“. . . the power of awakening to wonder.”
“Wonder doesn’t reside in an object or natural phenomena, it happens within us, at the moment of interaction with these things, if we remain open, stop and notice,” co-curators Tamsin Cull and Laura Mudge tell me about Wonderstruck; many of the works on show that they describe as “visually spectacular and experiential, encouraging the audience to view the work from different angles, and some invite audiences to participate, to get hands on and express their creativity.”
Drawn from the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art’s (QAGOMA) collection, featured here are more than 100 works and interactive projects by over seventy artists, the curators calling it “a collection show with a difference.” Developed “rapidly” over ten months, it includes recontextualised interactive projects that were first developed in the Children’s Art Centre, and many audience favourites – such as Nick Cave’s Heard, 2012, Ron Mueck’s In bed, 2005 and Yayoi Kusama’s The Obliteration Room, 2002–present.
Nick Cave, HEARD (detail), 2012, 15 wearable sculptures (six parts each) OR as a performance, 15 wearable sculptures (six parts each), choreography, musical score and video, dimensions variable. Purchased 2016 to mark the tenth anniversary of the Gallery of Modern Art with funds from the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Diversity Foundation through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Collection: QAGOMA, Brisbane. © the artist. Photograph: James Prinz. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
With Cull being QAGOMA’s Head of Public Engagement and Laura Mudge, Senior Program Officer in QAGOMA’s Children’s Art Centre, connecting audiences with art and ideas is a key aspect of the show, which is presented in six chapters: ‘Extraordinary within the Ordinary’, ‘Imagination and Play’, ‘Colour, Pattern and Illusion’, ‘Natural Wonder’, ‘Intangible: Sacred and Sublime’, and ‘Flight’.
“There are many opportunities for hands on participation,” the curators explain, including Kusama’s The Obliteration Room, Syagini Ratna Wulan’s Monad, 2021, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian’s Patterns of Infinity, 2009, Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan’s In-flight (Project: Another Country), 2009, and a drawing project in which five artists have contributed different prompts for audiences to respond to – the curators noting that they know, anecdotally, many people enjoy opportunities to get hands on.
Jemima Wyman (Pairrebeener people), Aggregate Icon (Kaleidoscopic Catchment), 2014, hand-cut digital photographs and archival tape 205cm (diam). Purchased 2014. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Grant Collection: QAGOMA, Brisbane. © the artist
“The labels are written to invite meaningful engagement with the artworks, and to be accessible for a broad audience. We’ve also worked with the Gallery’s Digital Experience team to develop a digital interactive ‘Wonderstruck Wonderer’ that delves into six artworks (one from each theme), providing an animated explanation followed by a short interactive activity that is designed as a pre or post visit experience.”
Patricia Piccinini, The Observer (installation view), 2010, silicone, fibreglass, steel, human hair, clothing, chairs, 220 × 140 × 48cm. Purchased 2018. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation Collection: QAGOMA, Brisbane. © the artist. Photograph: N Harth © QAGOMA
Opportunities abound, too, for the experience of wonder to flow from the exhibition space and invite reflection on our experiences of the outside world – in particular, via works that highlight the wonder that can be found in everyday experiences. On this, the curators point to Sumakshi Singh’s Afterlife (Door and shadow), 2020–21, “a delicate thread work that evokes the fragility of memory, in this case of her childhood recollections of her grandparents’ home”, and Madeleine Kelly’s Spectra of birds, 2014–15, abstractions of bird species that she spotted on walks in Wollongong, New South Wales, made using Tetra Pak containers and encaustic – described as a work “that reminds us of the preciousness of nature’s diversity.”
NS Harsha’s monumental work We come, we eat, we sleep, 1999–2001, is also pointed to by the curators as ripe for us to relate to – “rich in detail, capturing the flow of life on an epic scale but reflecting the basic commonalities of humankind.” These examples, the curators say, reveal to us “the sacred but common rhythms of everyday life, and the things we can’t always see but hold most dear.” Available to us, if we are prepared to stop and notice.
But also, to engage and relate to. To be struck by. And herein lies, to my mind, the power of awakening to wonder; namely, that wonder, when found, comes as a recognition of one’s own agency in it. An ethos the curators seem to appreciate: “For us, bringing together the words ‘wonder’ and ‘struck’ emphasises that this is an active state of being.”
Dr Joseph Brennan is a Lambda Literary Award-nominated author based in Tropical North Queensland.
Gallery of Modern Art
28 June to 6 October 2025
Queensland
Originally published in print – Art Almanac, July 2025 issue, pp. 20–22
