‘Sublime: Contemporary works from the Collection’ draws together culturally diverse points of contact with ideas of the sublime, featuring artists whose works create effects of wonder and uncertainty, and who variously engage with sacred architectures, sublime geometries and the power of the natural world. Aspects of sublime art and architecture are considered within different cultural and historical contexts. Some are translations from discussions in European and North American art history; others resonate with these but emerge from parallel aesthetic heritages, particularly in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

The past three decades have seen a sustained attention to concepts of the sublime in philosophy and in contemporary art writing. Most discussions of the sublime in art history refer to European and North American art. Some refer to the Romantic era’s explorations of the human inability to grasp the divine or the infinite through reason or the senses. Others are interested in what philosopher Jean-François Lyotard calls abstract painting’s ‘virtually ungraspable allusions to the invisible within the visible’.

Recently, a concept of a digital sublime has emerged, in which the experience of infinity previously associated with the natural world is now linked to the digital realm. Additionally, many writers reference a technological or ecological sublime — which emerged over the last century — of man-made catastrophe and humanity’s life-threatening intervention in the natural world.

In dialogue, the works in the ‘Sublime’ exhibition testify to a contemporary uncertainty about ideas of progress, whether artistic, technological or social. They also suggest a way forward for contemporary art and culture more broadly through increasingly sensitive forms of interpretation and translation between cultural systems.

'Sublime: Contemporary works from the Collection' was on display at Queensland Art Gallery from 30 August 2014 to 24 May 2015.

Feature image: Works by Xu Bing and Gordon Bennett, installed in QAG's Gallery 5 for 'Sublime', September 2014 / © The artists / Photograph: M Sherwood, QAGOMA