‘Under a Modern Sun’ celebrates a transformative time of creative practice, showcasing the work of leading Queensland artists and other major Australian artists working here in the mid-twentieth century. Together, their artworks present a light-filled vision of the state and, occasionally, the flipside of that picture. Drawn entirely from the QAGOMA Collection, the survey spans the years from 1930 to the late 1950s. The beginning of the period was heralded by the opening of Brisbane’s City Hall, graced by sculptor Daphne Mayo’s grand sandstone tympanum, while the end of the era coincided with the publication of painter Vida Lahey’s foundational overview Art in Queensland 1859–1959. These decades marked a vibrant phase of artistic activity during which Queensland’s cultural landscape began to shift to accommodate fresh approaches, despite resistance from a traditional constituency.

The exhibition underscores the vital role that women artists such as Lahey and Mayo played in fostering art in Queensland, as they worked to introduce concepts they had encountered in Europe. For example, Lahey’s waterolours of the Grey Street Bridge under construction stood as symbols of a modernising city, while her highly coloured still lifes were a vehicle through which she similarly expressed modernist ideas.

Artworks by renowned Brisbane-based painters, such as William Bustard and WG Grant, spark dialogues with those by luminaries from the regions, including Kenneth Macqueen on the Darling Downs and Joe Alimindjin Rootsey (Barrow Point people, Ama Wuriingu clan), who captured his Country in the state’s north. ‘Under a Modern Sun’ explores the connections between these artists and those from interstate who contributed to the development of a modernist sensibility here, among them Max Dupain, Charles Blackman and Sidney Nolan.

A later group of paintings by Margaret Olley and Margaret Cilento, who both returned from Europe to Brisbane in the 1950s, and by Jon Molvig, who moved to the capital in 1955 and became a driving force in the city’s art scene, point to the expressive directions that art in Queensland followed in succeeding decades.

MAJOR BENEFACTOR: John Allpass Charitable Foundation

'Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s–1950s' is on display from August 2025 to January 2026 in Gallery 4 at GOMA. To make the most of your visit, check the exhibition dates, get information on getting here and parking, and find out about Gallery accessibility.