University of Queensland Art Museum (UQ Art Museum) is set to showcase a selection of artworks recently acquired for The University of Queensland Art Collection in exhibition ‘NEW 2013: Selected recent acquisitions’.
UQ Art Museum Director Dr Campbell Gray said of the 309 works acquired in two years by purchase, gift and bequest, 169 were gifts, many through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program: “NEW 2013: Selected recent acquisitions demonstrates the significant activity of generous and civic-minded donors, who see the impact that the University’s Art Museum and Collection can have on generations of students and other visitors.”
As a special highlight, one gallery space has been devoted to celebrate donors to the Collection, with works in this gallery to be rotated three times during the exhibition. Six students, drawn from a variety of disciplines – architecture, art history, languages, ecology, and museum studies – worked with the exhibition curator, Art Museum Associate Director (Curatorial) Michele Helmrich, to select and arrange works for this gallery space in thematic groupings. “The students were given an opportunity to consider the meanings underpinning the artworks, and then bring those works together to cohere visually and thematically,” Ms Helmrich said.
The three rotations are ‘Colours of Country’ (10 August to 22 September); ‘Dreamscapes’ (24 September to 3 November); and ‘Assuming the Feminine’ (5 November to 15 December).
NEW 2013: Selected recent acquisitions reflects the University’s policy to acquire works by Australian artists who respond to the contemporary moment, with a focus on artists’ self portraits, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, and artists who were born in and/or based in Queensland.
UQ Art Museum
10 August to 15 December, 2013
Queensland
Images:
Laith McGregor, The Spook, 2011, unique state type C photograph, 74.3 x 94.4cm
Courtesy the artist and University of Queensland