly, rest and make music through interacting with them as spaces for living.
Rather than 'participation' on the part of the viewer, the artist is particularly
interested in the quality of human attention that arises through experiencing the
installation.
Claude Closky / France b.1963 / Untitled (NASDAQ) 2003
Wallpaper / Dimensions variable / Installation commissioned for ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’ /
Courtesy: The artist
In his wallpaper work Untitled (NASDAQ) 2003, Closky uses columns of stockmarket
figures to form a literal backdrop to our lives. These lists of numbers in black and white
belie the extraordinary interconnectedness and incomprehensible levels of complexity
characteristic of the global economic system.

Leandro Erlich / Argentina b.1973 / Swimming pool 2010
Timber, swimming pool ladder, plexiglass and water / Courtesy: The artist and Galleria Continua, San
Gimignano, Beijing, Le Moulin / Commissioned for ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’
Swimming pool 2010 is among Erlich’s most well-known and critically acclaimed
works — a trompe l’oeil sculpture of the most ambitious scale, in which a gallery
space is transformed into a swimming pool, complete with timber decking, ladder and
lapping water. Approaching the edge of the pool, visitors are further confounded by
the sight of people walking underneath the water. The installation was first displayed
at the 2001 Venice Biennale in the Argentinean pavilion, and has subsequently been
exhibited at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, and the 21st Century
Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, where a version has been constructed
as a permanent installation.
Fiona Hall / Australia b.1953 / Fly away home 2010
Bird nests courtesy of the Queensland Museum, paper, pencils, wallpaper, timber, MDF board, US dollars,
glass Installed size variable / Commissioned by the Children’s Art Centre for ‘21st Century: Art in the First
Decade’ / Courtesy: The artist and the Queensland Art Gallery / Supported by the Tim Fairfax Family
Foundation 2010
Fiona Hall is an Australian artist who is known for her ability to make extraordinary
things from ordinary, everyday materials like paper currency and Coca-Cola cans. For
‘21st Century Kids’, Hall’s interest in the migratory patterns of birds and nest making is
translated into a hands-on activity. Young visitors are invited to enter the nest-inspired
activity space to create their own species of bird using specially designed templates
and paper money.
Carsten Höller / Belgium/Sweden b.1961 / Left/Right Slide 2010
Stainless steel, polycarbonate and rubber mats / 950 x 2562 x 412cm (installed) / Commissioned for ‘21st
Century: Art in the First Decade’ / Purchased 2010 with a special allocation from the Queensland Art Gallery
Foundation
Höller’s Left/Right slide 2010 is a double, spiral shaped slide connecting GoMA’s third
and ground floors. The artist describes these slides as devices for eliciting ‘an
emotional state that is a unique condition somewhere between delight and madness’.
He is keenly interested in the private (mental) sensations generated by sliding, and
embraces the idea that the experience will affect or ‘change’ participants.

Jorge Méndez Blake / Mexico b.1974 / Untitled 2010
Paint on wall / 1100 x 850cm / Commissioned for ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’ / Courtesy:
The artist and Messen de Clerq, Brussels
The wall drawing Untitled 2010 was inspired by an illustration by Émile-Antoine
Bayard for Jules Verne’s short story, ‘Un drame dans les airs’, first published in
1851. This describes a hair-raising balloon flight with an uninvited passenger,
who is intent on dropping the ballast and flying ever-higher. The protagonist
must outwit the stowaway, with his irrational and potentially mortal desire for
altitude; the latter, meanwhile, recounts the history of balloon travel, including
landmark achievements and disasters. Méndez Blake here comments on the
nineteenth-century European and North American literary genre of the
adventure story as it was linked to colonial exploration, and to the ideology of
progress as the advance of scientific knowledge. Méndez-Blake also contributes
another major commission, inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure
Island, to the Children’s Art Centre.
Jana Sterbak / Czech Republic/Canada b.1955 / Children will show you art 2010
Queensland Art Gallery Collection, glasses fitted with cameras, modified USB hubs, computers,
touchscreens, decorative moulding, mirror, glass, timber, acrylic and MDF board / DVD: 6 minutes,
colour, sound / Commissioned by the Children’s Art Centre for ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’ /
Courtesy: The artist and the Queensland Art Gallery / Supported by the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation
2010
Recorded inside a purpose-built, faux 19th century gallery space, Jana Sterbak’s
commission features an exhibition of works from the Gallery’s historical collections
curated by kids. Young visitors view the exhibition and record a film featuring their
responses to the works from their point of view using a small digital camera built
into a pair of high tech glasses. The finished film clips can be sent to friends and
family via email to show the young visitors ideas about works on show.
Pascale Marthine Tayou / Cameroon b.1967 / Plastic bags 2001–10
Plastic bags / 600 x 600 x 600cm (variable) / Commissioned for ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’
/ Courtesy: The artist and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Beijing, Le Moulin
The recycling and re-purposing of materials is a strategy for several artists in the
‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’ exhibition who comment on issues of the
global circulation of goods, consumption and waste. Made from thousands of
plastic shopping bags, Tayou’s monolithic assemblage Plastic bags 2001–08 is
an ominous spectacle of consumerism that hangs from the ceiling, as if
threatening to spill its junk on the gallery floor. Tayou has compared the plastic
bags to people, describing them as both ‘useful and dangerous’, emphasising the
underlying contradictions of a world saturated with commodities.

Rirkrit Tiravanija / Argentina/Thailand b.1961 /Untitled (time sausage) 2010
Timber, glass, fabric, paper, pencils, animal product, wire, MDF board and mixed media /
Commissioned by the Children’s Art Centre for ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’ Courtesy: The
artist and the Queensland Art Gallery / Supported by the Tim Fairfax Family Foundation 2010
The work of Argentian-born artist Rirkrit Tiravanija aims to bring visitors together
and create living artworks, through activities such as sharing food in art galleries
and museums. Tiravanija’s work for ‘21st Century Kids’ is situated in a dynamic,
purpose-built activity space, which invites generations of children and their
grandparents to share family histories, stories and images. Contributions will be
collected and transformed during workshop demonstrations, creating new objects
for display in the space.
The Tissue Culture & Art Project / est. 1996, Perth, Western Australia. / Oron
Catts / Finland b.1967 / Ionat Zurr / England b.1970 / Odd Neolifism 2010
Bioreactor, glass, CO2, nutrient solution, living cells, and taxidermy and preserved specimens on loan
from the collections of QM Loans, Queensland Museum, Brisbane; the University of Queensland’s
Zoology Museum, courtesy of the School of Biological Sciences; and Mr David Burnett, Curator
International Art, QAG/GoMA / Internal cabinet dimensions: 135 x 1580 x 58.5cm / The Tissue Culture &
Art Project is hosted at SymbioticA — The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, School of Anatomy and
Human Biology, The University of Western Australia / Commissioned for ‘21st Century: Art in the First
Decade’
TC&A raises important cultural discussions about the ethics and epistemologies of
technologically manipulating living systems for human ends. Odd neolifism 2010 in
this context explores the field of taxonomy, or the classifying of specimens, as a
subject undergoing radical change in the era of genetic engineering. The artists ask
what place constructed forms of life can have in this system.

ARTIST BIODATA
Artist Biodata Media Queensland Art
Gallery Collection/
Commission/Loan
ABDESSEMED, Adel (M) Algeria b.1971 Neon Loan
AH XIAN (M) China/Australia NSW b.1960 Sculpture QAG Collection
AI Weiwei (M) China b.1957 Found object QAG Collection
ALBERT, Tony (M) Australia b.1981, Girramay people Assemblage QAG Collection
ALYS, Francis (M) Belgium b.1959 35mm slide
projection
ANDRADE TUDELA, Armando (M) Peru b.1975 Photograph QAG Collection
ANDREW, Brook (M) Australia b.1970 Painting /
installation
Loan
QAG Collection /
Commission
ATLAS GROUP, THE / RAAD, Walid Lebanon est.1999 / b.1967 Prints QAG Collection
AURUKUN Camp Dog Sculptors (M) Australia / Jack Bell b.1950, Wik-Mungkan
people / Craig Koomeeta b.1977, Wik-Alkan
people / David Marpoondin b.1968, Wik-
Ngathan people / Garry Namponan b.1960,
Wik-Ngathan/Wik-Alkan people / Leigh
Namponan b.1965 Wik-Ngathan people /
Keith Wikmunea b.1967, Wik-Mungkan/Wik-
Alkan people / Roderick Yunkaporta b.1948,
Wik-Mungkan people
Sculpture QAG Collection
BELL, Richard (M) Australia b.1953, Kamilaroi people Painting QAG Collection
BISMUTH, Pierre (M) France b.1963 Installation QAG Collection
BOURGEOIS, Louise (F) France/United States 1911-2010 Sculpture Loan
BOURSIER-MOUGENOT, Céleste (M) France b.1961 Installation Commission
BOYCE, Martin (M) United Kingdom b.1967 Sculpture QAG Collection
BREITZ, Candice (F) South Africa b.1972 Video QAG Collection
BREUNING, Olaf (M) Switzerland b.1970 Photograph QAG Collection
BRULY BOUABRÉ, Frédéric (M) Ivory Coast b.(c.)1923 Drawing QAG Collection
CHAPMAN, Jake & Dinos (M) United Kingdom b.1966/1962 Prints QAG Collection
CLOSKY, Claude (M) France b.1963 Wallpaper /
audio
Commission / Loan
COOKE, Nigel (M) United Kingdom b.1971 Painting QAG Collection

Artist Biodata Media Queensland Art
Gallery Collection/
Commission/Loan
COOPER, Justine (F) Australia/United States b.1968 Photograph /
video
CREED, Martin (M) United Kingdom b.1968 Installation Loan
QAG Collection
DE LA CRUZ, Angela (F) Spain b.1965 Painting QAG Collection
decolonizing.ps est.2007 Palestine / Sandi Hilal / Alessandro Petti / Eyal
Wiezman
Installation Loan
DEMAND, Thomas (M) Germany b.1964 Photograph QAG Collection
DJURBERG, Nathalie (F) Sweden b.1978 Video QAG Collection
ECHAKHCH, Latifa (F) Morocco/France b.1974 Installation QAG Collection
ELIASSON, Olafur (M) Denmark b.1967 Installation QAG Collection
EMIN, Tracey (F) United Kingdom b.1963 Neon QAG Collection
ERLICH, Leandro (M) Argentina b.1973 Installation Commission
EZAWA, Kota (M) Germany/United States b.1969 Video QAG Collection
FARMANFARMAIAN, Monir
Shahroudy (F)
Iran b.1924 Mirror mosaic QAG Collection
FINCH, Spencer (M) United States b.1962 Installation QAG Collection
FOROUHAR, Parastou (F) Iran b.1962 Photograph QAG Collection
FRASER, Andrea (F) United States b.1965 Video QAG Collection
GABORI, Sally (F) Australia b.(c.)1924, Kaiadilt people Painting QAG Collection
GARRIMARRA, Sally (F) Australia b.1967, Ganalbingu people Fibre QAG Collection
GLADWELL, Shaun (M) Australia b.1972 Video Loan
GROSSE, Katharina (F) Germany b.1961 Painting QAG Collection
HALL, Fiona (F) Australia b.1953 Installation Commission / QAG
Collection
HAZOUMÈ, Romuald (M) Benin b.1962 Sculpture /
photograph
QAG Collection
HENSON, Bill (M) Australia b.1955 Photograph QAG Collection
HIRST, Damien (M) United Kingdom b.1965 Wallpaper / print QAG Collection
HÖLLER, Carsten (M) Belgium b.1961 Installation Commission
HU Yang (M) China b.1959 Photograph QAG Collection

Artist Biodata Media Queensland Art
Gallery Collection/
Commission/Loan
JACIR, Emily (F) Palestine/United States b.1970 Print QAG Collection
JIN-GUBARANGUNYJA, Lorna (F) Australia b.1952, Burarra people Fibre QAG Collection
JULIEN, Isaac (M) United Kingdom b.1960 Video Loan
KENTRIDGE, William (M) South Africa b.1955 Video / print QAG Collection
KHER, Bharti (F) India b.1969 Sculpture QAG Collection
KLOSE, Anastasia (F) Australia b.1978 Video Loan
KOOLMATRIE, Yvonne (F) Australia b.1944, Ngarrindjeri people Fibre QAG Collection
KRIEMANN, Susanne (F) Germany b.1972 Photograph QAG Collection
KUSAMA, Yayoi (F) Japan b.1929 Installation QAG Collection
LEE Mingwei (M) Taiwan/United States b.1964 Installation QAG Collection
Makarrki – King Alfred’s Country 2008
artists (F)
Australia, Kaiadilt People / Birmuyingathi Maali
Netta Loogatha b.1942 / Rayarriwarrtharrbayingat
Amy Loogatha b.1942 / Sally Gabori Australia
b.(c.)1924 / Warthadangathi Bijarrba Ethel Thomas
b.1946 / Thunduyingathi Bijarrb May Moodoonuthi
1929–2008 / Kuruwarriyingathi Bijarrb Paula Paul
b.(c.)1937 / Wirrngajingathi Bijarrb Dawn Naranatjil
1935–2009
Painting QAG Collection
MALGARRICH, Shirley (F) Australia b.1947, Burarra people Fibre QAG Collection
MANGANO, Gabriella and Silvana (F) Australia b.1972 Video Loan
McGINLEY, Ryan (M) United States b.1977 Photograph QAG Collection
MÉNDEZ BLAKE, Jorge (M) Mexico b.1974 Installation Commission
MENLIBAYEVA, Almagul (F) Kazakhstan b.1969 Photograph QAG Collection
MIK, Aernout (M) The Netherlands b.1962 Video QAG Collection
MOFFAT, Tracey (F) Australia/United States b.1960 Prints QAG Collection
MORTON, Callum (M) Australia b.1965 Sculpture QAG Collection
MOUNTFORD, Arlo (M) Australia b.1978 Video QAG Collection
NALMAKARRA, Mary (F) Australia b.1942, Burarra people Fibre QAG Collection
NASR, Moataz (M) Egypt b.1961 Textile QAG Collection
NEUENSCHWANDER, Rivane (F) Brazil b.1967 Video / installation QAG Collection /
Loan
OFILI, Chris (M) England b.1968 Painting Loan

Artist Biodata Media Queensland Art
Gallery Collection/
Commission/Loan
OPIE, Julian (M) England b.1958 L.E.D QAG Collection
OROZCO, Gabriel (M) Mexico b.1962 Sculpture QAG Collection
PAMBEGAN Jr, Arthur Koo-ekka (M) Australia b.1936, Wik-Mungkan people Sculpture QAG Collection
PARDINGTON, Fiona (F) New Zealand b. 1961 Photograph QAG Collection
PARK, Junebum (M) South Korea b.1976 Video QAG Collection
PATTERSON, Campbell (M) England/New Zealand b.1983 Video QAG Collection
PIVI, Paola (F) Italy b.1971 Photograph QAG Collection
PULE, John (M) Niue/New Zealand b.1962 Painting QAG Collection
PUTRIH, Tobias (M) Slovenia b.1972 Sculpture QAG Collection
QUINN, Marc (M) England b.1964 Prints QAG Collection
RANA, Rashid (M) Pakistan b.1968 Photograph QAG Collection
RHODE, Robin (M) South Africa b.1976 Video QAG Collection
ROSETZKY, David (M) Australia b.1970 Video QAG Collection
RUFF, Thomas (M) Germany b.1958 Photograph QAG Collection
RUSCHA, Edward (M) United States b.1937 Prints QAG Collection
SCHWENSEN, Tony (M) Australia/United States b.1970 Video QAG Collection
SHONIBARE, Yinka (M) England/Nigeria b.1962 Sculpture Loan
Southern Ladies Animation Group
(S.L.A.G) (F)
Australia est.2001 Video QAG Collection
STERBAK, Jana (F) Czech Republic/Canada b.1955 Video Commission / QAG
Collection
STREULI, Beat (M) Switzerland b.1957 Photograph QAG Collection
SUPERFLEX (F) Denmark est.1993 (Rasmus Nielsen b.1969 /
Jakob Fenger b.1968 / Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
b.1969)
Video QAG Collection
SWALLOW, Ricky (M) Australia/United States b.1974 Sculpture Loan
TABRIZIAN, Mitra (F) Iran/England Photograph QAG Collection
TAYOU, Pascale Marthine (M) Cameroon b.1967 Installation Commission
THUKRAL & TAGRA (M) India est. 2000 (Jiten Thukral b.1976 / Sumir
Tagra b.1979)
Painting QAG Collection
TILLIM, Guy (M) South Africa b.1962 Photograph QAG Collection

Artist Biodata Media Queensland Art
Gallery Collection/
Commission/Loan
TIRAVANIJA, Rirkrit (M) Thailand b.1961 Drawing /
installation
TISSUE CULTURE AND ART
PROJECT, THE (M/F)
Australia est.1996 (Oron Catts, Finland b.1967 / Ionat
Zurr, England b.1970)
Commission / QAG
Collection
Installation Commission
TRECARTIN, Ryan (M) United States b.1981 Video QAG Collection
TSUI Kuang-Yu (M) Taiwan b.1974 Video QAG Collection
VARIOUS Artists (movie banners) Ghana Painting QAG Collection
WAKED, Sharif (M) Palestine/Israel b.1964 Video QAG Collection
WALKER, Kara (F) United States b.1969 Prints QAG Collection
WANG Qingsong (M) China b.1966 Installation QAG Collection
WEAVER, Louise (F) Australia b. 1966 Sculpture QAG Collection
WILINGGIRRA, Agnes (F) Australia b.1943, Burarra people Fibre QAG Collection
XU Zhen (M) China b.1977 Installation QAG Collection
YANG Fudong (M) China b.1971 Video QAG Collection
ZHOU Xiaohu (M) China b.1960 Sculpture QAG Collection
ŻMIJEWSKI, Artur (M) Poland b.1966 Video Loan

ARTIST PROFILES
For further information and exhibition histories, please see http://qag.qld.gov.au//21st_Century/artists
Adel ABDESSEMED
b.1971 Algeria
Lives and works in Paris, France
Adel Abdessemed is known for his unexpected and sometimes controversial art practice. His works consider a wide
range of personal and political themes often addressing social taboos and presenting them as raw and uncomfortable
truths. Abdessemed is also known for works that reflect on the beauty and fragility of life and his visual language is at
once poetic and provocative.
AH XIAN
b.1960 China/Australia
Lives and works in Australia
Ah Xian began casting porcelain in the early 1990s at Sydney College of the Arts. In 1996, he returned to China and
travelled to Jingdezhen — famous for its kilns which, for centuries, produced fine porcelain objects and vessels for the
Chinese imperial courts — to learn traditional techniques. An Australia Council grant allowed him to visit Jingdezhen
again in 1998, where he worked for nine months with master potters and learnt the process of making porcelain busts,
including moulding them from life and decorating, glazing and firing them. Ah Xian's subsequent move to working in
cloisonné, lacquer and jade allowed him to further explore and reinterpret longstanding Chinese artistic traditions.
AI Weiwei
b.1957 China
Lives and works in Beijing, China
After a brief involvement in the early Chinese avant-garde, Ai Weiwei moved to New York in 1981 and immersed
himself in modern and contemporary art. Influenced by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, he began to critically address
artistic traditions and conventions. Since returning to Beijing in the mid 1990s, he has regularly addressed the
economy of art and historical objects in China with his iconoclastic sculptures, performances, photographs and
installations.
Tony ALBERT
b.1981 Australia (Girramay people)
Lives and works in Brisbane, Australia
Tony Albert's practice reveals his interest in mass-produced products from Australia's history and what these say
about dominant beliefs. By collaging, sculpting and transforming images, brands and texts, Albert succinctly reframes
modern Indigenous Australian history through its representations in 'kitsch' material culture. His work Sorry 2008 was
inspired by former prime minister Kevin Rudd's formal apology to Indigenous Australians on 13 February 2008. On this
day, Australia witnessed an overtly optimistic displays of unity and emotion and, in the eyes of many, grew up.

Francis ALŸS
b.1959 Belgium
Lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico
Francis Alÿs works across a diverse range of media, often taking his point of departure from what he calls ‘minor events
from everyday life’. The activity of walking occupies a particularly important place in Alÿs’s practice: in some works,
walks involve large groups of people and careful planning. Generally executed in a city environment, Alÿs’s walks often
reflect the cultural, economic and architectural conditions of urban life. New York, Los Angeles, London and Venice have
all been venues for his walks, but it is his adopted home (since 1987) of Mexico City, and especially the area around his
studio, that features most regularly.
Armando ANDRADE TUDELA
b.1975 Peru
Lives and works in St Etienne, France and Berlin, Germany
Since 2000 Peruvian-born artist Armando Andrade Tudela has lived and worked in European cities including London,
Maastricht, St Etienne and Berlin. Andrade Tudela's exploration of themes of displacement has been prompted by both
his itinerancy and interest in processes of cultural assimilation.
Brook ANDREW
b.1970 Australia (Wiradjuri people)
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia
Brook Andrew often reproduces historical imagery on a large scale, re-investigating the ways in which Australian
Indigenous people have been represented in history. His work The Island V 2008 interrogates notions of Australia as a
savage and romantic land by examining an image from Wilhelm Blandowski’s Australien in 142 Photographischen 1862.
AURUKUN Artists
Jack Bell / b.1950 Australia, Wik-Mungkan people
Craig Koomeeta / b.1977 Australia, Wik-Alkan people
David Marpoondin / b.1968 Australia, Wik-Ngathan people
Garry Namponan / b.1960 Australia, Wik-Ngathan/Wik-Alkan people
Leigh Namponan / b.1965 Australia, Wik-Ngathan people
Keith Wikmunea / b.1967 Australia, Wik-Mungkan/Wik-Alkan people
Roderick Yunkaporta / b.1948 Australia, Wik-Mungkan people
Artists from Aurukun, western Cape York Peninsula, have long been known for their timber sculptures which often
represent totemic figures belonging to one of the five separate clans of Aurukun. Some of these sculptures are
monumental ‘law poles’ used in important ceremonies, whilst others take an innovative look at the contemporary culture
of their community. The group of camp dog sculptures exhibited in '21st century: Art in the First Decade' were produced
over an extended period during 2009–10 at the Wik and Kugu Art Centre in Aurukun.
Richard BELL
b.1953 Australia, Kamilaroi people
Lives and work in Brisbane, Australia
Richard Bell creates work that interrogates the taboo issues at the interface between cultures in Australia and constantly
challenges stereotyped ideas of Aboriginal culture and art. His 2003 Telstra NATSIAA winning painting, Scientia E
Metaphysica (Bell’s Theorem), boldly states: ‘Aboriginal art it’s a white thing’; it initiated a debate about the Indigenous
art industry and the forces that drive the production of Aboriginal art. Bell’s Theorem (Trikky Dikky and friends) 2005
makes another controversial statement: ‘Australian art it’s an Aboriginal thing’. Here, Bell asserts that many of Australia’s
most respected artists gained fame through appropriating Aboriginal art and artists.

BENTINCK ISLAND Artists
Birmuyingathi Maali Netta Loogatha / b.1942 Australia, Kaiadilt people
Rayarriwarrtharrbayingat Amy Loogatha / b.1942 Australia, Kaiadilt people
Sally Gabori / Australia b.(c.)1924 Australia, Kaiadilt people
Warthadangathi Bijarrba Ethel Thomas / b.1946 Australia, Kaiadilt people
Thunduyingathi Bijarrb May Moodoonuthi / 1929–2008 Australia, Kaiadilt people
Kuruwarriyingathi Bijarrb Paula Paul / b.(c.)1937 Australia, Kaiadilt people
Wirrngajingathi Bijarrb Dawn Naranatjil / 1935–2009 Australia, Kaiadilt people
The Bentinck Island artists are a group of very senior female painters of the Kaiadilt people who live on Mornington
Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. They commenced painting in 2006 after Sally Gabori became involved in painting
workshops run for participants at the aged care facility there. She took great pride in being able to tell her stories through
her art and introduced members of her extended family to painting, creating a small-scale but important movement
within the community.
Pierre BISMUTH
b.1963 France
Lives and works in London, England and Brussels, Belgium
Pierre Bismuth’s work addresses our ability to interpret cultural forms, from linguistic systems through to specific cultural
products such as photographs, magazines and films. A defining feature of contemporary art over the past decade is its
engagement with cinema and Bismuth is recognised for his unique and sophisticated interventions in the operations of
films.
Louise BOURGEOIS
1911–2010 France/United States
Louise Bourgeois had a long and influential career. Born in Paris, she studied under cubist artist André Lhote in the
1930s before moving to New York in 1938. She experimented with many ideas associated with the 20th-century
European and North American avant-gardes but always maintained an individual and unique approach, foregrounding
her own subjective experience and personal history. Her psychologically charged works often have an autobiographical
character, with references to childhood as well as to the human body.
Céleste BOURSIER-MOUGENOT
b.1961 France
Lives and works in Sète, France
After training as a musician and composer, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot forged an art practice that merges the visual and
the auditory. Boursier-Mougenot considers music the medium through which humans most commonly experience the
intangible and abstract. The artist aims for this harmony of process and effect to encourage viewers ’to witness their own
present time’. His installations combine the technical with the aesthetic and sensorial; he refers to them as functioning
like a ‘dispositif’ rather than an installation. The term, loosely translated as device or structure, foregrounds the potential
of a work to engage viewers in both the operational and aesthetic components of a work.
Martin BOYCE
b.1967 United Kingdom
Lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland
Martin Boyce re-imagines twentieth-century Modernism through his sculptures and installations, which rework and give
new life to modernist forms of art, architecture and design. As he stated in a 2005 interview, 'By and large what you're
looking at is something from the past, but I want to bring it into the now and see what effect time has had'.

Candice BREITZ
b.1972 South Africa
Lives and works in Braunschweig, Germany
Candice Breitz disassembles and reconstructs products from the entertainment industry with an eloquence,
sophistication and clarity that places the viewer in a critically engaged relationship with popular culture. Her video
installations imitate the visual languages of contemporary pop culture and the phenomenon of micro-celebrity
synonymous with YouTube. Often appropriating, splicing and remixing footage taken from film, television and music
videos, her approach combines a critique of consumerism with the uncritical enthusiasm of a fan.
Olaf BREUNING
b.1970 Switzerland
Lives and works in New York, United States
Based in New York since 2001, Olaf Breuning has created a body of work ranging across video, sculpture, drawing,
photography and installation. His work is steeped in popular culture and humorously underlines the artifice behind wellknown
movies and cultural icons. In the spirit of Dada, Breuning's practice draws directly from, and comments on, the
vast circulatory and viral nature of contemporary media. He uses humour to capture and halt our attention with images
that are familiar but made strange, funny, absurd and, at times, poignant.
Frédéric BRULY BOUABRE
b.c.1923 Côte d’Ivoire
Lives and works in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
Frédéric Bruly Bouabré is a major figure in contemporary West African art and is one of a group of senior artists included
in the exhibition whose work has had continued relevance and influence in the 21st Century. Since the 1970s, Bouabré
has transferred his thoughts and research to postcard-sized drawings, which are gathered together under the title
'Connaissance du Monde' ('Knowledge of the World').
Jake & Dinos CHAPMAN
Jake Chapman / b.1966 United Kingdom
Dinos Chapman / b.1962 United Kingdom
Live and work in London
Brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman came to prominence in the mid 1990s alongside their ‘Young British Artist’ peers,
including Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Marc Quinn. Since then, they have collaborated on a provocative and
influential body of work that confronts our standards of morality and taste while also questioning the social role and value
of art. The Chapman brother’s work questions the idea that art emerges from unique and original creative thoughts: they
regard their art practice as being situated within an ongoing process of exchange with existing images and forms in both
contemporary and historical visual culture.
Claude CLOSKY
b.1963 France
Lives and works in Paris
Claude Closky’s art practice draws on the flow of images, logos and advertising strategies that are the face of consumer
capitalism in the twenty-first century. His work points to the way in which the sign and the product become equivalent in
the hyper-reality of publicity and consumerism.

Nigel COOKE
b.1973 England
Lives and works in London, England
Nigel Cooke is best known for large-scale, meticulously painted canvases that depict fantastic, hyperrealistic scenes of
urban decay. His style merges popular art forms such as the graphic novel and grafitti with a labour-intensive technique
characteristic of seventeenth-century Flemish and Dutch oil painting traditions. While his method is obsessively realistic,
the realities he produces are otherworldly.
Justine COOPER
b.1968 Australia/United States
Lives and works in New York, USA
Justine Cooper works at the intersection of art, science and medicine. She originally specialised in photography but her
work now extends across media including animation, video and installation, as well as medical imaging technologies
such as MRI, DNA sequencing and ultrasound. In 2003-04 Cooper was artist-in-residence at the American Natural
History Museum in New York, the first in its almost 150-year history.
Martin CREED
b.1968 Scotland
Lives and works in London, United Kingdom
Martin Creed’s works delicately illuminate the objects, spaces and logic of our daily lives. With gentle and often selfeffacing
humour, Creed makes art from things we take for granted and enacts a shift in the way we look at and think
about familiar objects and situations. He transforms mundane materials into highly affecting installations and objects.
decolonizing.ps
est. 2007 Palestine
Sandi Hilal, Palestine b.1973
Alessandro Petti, Italy b.1973
Eyal Weizman, Israel b.1970
The collaborative project decolonizing.ps intertwines art, architecture, politics and ecology to envision new possibilities
for the structures of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Their output can take the form of plans, maps, data or published
documents, as well as physical interventions in built structures. Their work has been characterised by its integrity, rigour,
and combination of conceptual precision and political engagement.
Angela DE LA CRUZ
b.1965 Spain
Lives and works in London, United Kingdom
Angela de la Cruz’s iconoclastic art practice subjects paintings to violent and destructive processes. In an art-historical
context, de la Cruz’s work might be understood in the tradition of monochrome painting which, at different times over the
course of the 20th century, signalled a radical departure from figurative art and proposed a new approach that was antiillusionist
and sought to emphasise the materiality of painting. Other important historical precedents for de la Cruz’s work
are Lucio Fontana’s ‘slash paintings’ and Yves Klein’s ‘fire paintings’, in which destructive processes are carefully
controlled and deployed for aesthetic ends.

Thomas DEMAND
b.1964 Germany
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Thomas Demand typically takes a found photograph as his point of departure. He meticulously recreates its content in a
large-scale model using paper and cardboard, before producing a single, carefully lit and composed image almost
indistinguishable from the original. However, something unsettling and surreal about Demand's works entices viewers to
study the detail, and the artifice begins to unravel.
Nathalie DJURBERG
b.1978 Sweden
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Nathalie Djurberg uses plasticine and domestic materials to craft stop-frame animations highly regarded for both their
complexity and intensity. Since the late 1990s Djurberg has explored fantasy, dreams and sexuality through her short
animated works, which include compelling soundtracks composed by her partner, Hans Berg, and which can challenge
the viewer through their emotional and psychological impact.
Latifa ECHAKHCH
b.1974 Morocco/France
Lives and works in Paris, France and Martigny, Switzerland
Latifa Echakhch draws on objects and motifs relating to her Moroccan heritage and to European and United States
postwar art — minimalist art and colour field painting from the 1960s in particular. Echakhch's installations give presence
to the language of politics and protest through a range of materials while also exploring how the treatment of an
exhibition space can refer to forms of political expression.
Olafur ELIASSON
b.1967 Denmark
Lives and works in Copenhagen, Denamrk and Berlin, Germany
Olafur Eliasson is known for works in which immaterial sensations such as temperature, light and air become sculptural
elements which viewers experience. He seeks to actively engage audiences in the physical nature of a work or
installation rather than the conventional visual encounter. Eliasson states, ‘my works in general discuss the notion of a
reality being constructed, that ideas such as ‘nature’ or ‘science’ are models for how we perceive reality. So the notions
of ‘construction’ and ‘models’ are very present in all my work. I have always put an effort into exposing the way my work
has been constructed, so as to suggest that there are not any universal values connected to human experience. Actually
I would argue that there is no ‘nature’ but only ‘culture’ and that as we experience so called ‘nature’ we also cultivate or
constitute it.’
Tracey EMIN
b.1963 England
Lives and works in London, England
Tracey Emin’s practice ranges across drawing, printmaking, photography, sewn fabric, video, painting, sculpture and
installation. Since the late 1990s, neon has also been a key medium for her, which she uses to emulate a cursive script.
This reflects both her confessional, autobiographical writings, and the graphic rhythm of drawing – an activity central to
her practice. Emin has stated that, ‘To me drawing is a natural extension of mental creativity, it’s like handwriting.
Without drawing I wouldn’t really exist’. Text, image and direct communication are the hallmarks of Emin’s work and her
‘tell it like it is’ narratives resonate in a manner parallel to pop-music lyrics.

Leandro ERLICH
b.1973 Argentina
Lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Paris, France
In Leandro Erlich’s installations, familiar spaces such as apartment buildings, hairdressing salons, and gallery spaces
are used in unexpected and confounding ways. Basic laws of physics are seemingly inverted, and viewers are plunged
into environments that both confuse and delight the senses.
Kota EZAWA
b.1969 Germany
Lives and works in San Francisco, United States
Kota Ezawa describes his practice as a form of 'video archaeology'. Drawing on sources as diverse as the OJ Simpson
trial and the 1969 Moon landing, Ezawa recasts his subjects in simple stills and animations, the results having been
described as a cross between Andy Warhol and South Park.
Monir Shahroudy FARMANFARMAIAN
b.1924 Iran
Lives and works in Tehran, Iran
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian has forged a distinguished career spanning over 50 years. Inspired by the traditions
of Islamic geometry and pattern and by techniques such as reverse glass painting, mirror mosaic and relief sculpture,
Farmanfarmaian has revived and transformed these forms to create startlingly original works.
Spencer FINCH
b.1962 United States
Lives and works in New York, United States
Spencer Finch explores the peculiarities of human perception, bringing a combination of poetic sensibility and scientific
rigour to a range of media, including painting, drawing, photography and installation. Light is the preeminent subject of
his practice and he considers how our experience of it is inflected by a diverse set of subjective and objective factors
such as geography, time, history and memory.
Parastou FOROUHAR
b.1962 Iran
Lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany
Parastou Forouhar grew up in Tehran, and was one of the first students enrolled at Tehran University’s Academy of the
Arts after it reopened in 1984, following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. While there, Forouhar explored the tradition of
Persian miniature painting as a structure within which to test new ideas. In 1991, she left Iran to continue her studies in
Germany, where she found her identity shift from Parastou Forouhar into an ‘Iranian artist’.
Andrea FRASER
b.1965 United States
Lives and works in Los Angeles, United States
Andrea Fraser began exhibiting in the United States in the mid 1980s. Much of her work is concerned with the
hierarchical structures of the art world and the relationships between its constituent parts: museums, curators, collectors,
artists and audiences.

Sally GABORI
b.c.1924 Kaiadilt people, Australia
Lives and works on Mornington Island, Australia
Sally Gabori’s paintings are widely acclaimed and admired for their vitality, immediacy and intuitive use of colour. Born
into the Kaiadilt people of Bentinck Island in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria, until her early twenties she had lived an
almost exclusively traditional life, gathering bush foods and fishing with the aid of the complex stone-walled fish-traps. In
1948, following the effects of drought, high tide and the salination of underground freshwater stores, all Bentinck people
were moved to the Methodist Mission on the larger Mornington Island. Gabori has, however, maintained a strong
connection to Kaiadilt country through language, story and physical return whenever possible.
Shaun GLADWELL
b.1972 Australia
Lives and works in Sydney, Australia
In recent years Shaun Gladwell has gained a national and international profile for his videos, which feature acts of
physical prowess and endurance. After an injury ended his ambitions to become a professional skateboarder, Gladwell
began to experiment with video, filming street subculture arts such as skateboarding, breakdancing and BMX-bike riding.
Katharina GROSSE
b.1961 Germany
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Katharina Grosse's work embraces many of the traditions of painting while opening it up to new possibilities and
investigating its interaction with other disciplines, including drawing, performance, sculpture and architecture. Having
worked predominantly with a brush in the early phase of her practice, in the late 1990s Grosse began working with a
spray gun. In recent years, her works have brought together a range of painting techniques in an ongoing dialogue
about gesture and paint.
Fiona HALL
b.1953 Australia
Lives and works in Adelaide, Australia
Fiona Hall’s practice includes major public commissions and projects that have embraced a broad range of media, and
have increasingly engaged with themes of ecology, history and the effects of globalisation.
Romuald HAZOUMÈ
b.1962 Benin
Lives and works in Porto-Novo, Benin
Romuald Hazoumè's assemblages are constructed from a range of discarded materials. This 'recycling' refers to
historical inequities in exchange between Africa and Europe — of slaves, of traditional artefacts being sent to Europe
and the Americas over centuries, and of the contemporary phenomenon in which industrialised countries pay African
nations to allow the dumping of their waste. Hazoumè creates a subversive feedback loop within this system by
recycling the waste as sculpture to be exhibited in (primarily) European galleries.

Bill HENSON
b.1955 Australia
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia
Bill Henson is one of Australia’s most celebrated artists and holds a central position in contemporary Australian
photography. For the last decade or more, he has presented exhibitions of diverse subjects in careful juxtapositions and
combinations, including figures, classical statuary and ruins as well as land and seascapes. Henson’s exhibitions are
unified by a distinctive sensibility, using the drama of highlights against the darkness characteristic of baroque or
romantic painting.
Damien HIRST
b.1965 United Kingdom
Lives and works in London and Devon, England
Since his first exhibitions in the early 1990s, Damien Hirst has emerged as one of the most influential and widely
publicised figures in his generation of ‘Young British Artists’. Hirst came to broad recognition for his vitrine sculptures of
animals in formaldehyde, cabinets full of pharmaceutical pills and paintings made from butterfly wings. Most recently, he
notoriously produced works specifically for a single artist’s auction in 2008 at Sotheby’s — a project he called ‘Beautiful
inside my head forever’. The auction netted over £111 million (around A$180 million) on the eve of what became known
as the ‘global financial crisis’.
Carsten HÖLLER
b.1961 Belgium
Lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden
Carsten Höller worked as a biologist before becoming an artist, and his art works might be thought of as experiments
that act on the viewer in surprising ways. He has stated that experience is the ‘material’ that he uses to create works that
alter the viewer’s sensory perception, behaviour and sense of order or logic. Since 1998, he has created a series of
slides for venues across Europe and the United States. Höller described these slides as devices for eliciting ‘an
emotional state that is a unique condition somewhere between delight and madness’. He is keenly interested in the
private (mental) sensations generated by sliding, and embraces the idea that the experience will affect or ‘change’
participants:
HU Yang
b.1959 China
Lives and works in Shanghai, China
In January 2004, Hu Yang commenced his encyclopaedic ‘Shanghai living’ project, which documents more than 500
families living in Shanghai. By turning the camera on the internal lives and homes of his subjects, Hu Yang also
documented the frantic urban development of Shanghai, one of the most rapidly changing cities in the world.
Emily JACIR
b.1970 Palestine/United States
Lives and works in Ramallah, Palestine and New York, United States
Based in both Ramallah — the Palestinian city on the West Bank — and New York, Emily Jacir works across diverse
media to make art that addresses the plight of the Palestinian people, and which encompasses geopolitical issues as
well as deeply personal stories. As a United States citizen, Jacir is able to travel with relative freedom between Israel,
Palestine and the rest of the world. Her experiences in these places and engagement with the friends, family and
strangers she meets there are an ongoing source of inspiration for her work.

Isaac JULIEN
b.1960 United Kingdom
Lives and works in London, England
Isaac Julien is today one of the most internationally celebrated artist–filmmakers working with multiple-channel video
installations. His practice is concerned with the transposition of film to spatialised installation, and he uses film and
projection technologies to create new vocabularies for experiencing the moving image, combining multiple narratives
and perspectives across an arrangement of screens. Julien explores themes of overlapping cultural histories,
movements of people and cultural interpretation in works such as True North 2004 and Fantôme Afrique 2005.
William KENTRIDGE
b.1955 South Africa
Lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa
Since the mid 1970s, William Kentridge's work has encompassed printmaking, theatre, filmmaking and drawing. Film
became an increasingly important aspect of his work from the late 1980s, proceeding from his animation of charcoal
drawings using the stop-motion technique, capturing them as they became visible before erasing and then reworking
them. Kentridge's practice is informed by the political and historical realities of South Africa while also addressing the
broader human condition.
Bharti KHER
b.1969 England
Lives and works in New Delhi, India
Bharti Kher uses stick-on bindis as a central motif in her practice. Traditionally a mark of pigment applied to the forehead
of Hindu men and women to symbolise the ‘third eye’, today, the bindi is commercially manufactured and has become a
popular decorative item for girls and women of other religions. Kher views the daily ritual of applying this third eye as
offering the possibility of seeing the world with fresh eyes. She uses this tiny object to transform various objects and
surfaces allowing the viewer to look at them anew.
Anastasia KLOSE
b.1978 Australia
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia
Anastasia Klose has established a reputation for her ‘aesthetic of the pathetic’, drawing on the painful or humorous
moments in her life to make videos. Her work answers a challenge to make art from what is immediately available,
whether ordinary experiences - such as boredom, loneliness or unrequited love - or inexpensive resources such as a
cheap camera, basic editing software and popular songs.
Yvonne KOOLMATRIE
b.1944 Australia, Ngarrindjeri people
Lives and works in Maningrida, Australia
After participating in a workshop in the early 1980s, Yvonne Koolmatrie was introduced to the techniques and traditional
methods of working with sedge rushes (Cyperus gymnocaulos). The traditional coiled basketry technique was refined by
the Ngarrindjeri people of the Murray River region. It uses bound bunches of local sedge rushes to form the foundation
of the object, which is then formed in a continuous spiral. Koolmatrie's work transcends the functional basis of the
technique and explores the sculptural potential of the medium while remaining connected to ancient traditions.

Susanne KRIEMANN
b.1972 Germany
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Susanne Kriemann investigates the uses of photography as a documentary and historiographic tool and has stated her
interest in how ‘photographs evoke imagination and mystery about the past’. She collects not only images but historical
documents, vintage photographs, books, old newspaper articles and artefacts as part of her expanded photographic
practice. Her photography records historical moments or sites and is often imbued with particular social and ideological
meanings.
Yayoi KUSAMA
b.1929 Japan
Lives and works in Tokyo, Japan
Yayoi Kusama has worked as a painter, sculptor and environmental artist for the past 50 years. She moved to the United
States in 1957 where she lived and worked in New York before returning to Tokyo in 1973. Kusama has developed a
motif in her work known as the ‘infinity net’, which she explores through a variety of materials and forms. She traces this
motif to her early childhood experiences, in which she '. . . was often troubled by a thin silk-like greyish-coloured veil that
came to envelop [her] . . .' Kusama uses images of nets, dots, repeated patterns and mirrors as ways of understanding
and coming to terms with the vastness of life.
Gabriella and Silvana MANGANO
b.1972 Australia
Live and work in Melbourne, Australia
Gabriella and Silvana Mangano studied drawing separately at the Victorian College of the Arts, only later did they come
together to collaborate on the videos for which they are now well-known. Drawing remains integral to the twins’ work and
it often features in their videos. The moving image allows them to imply the drawn line in different ways too, effectively
drawing with their bodies or with props such as fabric, chairs or window shutters.
MANINGRIDA artists
Sally Garrimarra / b.1967 Australia, Ganalbingu people
Lorna Jin-Gubarangunyja / b.1952 Australia, Burarra people
Shirley Malgarrich / b.1947 Australia, Burarra people
Mary Nalmakarra / b.1942 Australia, Burarra people
Agnes Wilinggirra / b.1943 Australia, Burarra people
Pandanus fish traps are made by artists who live in and around Maningrida in north-central Arnhem Land. The
Maningrida Aboriginal community occupies an area of 10,000 square kilometres, with many outlying communities where
artists live. Since the first craft outlet was set up in 1967, the cultural diversity of the region has contributed to the artists’
reputation for innovative, vibrant bark paintings, wooden sculptures and fibre works, ambitious in both scale and vision.
LEE Mingwei
b.1964 Taiwan
Lives and works in San Francisco and New York, United States
Lee Mingwei creates works which forge a direct connection between the artist and audience. These connections are
established via creative projects where gestures of trust, dialogues with strangers, cultural exchanges and the
appreciation of others are foregrounded.

Ryan McGINLEY
b.1977 United States
Lives and works in New York, United States
Since the early 2000s, Ryan McGinley has constructed a body of work picturing his adolescent friends and others
involved in the skateboarding scene on New York's Lower East Side. He developed a working relationship with
magazines including i-D, Vice and Butt, and was mentored by photographer and filmmaker Larry Clark, whom he met in
1991.
Jorge MÉNDEZ BLAKE
b.1974 Mexico
Lives and works in Guadalajara, Mexico
In his installations, wall drawings and objects, Jorge Méndez Blake navigates between literature, architecture and
history. He has previously taken texts by Robert Louis Stevenson, Pablo Neruda, Arthur Conan Doyle, Franz Kafka, Karl
Marx, Herman Melville and Jules Verne as points of departure for his works. He is interested in the way classic literature
can interact with everyday elements, such as buildings and urban space. In his works, literary references and images
are reframed to take on new resonance and invite new interpretations.
Almagul MENLIBAYEVA
b.1969 Kazakhstan
Lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Berlin, Germany and Almaty, Kazakhstan
Almagul Menlibayeva's practice incorporates photography and video and reflects on history, memory and landscape.
Employing an aesthetic she calls 'Romantic Punk Shamanism', Menlibayeva delineates an imagined pre-Soviet, pre-
Islamic realm incorporating a shamanistic freedom of the human body. In her performance videos, the artist appears
often with a group of other women in landscapes and architectures in a complex exploration of power, sexuality and
ritual.
Aernout MIK
b.1962 The Netherlands
Lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Aernout Mik’s work combines elements of architecture, performance and video. In his installations, a fictitious space is
projected to life size, linking it with the real, physical experience of the viewer. Mik proposes a space in which the
spectator acquires a heightened awareness of their own bodies in relation to both the screen and other viewers in the
gallery.
Tracey MOFFATT
b.1960 Australia/United States
Lives and works in Sydney, Australia
Tracey Moffatt works in photography, film and video, addressing complex open-ended narratives, often in extensive
suites of works. Moffatt frequently appears in her own images, acting out roles with the aid of elaborate costumes, props
and theatrical staging.
Callum MORTON
b.1965 Australia
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia
Callum Morton explores our relationship to the built environment. Addressing both iconic modernist buildings and
vernacular architecture, his works present architectural spaces as sets for personal narratives, social history and
invented stories.

Arlo MOUNTFORD
b.1978 England/Australia
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia
Arlo Mountford makes digital animations that are often filled with art historical references. Habitually peopling his works
with stick figures who rummage through the canon of twentieth-century art, he embarked in 2007 on an ambitious project
to animate three paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The hunters in the snow 1565, The harvesters 1565 and
Landscape with the fall of Icarus c.1558. Mountford set in motion the action implied in each painting, which occurs
successively as the soundtrack leads the viewer’s attention from one animation to the next.
Moataz NASR
b.1969 Germany
Lives and works in San Francisco, United States
Moataz Nasr’s combines art and cultural activism to address pan-Arab issues, often using the language of global media
and communications. Nasr’s Propaganda fabric appliqué and embroidered wall hangings represent the design and
content of United States’ propaganda leaflets, distributed over Iraq and bordering nations prior to the beginning of the
second Gulf War. His re-use of propaganda materials in his art constitutes a vehicle through which we can consider the
use of language and image to violent ends, as well as the effects of indifference and ignorance. These messages are
transformed through Nasr’s use of appliqué — a longstanding artistic practice in Egypt. The detailing of leatherwork with
figurative appliqué and decorative stitching was considered one of the highest cultural forms in ancient Egypt, figuring in
both cosmogony and mythology.
Rivane NEUENSCHWANDER
b.1967 Brazil
Lives and works in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Rivane Neuenschwander’s unique and multifaceted practice reflects on language, the natural world and the passing of
time. The recognition of her work Contingent 2008 that geographies are dependent on the rate of consumption is
particularly resonant at a time when the globalisation of industry and climate change has brought to the fore issues of
responsibility to the environment and to finite resources.
Chris OFILI
b.1968 England
Lives and works in London, England
Chris Ofili’s paintings, watercolours, and assemblages came to broad attention in the 1990s and he has continued to
paint and sculpt works that reflect on black culture and its portrayal. Early works featured characters from B-grade
‘blaxploitation’ films and funk, hip-hop and reggae music scenes. Ofili reworks them as politically engaged superheroes
expressing the need for change.
Julian OPIE
b.1958 England
Lives and works in London, England
Julian Opie is renowned for his highly simplified and effective visual language. Paradoxically, while his works employ a
high degree of abstraction and abbreviation to produce a figurative image, they often retain a strong connection to their
actual subjects. In discussing his processes, Opie has commented that 'my work isn't about paring things down but
about starting from something simple and building the image up until I achieve a kind of singularity'.

Gabriel OROZCO
b.1962 Mexico
Lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico; Paris, France and New York, United States
Gabriel Orozco uses photography, video, installation, drawing and sculpture to explore forms that fall between
philosophy, science, history and art. Extensive travel informs Orozco's work, and much of his wide-ranging practice blurs
the boundaries between the everyday flow of life and the formalised categories of art. Bridging the twentieth and twentyfirst
centuries, his work draws on the legacy of Modernism to engage with the present.
Arthur Koo-ekka PAMBEGAN Jr
b.1936 Australia, Wik-Mungkan people
Lives and works in Aurukun, Australia
Arthur Koo-ekka Pambegan Jr is an Elder of the Wik-Mungkan people and highly respected artist from Aurukun in the
Cape York Peninsula who, in recent years, has achieved recognition both for his work and his community. Since the
early 2000s, his sculpture and painting have enlivened and restored stories of great cultural significance to the Wik-
Mungkan people.
Fiona PARDINGTON
b.1961 New Zealand
Lives and works on Waiheke Island, New Zealand
Fiona Pardington has been photographing taonga (treasures in Māori) for over a decade. She searches for forgotten
museum objects that were once cherished — such as hei tiki (neck ornaments) or taxidermied extinct animals — and
deliberately re-presents them as portraits imbued with a sense of their past value.
Junebum PARK
b.1976 South Korea
Lives and works in Seoul, South Korea
Junebum Park’s video works marry ideas of theatre with contemporary concepts of space and illusion. Everyday scenes
such as parking a car or crossing the road are animated by Park's hands the artist is a giant manipulating the world. This
distortion of perspective and spatial depth recalls the illusory devices employed in Japanese Bunraku performance.
Campbell PATTERSON
b.1983 United Kingdom
Lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand
Campbell Patterson works predominantly in performance-based video art and much of his work has the rough,
immediate look of user-generated content from websites such as YouTube. Rather than being confessional, revelatory
or expressly exhibitionistic, Patterson’s videos capture abstract actions derived from moments in his life.
Paola PIVI
b.1971 Italy
Lives and works in Milan, Italy and Anchorage, United States
Paola Pivi has a strong international profile for her photographic, sculptural, installation and performance works, in which
she stages incongruous encounters. These unexpected juxtapositions create poetic, political and often humorous
associations, and many have incorporated animals. Pivi has created installations of live animals, most notably with her
work Interesting 2007, staged in an abandoned warehouse in Milan. A number of white animals — including horses,
rabbits, llamas, geese and peacocks, sourced through a company that specialises in animals for cinema and advertising
— had the run of the long, concrete space.

John PULE
b.1962 Niue/New Zealand
Lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand
Born on the limestone coral atoll of Niue, John Pule is recognised as one of the Pacific region's most significant and
influential artists. In his early works, Pule adapted the grid-like formation of Niuean hiapo (barkcloth) to structure his
visual narratives. These works signalled the beginning of his long-term concern with the effects of migration and differing
belief systems.
Tobias PUTRIH
b.1972 Slovenia
Lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia and New York, United States
Tobias Putrih’s often concept-based work comprises drawings, illustrations, plans, models and intricate constructions.
His practice addresses particular aspects of modernist history such as social utopianism, modern architecture and the
evolution of cinema.
Marc QUINN
b.1964 England
Lives and works in London, England
Since his first exhibitions in the early 1990s, Marc Quinn has forged a rich and complex art practice exploring themes
including nature, beauty, hybridity and genetic manipulation. Much of his work meditates on attempts to overcome the
transience of human life through scientific knowledge and artistic expression.
Rashid RANA
b.1968 Pakistan
Lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan
Rashid Rana’s photographs are composed of thousands of pixel-like images, ranging in subject matter from stills taken
from popular Indian cinema to details of Lahore’s urban environment. Rana meticulously brings these minutiae together
to create in composite images of famous Indian film stars or of landscapes. This attention to detail is akin to that found in
the South Asian tradition of miniature painting, which Rana studied at the renowned National School of Art in Lahore. His
use of digital photographic processes, however, emphasises the contemporary nature of his subject: Lahore’s urban and
increasingly media-saturated landscape.
Robin RHODE
b.1976 South Africa
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Robin Rhode is best known for his photography and animation documenting ephemeral works and performances in
public spaces. His early works typically took the form of simple paintings or chalk drawings executed on pavements or
walls, which served as sets for choreography by the artist. In recent animations, Rhode has placed a greater emphasis
on formal elements, often working with a reductive approach to composition and introducing abstract forms into the
works.

David ROSETZKY
b.1970 Australia
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia
David Rosetzky works through a range of artistic modes, including contemporary design, fashion and portraiture, to
scrutinise aspects of the contemporary condition as it plays out through issues about identity, in personal relationships,
and through love and alienation. Rosetzky’s subjects often appear in chic minimal settings or among the latest designer
furniture, and they negotiate worlds that are familiar and intimate yet also oddly estranged.
Thomas RUFF
b.1958 Germany
Lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany
Thomas Ruff is a leading figure in a generation of celebrated German photographers. Ruff believes that photographs
capture only surface appearances and convey a constructed reality, formed by the unconscious influence of images in
the mass media and other cultural sources. Reflecting on this condition, Ruff's works attempt to define what he calls the
'substratum' of photography, at which point images become bearers of information.
Edward RUSCHA
b.1937 United States
Lives and works in Los Angeles, California
Ruscha works with paint, printmaking and drawing. Since his first exhibition in Los Angeles in 1963, Ruscha has played
with text and image to explore the peculiarities of vernacular language, graphics and typography; in his hands, words
become forms and images become words. The graphic visual environment of Los Angeles and Southern California, with
its advertising hoardings and architecture of neon signage, provides Ruscha with ongoing source material.
Tony SCHWENSEN
b.1970 Australia/United States
Lives and works in Boston, United States
Tony Schwensen is one of Australia's foremost interdisciplinary artists and has made a long and distinguished series of
performance works, often examining the underside of cultural life and notions of artistic value.
Yinka SHONIBARE
b.1962 United Kingdom
Lives and works in London, United Kingdom
Born in London and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, Yinka Shonibare refers to himself as a ‘postcolonial hybrid’. His work
comments on contemporary identity politics, cultural history, the legacy of colonialism and the structures of international
trade. He works in multiple disciplines, including painting, photography, assemblage, dance, literature and film.
SOUTHERN LADIES ANIMATION GROUP (SLAG)
est. 2001 Australia (Louise Craddock, Susan Earl, Sally Gross, Emma Kelly, Katherine Mew, Nicole McKinnon,
Elizabeth McLennan, Sharon Parker, Dell Stewart, Sophie Raymond, Yuki Wada, Justine Wallace, Diana Ward)
The Southern Ladies Animation Group (SLAG) was formed in Melbourne in 2001 as a collective to support women
working in animation. Comprising 13 members, the collective's first project was a music video for SLAG member Sophie
Raymond’s band ‘Sophie Raymond & the Fat Chops’. The SLAG members use a variety of animation techniques
including stop motion puppet animation, hand drawn line animation and computer animation.

Jana STERBAK
b.1955 Czech Republic/Canada
Lives and works in Montreal, Canada and Barcelona, Spain
Jana Sterbak's practice encompasses sculpture, photography, performance, video and installation, and draws on a rich
vein of Czech Surrealism. Her works elaborate on desire, constraint, the body, technology and artistic creation.
Beat STREULI
b.1957 Switzerland
Lives and works in Brussels, Belgium
Beat Streuli engages with the longstanding tradition of works that reflect urban life, its energy, its speed and its crowds.
He presents intimate portraits taken within a public context, offering open-ended narratives and a poignant examination
of public identity and glimpsed inner life. Employing a serial, almost documentary style in his work, Streuli plays on
contradictions and polarities such as the natural and the stylised, documentary and fiction, public and private.
SUPERFLEX
est. 1993 Denmark
SUPERFLEX is a collaboration between Danish artists Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen, Jakob Fenger and Rasmus
Nielsen. Their practice is characterised by a high level of social engagement and responds to a range of contemporary
political and social themes, including the financial markets, labour conditions, copyright law and environmentalism. They
often involve professionals from non-art disciplines in the development of their projects, which the artists describe as
'tools' in both a practical, use-value or consciousness-raising sense, as well as having a conceptual or metaphorical
dimension.
Mitra TABRIZIAN
b. Iran
Lives in England
Mitra Tabrizian’s large-format photographs combine techniques from documentary photography and highly stylised mise
en scene to capture her subjects and settings with meticulous attention to detail and lighting.
Pascale Marthine TAYOU
b.1967 Cameroon
Lives and works in Ghent, Belgium
Pascale Marthine Tayou’s drawings, sculptures, installations, videos and performances address issues of cultural and
national identity and borders in an age of global tourism, drawing on his own experiences of frequent travel. Tayou often
works with found materials, objects and images emblematic of people’s itinerancy and circulation around the world, such
as train and bus tickets, flags and postcards.
THE ATLAS GROUP / WALID RAAD
est. 1999 Lebanon / b.1967 Lebanon/United States
The Atlas Group is a project established by artist Walid Raad in 1999 with the aim of researching and documenting the
contemporary history of Lebanon, collecting and presenting what appear to be factual photographic, textual and video
documents. The documentary nature of their work's content contrasts with its aestheticised presentation, ultimately
leading the viewer to question the validity of the information presented. By extension, they examines broader issues of
authorship, legitimacy and authenticity related to the writing of history and media reportage.

THUKRAL & TAGRA
Jiten Thukral / b.1976 India
Sumir Tagra / b.1979 India
Live and work in Gurgaon, India
Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra (Thukral & Tagra) offer a seductive and vibrant take on contemporary Indian society and
culture. Thukral & Tagra's refined aesthetic is applied to painting, sculpture and installation as well as graphics, interiors,
fashion and product design. Much of their work is inspired by the pressures in Punjabi society on young people,
particularly young men, to move abroad. While wandering and migration are longstanding in Punjabi culture, emigration
accelerated during the second half of the twentieth century due to a range of factors, including increased global demand
for labour and more relaxed immigration policies.
Guy TILLIM
b.1962 South Africa
Lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa
Guy Tillim began working as a professional photographer in 1986 for agencies such as Afrapix, Reuters and Agence
France Presse. He continued to work as a photographer for the news media but since the mid-1990s his works have
also appeared in a contemporary art context. For his celebrated 2007 series 'Avenue Patrice Lumumba', Tillim travelled
through Angola, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar recording the modernist
architecture and city planning that framed Africa's postcolonial pursuit of democracy.
Rirkrit TIRAVANIJA
b.1961 Thailand
Lives and works in New York, United States; Berlin, Germany and Bangkok, Thailand
In today's image-saturated world, every time we turn on the television, open the newspaper or surf the internet we are
bombarded with images of people, events and problems far removed from our own lives. Since the early 1990s, Rirkrit
Tiravanija's practice has involved shifting his audience from passive spectators to active subjects.
THE TISSUE CULTURE AND ART PROJECT
Est. 1996 Perth, Western Australia
Oron Catts, b.1967 Finland
Onat Zurr, b.1970 England
Live and work in Perth, Australia
The Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A) is an ongoing artistic research and development project into the use of tissue
technologies as a medium for artistic expression. Pioneering in the field of biological art (or ‘bio-art’), the TC&A was
central to the establishment of SymbioticA – The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, in the School of Anatomy and
Human Biology at the University of Western Australia in 2002.
TSUI Kuang-Yu
b.1974 Taiwan
Lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Tsui Kuang-Yu uses video, performance and photography to examine aspects of urban life and human behaviour
in regulated contemporary city environments. A recurrent feature in Tsui's work is a sophisticated critique of public life,
its social groups and urban systems. He considers how the time-poor city-dweller contends with a population density
and pace that impels order and efficiency.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Ghana
Hand-painted movie banners are created as advertisements posted outside Ghanaian video stores. They reflect the
global culture of movie distribution, advertising films ranging from Hong Kong kung-fu titles such as Operation Scorpio
and Nigerian productions such as My Father’s Love 2 to the Hollywood-produced Species. While an array of foreign
movies — particularly from the Chinese, Indian and US film industries — are consumed by local audiences in video
format, Ghanaian and Nigerian productions shot on video have increasingly been distributed through networks of video
shops and clubs since the 1980s. The local video industry now also exports titles to other African nations, including
Benin, Togo, Zambia and South Africa.
Sharif WAKED
b.1964 Palestine/Israel
Lives and works in Haifa and Nazareth, Israel
Sharif Waked uses video, installation and painting in an ongoing examination of the complexities of Middle Eastern
histories and politics. His art reflects on the propaganda strategies within the region as well as globalised images of
conflict that have emerged in the media. In his work, Waked strives to remind viewers of the rich heritage of literature
and art that binds Islamic cultures but which is often buried in media clichés.
Kara WALKER
b.1969 United States
Lives and works in New York, United States
Kara Walker is best known for her large room and wall installations of life-size silhouettes made from black paper and
video projections. The narratives that unfold are set in the pre-Civil War south of the United States. Walker often sources
her images from historical textbooks and illustrated periodicals, transforming them into nightmarish graphic narratives
that evoke the legacy of slavery.
WANG Qingsong
b.1966 China
Lives and works in Beijing, China
Wang Qingsong’s art comments on the consumer merchandise and commercial imagery that has flooded the Chinese
market over the past two decades. In the late 1990s, Wang gained notoriety as a proponent of ‘gaudy art’, a term coined
by the Chinese art critic Li Xianting to express the appropriation by artists of kitsch motifs from popular culture and the
media. Although he began as a painter, Wang soon moved into photography. His photographs are characterised by
theatrical, highly constructed sets and poses that draw on elements of traditional art, socialist realism and commercial
iconography.
Louise WEAVER
b.1966 Australia
Lives and works in Melbourne, Australia
Louise Weaver’s sculptures engage with representation, evolution and metamorphosis. Her painstakingly crafted
menagerie re-imagines taxidermy models in decorative ‘skins’ created with crochet, appliqué and weaving. This process
of fantastic reinvention is transformative, and illustrates Weaver’s ongoing interest in the perceived distinction between
artificial and natural, the ephemeral and the imperishable, the beautiful and the bizarre.

XU Zhen
b.1977 China
Lives and works in Shanghai, China
Over the past decade, Xu Zhen has emerged as one of China’s most innovative young artists. Working in photography,
installation and video art, he often incorporates elements of performance and draws inspiration from the history of
conceptual art from the 1970s on. In 1999, along with Shanghai-based artists Yang Fudong, Gu Zhenqing and Yang
Zhenzhong, Xu Zhen curated the exhibition ‘Art for Sale’, in which a supermarket was set up in the exhibition space with
inexpensive art works displayed on shelves.
YANG Fudong
b.1971 China
Lives and works in Shanghai, China
Yang Fudong is celebrated for the poetry of his moving-image works. His visual language draws from and pays tribute to
Chinese literature, literati painting and folklore as well as pre- and post-Revolutionary film history.
ZHOU Xiaohu
b.1960 China
Lives and works in Changzhou, China
Zhou Xiaohu’s videos, animations, sculpture and paintings engage with politics, mass media and consumer culture.
While embracing technology in his work, Zhou also comments on its malign manifestations. In Utopian theatre 2006,
miniature clay figures enact history-making scenes that have been transmitted to the world through the media of
television and the internet. Each is modelled as a miniature theatre or movie set and accompanied by a television
monitor, showing the events in claymation.
Artur ŻMIJEWSKI
b.1966 Poland
Lives and works in Warsaw, Poland
After studying sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1990 to 1995, Artur Żmijewski began to use
photography and film to critically, and often polemically, explore social, political and psychological issues of
contemporary society. Much of his work re-examines historical events and human behaviour through documentary and
research-based film experiments. He provocatively addresses painful histories, including Nazi death camps and the
experiences of the disabled, as well as nationalist symbolism.

PUBLICATION
21st Century: Art in the First Decade is a full-colour, 296-page publication
featuring informative, in-depth texts that explore some of the dominant
strands of contemporary art practice. It features essays by five curators at
the Queensland Art Gallery, as well as nine contextual essays
commissioned from leading Australian and international writers.
The publication highlights the Queensland Art Gallery’s significant
collection of contemporary art from across the globe, and provides a broad
historical and theoretical context for understanding its significance.
The catalogue is edited by Miranda Wallace, Senior Curator, Exhibitions
and Research, Queensland Art Gallery, and features contributions by the
following writers:
Nancy Adajania is a cultural theorist and independent curator.
Claire Bishop is Associate Professor in the PhD Program in Art History at CUNY Graduate Center, New York.
Manuel J Borja-Villel is the Director of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
David Burnett is Curator, International Art, Queensland Art Gallery.
Rex Butler is Associate Professor in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of
Queensland, Brisbane.
Nicholas Chambers is Curator, Contemporary International Art, Queensland Art Gallery.
José Da Silva is Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, Queensland Art Gallery.
TJ Demos is Reader in Contemporary and Modern Art in the Department of History of Art, University College of
London.
Juliana Engberg is Artistic Director of Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne.
Julie Ewington is Curatorial Manager, Australian Art, Queensland Art Gallery.
Ian McLean is Winthrop Professor in Art History at the University of Western Australia, Perth.
Kobena Mercer is an independent scholar and was previously Reader in Art History and Diaspora Studies at
Middlesex University, London.
Terry Smith is Andrew W Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the
History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, and Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Architecture,
University of Sydney.
Russell Storer is Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art, Queensland Art Gallery.
Miranda Wallace is Senior Curator, Exhibitions and Research, Queensland Art Gallery.
Kathryn Weir is Curatorial Manager, International Art and Australian Cinémathèque, Queensland Art Gallery.
296 pages, full colour. Available from the Gallery Store, Gallery Store Modern and www.australianartbooks.com.au
RRP: $49.95

CHILDREN’S PUBLICATION
Coinciding with the ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’ exhibition, the Queensland Art Gallery Children’s
Art Centre launches an exciting publication for children. 21st Century Art for Kids is a richly illustrated book
profiling art works, childhood images and stories by 16 contemporary artists from around the world whose
works are held in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection. The publication explores the diversity of
contemporary art practice in a format which is both appealing and accessible to children. Activities
developed by the artists add a hands-on element for children to further engage with contemporary art at
home or in the classroom.
The featured artists are Ah Xian, Tony Albert, Pierre Bismuth, Justine Cooper, Katharina Grosse, Fiona
Hall, Romuald Hazoumè, Yayoi Kusama, Jorge Méndez Blake, Callum Morton, Arthur Koo-ekka
Pambegan Jr, John Pule, Tobias Putrih, Jana Sterbak, Louise Weaver and Zhou Xiaohu.
21st Century Art for Kids is suitable for ages 4+.
176 pages, hardcover, full colour. Available from the Gallery Store, Gallery Store Modern and
www.australianartbooks.com.au
RRP: $29.95

NEW TECHNOLOGY PLATFORMS
EXHIBITION BLOG
www.21cblog.com is an online source book that has gathered reference
material, artist contributions and contextual information on works and projects
in the exhibition. During the exhibition, it will publish new writing by a wide
range of Australian and international contributors, alongside contributions by
exhibiting artists, webcasts of lectures and public programs, interviews with
artists and curators and critical responses to the exhibition. Guest
contributors will include Negar Azimi, Mark Fisher, Marina Fokidis, Andrew
Frost, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Ghassan Hage, Barbad Golshiri, Jens Hoffman,
Ranjit Hoskote, Rose Issa, Lisette Lagnado, Marcia Langton, Angela
Ndalianis, Andrew Maerkle, Amanda McDonald Crowley, Adriano Pedrosa,
Michael Smith and Tom Vanderbilt. Viewers are invited to join the
conversation.
INTERNET MEME PROJECT
Internet memes are easily replicated ideas, catchphrases, symbols and
practices that take the form of image macros, viral videos and other
propagated content that respond to current affairs and popular culture.
The Internet Meme Project is an interactive exhibition space and breakout
lounge on the ground floor of GoMA. The highlight of the space is a wall of
over two hundred screens of moving image, including four touch screens that
allow users to explore the memes. The project places internet content within a
broader conversation about visual culture and the internet’s influence on
contemporary art.
The lounge encourages visitor interaction by providing wifi access, computer
terminals, magazines and personalised listening stations.
iPHONE APP
The new Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art iPhone app, available from the iTunes app store, is designed
to extend the viewer experience of the exhibition.
Utilising the Galleries’ free wifi service, the app will contain mainstay Gallery information such as exhibition
information, public and cinema programs. The app will provide access to multimedia content for a number of works
throughout ‘21st Century’.
PUBLIC PROGRAM WEBCASTS
Select public programs that examine issues that have defined the first decade and investigate art in the 21st century
will be broadcast as live webcasts via http://21cblog.com/ and archived as an ongoing resource on the Gallery’s
website and social media networks.
FREE WIFI ACCESS
Free wifi access is available throughout the Gallery of Modern Art and Queensland Art Gallery from December 2010.

Image: Rivane Neuenschwander's
installation I Wish your Wish 2003
21st CENTURY KIDS
Twelve interactive activities and artworks from leading international
contemporary artists, a summer festival, a regional touring program and the
Children’s Art Centre’s first ever publication for kids are all part of the ‘21st
Century Kids’ program
‘21st CENTURY KIDS’ ART WORKS AND PROJECTS
21st Century Kids sees the introduction of all-new artist activities for young
visitors and their families, as well as the return of some favourites from previous
exhibitions. The activities will take place across two levels of GoMA’s dedicated
Children’s Art Centre, as well as throughout the Gallery on all three levels. Key
art works in the exhibition will be labelled with special didactics for young art
lovers.
Tony Albert Alien nation embassy 2008
Tony Albert’s Alien nation embassy 2008 is a multimedia interactive that invites all earthlings to become
honorary citizens of the Alien Nation — but not before passing the citizenship test! This multimedia
installation features two dynamic activity spaces that include a population counter, a global map that tracks
new alien citizens and electronic ‘swipe’ cards for kids to access secret alien information. Play online and
access exclusive citizen-only activities at www.qag.qld.gov.au/aliennation
Pierre Bismuth Follow me 2010
Relating to the artist’s series of works Following the right hand of…, Bismuth invites young visitors to trace
with a felt tip pen the movements of a character or object starring in classic motion pictures. The end result
is a surprising abstract drawing. Disconnected from what originally informed the drawing, the finished result
takes on a new life of its own.
Justine Cooper The call of the wild 2006
The call of the wild 2006 is a touch screen interactive set in a natural history museum similar to those seen
in some of Justine Cooper’s art works. The aim of the interactive is to set trapped animals free from
drawers and lockers, returning them to their natural habitat. The call of the wild is presented inside an
immersive installation space that replicates the collections of museums in a playful and colourful way
appealing to all young Gallery visitors.
Olafur Eliasson The cubic structural evolution project 2004
Olfaur Eliasson’s unique installation puts the construction of a city into children’s hands! With thousands of
white Lego pieces, the task is to create and re-create an ever-evolving metropolis. Over the course of the
exhibition the project will change dramatically as young visitors build new constructions informed by both
the world around them and their imaginations.

Fiona Hall Fly away home 2010
Fiona Hall is an Australian artist who is known for her ability to make extraordinary things from everyday
materials. For ‘21st Century Kids’, Hall’s interest in the migratory patterns of birds and nest-making is
translated into a hands-on activity. Young visitors are invited to enter the nest-inspired activity space to create
their own species of bird using templates and paper money created by the artist.
Romuald Hazoumè (MIB) Made in Brisbane 2010
Beninese artist Romuald Hazoumè travelled to Brisbane to conduct workshops with local high school
students to create a large scale installation especially for ‘21st Century Kids’. As part of the installation a
documentary of the creative process presents the artist’s and the students’ views on this unique experience.
Bharti Kher Nothing is ordinary 2006
In India, the bindi is traditionally a symbolic mark of pigment applied to the forehead. Today it has become a
fashionable and decorative accessory available in many colours and designs, and is used by Indian artist
Bharti Kher in some of her art works. Children can wear one of the artist’s specially designed bindis and
everyone will know they’ve been to ‘21st Century Kids’.
Jorge Méndez Blake Discover Treasure Island 2010
Discover Treasure Island 2010 is a series of large-scale murals created by Mexican-born artist Jorge Méndez
Blake especially for the Children’s Art Centre’s Park level foyer. The artist has chosen his favourite story as a
child — Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic swash-buckling tale Treasure Island and brought it to life in an
immersive, sound-based installation.
Rivane Neuenschwander I Wish your Wish 2003
Inspired by a Brazilian tradition, Rivane Neuenschwander’s vibrant installation invites visitors to tie colourful
silk ribbons to their wrists that feature printed wishes on the fabric. Hundreds of the ribbons are inserted into
the gallery wall to create a sea of colour and silk. According to tradition, the wish is granted when the ribbon
wears away and falls off.
John Pule Drawing words 2006
John Pule is an artist, writer and poet whose art works often combine words and images. For ‘21st Century
Kids’ Pule presents a large-scale collaborative drawing project titled Drawing words. Engaging with Niuean
legends and culture, children can draw their interpretations of poetic words and phrases provided by the artist
for display in the Gallery.
Jana Sterbak Children will show you art 2010
Recorded inside a purpose-built, faux 19th century gallery space, Jana Sterbak’s artist project features an
exhibition of works from the Gallery’s historical collections curated by kids. Young visitors are able to view the
exhibition and record a film from their point of view using a pair of high tech glasses with a built-in digital
camera. The finished film clips can be sent to friends and family via email to show the young visitors ideas
about works on show.

Rirkrit Tiravanija Untitled (time sausage) 2010
The work of Argentian-born artist Rirkrit Tiravanija aims to bring visitors together and create living artworks, in
art galleries and museums. Tiravanija’s work for ‘21st Century Kids’ is situated in a dynamic, purpose-built
activity space, which invites generations of children and their grandparents to share family histories, stories
and images. Contributions will be collected and transformed during workshop demonstrations into ‘time
sausages’ for display in the space.
21st CENTURY KIDS SUMMER FESTIVAL
January 13-23, 2011
The 21st Century Kids Summer Festival celebrates the unique ways we have lived our lives in the first
decade of the 21st century, and to imagine what the future of our world might hold. The action-packed 11-day
program will feature a series of exciting new media performances, artist-run workshops and activities. The
program includes artist-run workshops by participating artists in the ‘21st Century’ exhibition, including: Fiona
Hall (AUS), Pierre Bismuth (France), Brook Andrew (AUS), Campbell Patterson (New Zealand) and Craig
Koomeeta (AUS). Special projects include American artist Spencer Finch’s specially designed ice cream stall,
and interactive performances by the Brisbane Live iPhone Orchestra.
Special Summer Festival events at GoMA’s Australian Cinémathèque include:
The Jetsons (1962)
Screening daily 13–23 Jan 12.30pm / Cinema A
The Gallery’s Australian Cinémathèque presents selected episodes from the celebrated family sitcom The
Jetsons. This animated series by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna projected 1960s US culture and
lifestyle onto the 21st century, and creating the adventures of a family living in a futuristic utopia of
elaborate robotic contraptions and quirky inventions.
Pierre Bismuth
Sat 22 Jan & Sun 23 Jan / Cinema A
Using the Gallery’s 1929 Wurlitzer organ, French artist Pierre Bismuth will work with the musical tradition
of organ accompaniment to silent motion pictures. Young visitors will be enthralled by the artist’s selection
of unexpected and sometimes hilarious images for organist David Bailey’s live improvisation, creating a
unique and spectacular soundtrack.
21st CENTURY KIDS SUMMER FESTIVAL ON TOUR
10.30am – 2.30pm Saturday 15 January 2011 (Selected venues at later dates)
On Saturday 15 January 2011, Queenslanders are invited to participate in a free day of activities at more
than 45 regional and remote galleries and community centres simultaneously with the Gallery as part of the
21st Century Kids Summer Festival. 21st Century Kids Summer Festival on Tour will feature interactive
activities for children and families by artists in the exhibition, including Fiona Hall (Australia), Tony Albert
(Australia) and Rirkrit Tiravanija (Thailand). The projects have been developed to reflect the themes of the
exhibition, offering children and families insights into contemporary international art created in the past
decade.

21st CENTURY CINEMA
Opening weekend
18-19 December 2010 / Free admission
Over the opening weekend, the Gallery’s Australian Cinemathèque is screening two contemporary film and
video programs including Swiss artist, Ursula Biemann’s film essays exploring migration, technology and
gender and two new films by Isaac Julien. For further details see http://qag.qld.gov.au/cinematheque.
A New Tomorrow: Visions of the Future in Cinema
26 December 2010 – 27 February 2011
Adults $9 / 5-film pass $36, Concessions $7 / 5-film pass $28, Members $6 / 5-film pass $24
Tickets through QTix via 132 246 www.qtix.com.au or from the box office one hour prior to screenings
(l-r: Production still from Things to Come 1936 / Courtesy: Park Circus, British Film Institute / Production still from E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial
1982 / Image courtesy: Universal Pictures / Production still from Mad Max 1979 / Image courtesy: Roadshow)
A New Tomorrow: Visions of the Future in Cinema includes science fiction favourites and cult classics,
charting alternative scenarios for civilisations to come and extraordinary explorations of new spaces,
dimensions and frontiers in cinema. From the schisms of industrialisation in Fritz Lang’s landmark Metropolis
1927; to the epic philosophical ideas of human evolution in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968;
the world of cyberpunk replicants in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner 1982; and the post-apocalyptic dystopia of
Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men 2006; the program plays out our hopes and fears in imaginatively
prefiguring the future on screen.
Special event: Zan Lyons vs Blade Runner AV
25-26 February 2011
General admission $25 / Gallery Members $16.50
Tickets available through QTix 132 246 www.qtix.com.au
In two Australian-exclusive shows at GoMA, Berlin-based filmmaker and sound artist Zan Lyons will perform
with viola, foot pedals and laptop while simultaneously remixing and reworking Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner
1982. Lyons has completely rewritten the film's legendary electronic score by composer Vangelis, and reedited
several scenes with his own visuals to achieve a dark and chaotic spectacle.

Unseen: New Cinema in the 21st Century
4 March – 26 April 2011 / Free admission
Production still from Sawan baan na (Agrarian Utopia) 2009 / Director: Uruphong Raksasad / Image courtesy: Extra Virgin
Unseen: New Cinema in the 21st Century showcases some of the most important new voices to emerge in the
last decade in contemporary cinema. Filmmakers such as Uruphong Raksasad, Pietro Marcello, Jessica
Hausner and Steve McQueen have contributed to the formulation of innovative visual languages. ‘Unseen’
celebrates moments of innovation in expressive languages which contribute to the perpetual reformulation of
cinema.
Video Witness: News from the World
18 - 27 March 2011 / Free admission
Production still from Burma VJ: Reporter i et lukket land (Burma VJ: Reporting from the Closed Country) 2008 / Director: Anders Østergaard /
Image courtesy: Magic Hour Films
‘Video Witness: News from the World’ explores the use of digital technologies over the last decade as effective
tools in protecting human rights. The program brings together important examples of filmmakers and nonprofessionals
making use of the accessibility of digital cameras and mobile technologies to record communities
under threat and political struggles. The footage captured serves not only as a document and a portrait of daily
life in conditions of instability but can also ensure that events and actions are reported in situations of
censorship and repression.
For screening info on all programs, visit www.qag.qld.gov.au/cinematheque

PUBLIC PROGRAMS
OPENING WEEKEND TALKS
From 11.30am Saturday 18 - Sunday 19 December
Opening weekend talks on major commissions and Collection works by curators and exhibiting artists,
including Tony Albert, Brook Andrew, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Fiona Hall, Isaac Julien and Arlo
Mountford. Visit the website for talk times.
EXHIBITION INTRODUCTION TOUR
2.30pm Sunday 19 December 2010 and 2.30pm Sunday 30 January 2011
With Kathryn Weir, Curatorial Manager, International Art and Australian Cinémathèque, Queensland Art
Gallery and Nicholas Chambers, Curator, Contemporary International Art, Queensland Art Gallery.
THEMES AND IDEAS TOURS
Curator’s tours reflecting on ‘21st Century’ exhibition themes and key works from the Queensland Art
Gallery Collection.
2.30pm Tuesday 21 December 2010 and 3.00pm Sunday 24 April 2011
The medium of contemporary art with Nicholas Chambers, Curator, Contemporary International Art,
Queensland Art Gallery.
2.30pm Sunday 9 January and 2.30pm Sunday 27 March 2011
Positioning and experiencing contemporary art with Russell Storer, Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific
Art, Queensland Art Gallery.
2.30pm Saturday 5 February 2011 and 11.30am Thursday 3 March 2011
Traces of history with David Burnett, Curator, International Art, Queensland Art Gallery.
11.30am Friday 25 February and Thursday 14 April 2011
Australian artists in the global frame with Julie Ewington, Curatorial Manager, Australian Art, Queensland
Art Gallery.
GOMA TALKS 21ST CENTURY
Commences Thursday 3 February 2011, 6.15 for 6.30pm, GoMA
Engage in the issues that defined the first decade during a series of evening discussions with local and
visiting speakers. Talks will be webcast live via the ‘21st Century’ blog at www.21Cblog.com.
3 February: GoMA TALKS | Communication: Who are we in the world of Web 2.0?
17 February: GoMA TALKS | People: How can human rights and politics evolve in the 21st century?
3 March: GoMA TALKS | Places: What makes up a 21st century city and are there any boundaries?
For further March and April topics visit www.qag.qld.gov.au/21stcentury.

TALKING ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ART
Weekly illustrated lecture and interview series
2.00pm Saturdays, Cinema B, GoMA (commences Saturday 12 February)
Investigate the diverse aims, inspirations and contexts for the production of art in the 21st century with Dr
Mark Pennings, Senior Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology, and special guests.
12 February
Lecture: Contemporary art’s history.
19 February
Lecture: Global identities: Social and political perspectives.
26 February
Lecture: Taking part in contemporary art: Entertainment and participation.
5 March
Lecture: New globalism in the media sphere: New media art.
12 March
In-conversation: Contemporary Art in an international field.
Mark Pennings with Julie Ewington, Curatorial Manager, Australian Art.
19 March
Artist interview held as part of the 21st Century exhibition symposium.
26 March
In-conversation: Video and memes.
Mark Pennings with José Da Silva, Curator, Australian Cinémathèque.
2 April
In-conversation: The fluidity of boundaries in international art.
Mark Pennings with Russell Storer, Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art and Nicholas Chambers,
Curator, Contemporary International Art.
EXHIBITION SYMPOSIUM AND ARTIST TALKS WEEKEND
18-19 March 2011, GoMA
Take the time to visit ‘21st Century’ over summer and come back to explore the exhibition and its wider
relevance in more depth through this engaging weekend program with visiting scholars, participating artists
and curators. Booking details available via www.qag.qld.gov.au/21stcentury closer to the time.

EDUCATION PROGRAM AND RESOURCES
Online resources are available for primary and secondary teachers to guide their students to interpret
and appreciate the art works and create their own responses.
Look Out teacher workshop days
Bookings required | Paid programs
Early years and primary: Saturday 5 February 2011 at GoMA
Secondary: Saturday 12 February 2011at GoMA
In a workshop for teachers planning class visits to ‘21st Century’, teachers are invited to meet some of
the Australian artists featured in ‘21st Century’ ands submit a question for the artists in these fun
‘teacher meets the artist’ sessions, followed by a hands-on workshop.
Handouts with curriculum information and step-by-step instructions will assist teachers in developing
classroom activities, and participants will receive a certificate of participation endorsed by the
Queensland College of Teachers.
Please contact the Education Bookings Office in early January 2011 to make a booking.
Telephone: (07) 3840 7255
Email: schoolbookings@qag.qld.gov.au
Web: www.qag.qld.gov.au/education/bookings
Exhibition Resources
Access the free online resources, as they become available. Visit the Education webpage:
www.qag.qld.gov.au/education
Edmail
To receive updates on Look Out programs and education resources please subscribe to Edmail, the
Gallery’s free eNews for teachers. Send your name, school, address, phone number and teaching level
to edmail@qag.qld.gov.au.
School bookings
Bookings are required for groups of 10 or more. Please provide at least 72 hours’ notice of your visit.
To make a group booking, please contact the Education Bookings Office.
Telephone: (07) 3840 7255
Email: schoolbookings@qag.qld.gov.au
Web: www.qag.qld.gov.au/education/bookings

On the exhibition
SPOKESPERSONS
• Tony Ellwood, Director, Queensland Art Gallery
• Suhanya Raffel, Deputy Director, Curatorial and Collection Development, Queensland Art Gallery
• Kathryn Weir, Curatorial Manager, International Art and Australian Cinémathèque, Queensland Art
Gallery
• Julie Ewington, Curatorial Manager, Australian Art, Queensland Art Gallery
• Russell Storer, Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art, Queensland Art Gallery
• Nicholas Chambers, Curator, Contemporary International Art, Queensland Art Gallery
• José Da Silva, Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, Queensland Art Gallery
On the publication
• Miranda Wallace, Senior Curator, Exhibitions and Research, Queensland Art Gallery
On 21st Century Cinema
• Kathryn Weir, Curatorial Manager, International Art and Australian Cinémathèque, Queensland Art
Gallery
• José Da Silva, Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, Queensland Art Gallery
• Rosie Hays, Associate Curator, Cinema Acquisitions and Programming, Australian Cinémathèque,
Queensland Art Gallery
On 21st Century Kids, children’s publication, public programs and education
• Andrew Clark, Deputy Director, Programming and Corporate Services, Queensland Art Gallery
• Donna McColm, Head of Public Programs, Children’s Art Centre and Membership, Queensland Art
Gallery
• Kate Ryan, Curator, Children’s Art Centre, Queensland Art Gallery
• Kate Ravenswood, Head of Access, Education and Regional Services, Queensland Art Gallery

USE OF IMAGES AND COPYRIGHT
The Queensland Art Gallery respects the rights of artists and copyright holders when providing
images for media use.
The Gallery provides images of selected artworks in the ’21st Century: Art in the First Decade’
exhibition to approved media representatives to communicate broadcast and reproduces for fair
dealing purposes. Under the Copyright Act 1968, fair dealing covers criticism or review, and reporting
the news.
Images strictly for these purposes are available at www.qag.qld.gov.au/21stcentury/media
The responsibility for securing permission from the copyright holder for any additional purposes of
image reproduction remains solely with the party reproducing the images.
In addition, any reproduction of these images must be accompanied by the full caption, including the
credit line and the relevant copyright information, as provided with each image.
Any party communicating, broadcasting or reproducing these images must not crop, distort or
manipulate the images in any way. No images can be bled off the page, or printed in a single colour
other than black, or overlaid with text.
Copying, dissemination or redistribution of any image is strictly prohibited without prior written
permission from the Gallery.
For images or further information regarding image use, please contact the Queensland Art Gallery
ph: +61 7 3840 7162 or email: amelia.gundelach@qag.qld.gov.au

Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia
18 December 2010 – 26 April 2011
SPONSORS
MEDIA INQUIRIES
Amelia Gundelach
Senior Media Officer
Queensland Art Gallery
tel: 61 (0) 7 3840 7162
61 (0) 404 994 985
fax: 61 (0) 7 3840 7257
e: amelia.gundelach@qag.qld.gov.au
Images:
www.qag.qld.gov.au/21stcentury/media