‘Sugar Spin’ brings together the work of remarkable Australian artists with that of their global peers in celebration of the creative depth and diversity of the Gallery’s Collection. This exhibition plays with ideas of abundance, dizziness and disorientation in five contrasting chapters, moving from light to dark, and from the monumental to the minute. It offers a series of paths to explore, traversing heady colour, darker anxieties, soaring rhythms and precious treasures, before opening to encompass the wider cosmos. The artworks in ‘Sugar Spin’ take our breath away – swiftly at times, filling us with wonder. At other points they unfold more slowly, and reflect our own fears and uncertainties. The ancient creation narratives of this land are renewed and find echoes in works from afar.

‘Sugar Spin’ is a celebration, but also a reflection on a time in which truth is spun and sugar-coated, attention spans are short, trust is fractured, and we are eager for one sugar hit after another. Joy and danger animate us as sweet seekers, but we are also storytellers and sense-shapers, ready to look, feel, talk and together shape new futures.

Spin me around
until I am dizzy
until all I know
is a blur

Until the world comes into focus
with a different shape
Spin me stories
as a spider would a web

Spin me a sugar high
A feast of everything
I ever wanted
and more

Feature image: Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's from here to ear (v.13) (detail) 2010 installed at GOMA for 'Sugar Spin', November 2016 / Purchased 2011. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation / © Céleste Boursier-Mougenot / Photograph: N Harth, QAGOMA