Compiler

Ben Challenor, Untitled, 2004, C-type print on photographic paper. Courtesy of Queensland Arts Council. In the exhibition Duplicated utility, about the links between art and skateboarding, featuring photographs by Challenor and paintings on skateboards by Phillip Christensen. At Redland Art Gallery, Capalaba, Queensland from 16 April to 24 May 

SNAP

Everybody’s favourite photographer in Brisbane, Richard Stringer, opened the 2005 Leica/Centre for Contemporary Photography Melbourne Documentary Photography Award late last month. The touring exhibition holds seventeen documentary photographers on display at the Noosa Regional Gallery until 28 April. In keeping with the photographic twist there will be a Cyanotype Photogram Workshop facilitated by Andrea Higgins on Saturday 21 April. Contact the gallery for details and bookings gallery@noosa.qld.gov.au or telephone 07 54495340.

In and around

Old lino and photographs
Bruce Reynolds is well known for his art that uses predominantly kitchen linoleum rescued from old Queensland houses. He also works over these with photographic images, and in this next exhibition uses a series mostly taken from a hot air balloon. While this all sounds quite romantic the artist says ‘My work is about history and memory rather than nostalgia’. You can judge for yourself when Bruce Reynolds’s exhibition Substrate opens 13 April at Ryan Renshaw (formally Blacklab) Gallery and continues until 13 May.

Brought to light too
Early April saw the new publication Brought to Light II: Contemporary Australian Art launched at the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG). The 492-page book with over 500 illustrations and sixty commissioned texts on the late modern and contemporary art collection of the gallery is a companion to Brought to Light, published in 1998. Another project getting the green light in June, is by contemporary German artist Katharina Grosse, who was brought to light in Brisbane seven years ago by curator David Pestorious, in an exhibition in which she made a substantial spray-painted installation in the now demolished QUT Merivale Street gallery. Grosse will be the first European artist that I can recall to make an artist’s project at QAG since Leni Hoffman in 1995.

Disruptive pattern syndrome

Pinnacles Gallery shows Annabelle Collett’s works that draw inspiration from the military print camouflage fabric – disruptive pattern material – and the laws of disguise to make social comment and historic references. Titles conjure curiosity and perhaps even manipulate the imagery when we are presented with Floral fundamentalism and Follow suit. When discussing the work Commando wear, consisting of garments such as Secret Service lingerie and Combat pyjamas, Collett explains, ‘No printed fabric has ever met with such continuing success as camouflage’. Disruptive pattern syndrome continues until 15 April. Pinnacles Gallery is running a series of public programs in conjunction with the exhibition. For details see www.riverway.thuringowa.qld.gov.au or call 07 4773 8871. or email: louisea@thuringowa.qld.gov.au.

State Library Queensland

New ground: construction photographs
Apologies for further indulgence in the new cultural precinct, but New ground provides a unique insight into the total transformation of the State Library of Queensland from the inside out and the construction of the new Gallery of Modern Art from the ground up. Brisbane photographer Peter Liddy has made a detailed study that reveals the immense scale of the Millennium Arts Project at the Cultural Centre, its architectural achievements and the working lives of the people who built it. Curated by Timothy Morrell, the exhibition runs until 6 May in The Studio, Level 1, State Library Queensland www.slq.qld.gov.au 

Also at the State Library Queensland
…is another media artist commissioned to work with the SLQ collection. Lawrence English, well known around town for his work in the Room 40 realm of sound art and audio extravaganzas, has been commissioned to work with the public spaces, repositories and collections held in the State Library Queensland to create a media work titled Uncovering the once discovered. Until 1 July.  

Vietnam or Bust

April will see the first of three Brisbane-based curators take up Arts Queensland funded Asialink residencies. Thea Baumann who was EPIC Producer with MAAP Multimedia Art Asia Pacific and curator of Manhua Wonderlands will be working with A Little Blah Blah (ALBB) in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, for three months. ALBB is an artists’ run initiative and has produced many successful art events through out the city. Two other Brisbane curators are heading north to South East Asia: Queensland Art Gallery assistant curator Zoe Butt will also go to Ho Chi Minh City to work with Open City Saigon organisation; Vanessa McCrae from the Institute of Modern Art will work with Videotage, a media arts artist run organisation in Hong Kong.