Now in our fourth decade, the Institute of Modern Art (IMA) is Queensland’s leading independent art space. Our focus is commissioning new works by local and international artists at pivotal points in their practices.

In 2018, we will present eight exhibitions onsite and tour three exhibitions throughout Australia and internationally. We will also be presenting a series of Green Screen projects throughout the year. Together with an extensive array of public programs—including our popular First Thursdays events—it’s bound to be another exciting year!

— Executive Directors, IMA, Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh.

Amalia Pica, Until 10 March 2018

The year begins with the first major exhibition in Australia by Amalia Pica. This second chapter of her current show, please open hurry, will feature newly commissioned works, supported by the Keir Foundation, and developed by Pica on a residency at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado, USA, where the artist has been deepening her understanding of inter-species communication.

Goldin+Senneby, Until 10 March 2018

The latest permutation of Goldin+Senneby’s retrospective, Standard Length of a Miracle (The Bootleg), will open on 3 February. This iteration will be informed by Camila Marambio and Amaara Raheem’s Meth(odology) Lab, which responds to more than a decade of Goldin+Senneby’s practice through an immersive set of procedures including quizzes and the distillation of scents.

Tom Nicholson, March–June

Spanning two gallery spaces, Tom Nicholson’s exhibition surveys the central role drawing plays in his engagement with contemporary political realities in Australia and beyond. The show presents works from 2005 to 2018, focusing on both the histories and possibilities of drawing, and its relationship to writing. The exhibition will feature the final chapter of Drawings and correspondence: a new commission by IMA, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, and Art Gallery of South Australia. The project centres upon a moment at Kwartatuma/Ormiston Gorge in Central Australia, at the outbreak of WWII, that led to a remarkable relationship between the non-Aboriginal watercolourist Rex Battarbee and the Western Aranda artist Albert Namatjira.

Ryan Presley, March–April

For his solo exhibition at the IMA, Ryan Presley is developing new work as part of his ongoing project, Blood Money (2010–present), which deals with representation and exchange. In these works, Presley has painstakingly recreated the complex composition, patterning, and motifs of present-day Australian currency. Through this process, he reimagines our banknotes’ figureheads as the heroes and warriors of Aboriginal history, including Pemulway, Dundalli, and Oodgeroo Noonuccal. Alongside these paintings, the artist will stage a participatory currency exchange.

Lu Forsberg, May–June

Since 2009, the IMA has had the honour of presenting the Jeremy Hynes Award to an experimental Queensland artist in the earlier stages of their career, made possible by a bequest made by the Hynes family. The recipient of 2017 Jeremy Hynes Award, Lucy Forsberg will present a new body of works titled Transparency and other worries–expanding upon their research into Ecolonomics, addressing the nexus of environmental, social, and economic systems.

Haegue Yang, June–August

The IMA will present the first solo exhibition in Australia by the celebrated Korean artist Haegue Yang. Known for her complex and sensorial blind installations, sculptures, and video, Yang translates her research and reflections on historical figures and concrete, domestic phenomena using her meticulous language of formalist abstraction. The show will bring together a selection of works from the past decade, spanning video, sculpture, and installation. The exhibition will also feature major new sculptures co-commissioned by the IMA and the 21st Biennale of Sydney.

Karrabing Film Collective, June–August

Bringing together over thirty individuals from different Indigenous groups from the Northern Territory and their non-indigenous colleagues, Karrabing Film Collective is a grassroots initiative championing new forms of Indigenous agency through the production of local film and artistic forms. Karrabing’s films are marked by an inventive artistic language aimed at challenging historical and contemporary structures of settler power. The IMA is co-commissioning Karrabing’s new film together with Checkpoint Helsinki, Frontier Imaginaries, and the Van Abbemuseum.

The Commute, September–December

Indigenous curators Sarah Biscarra Dilley (yak tityu tityu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash, Chicana), Freja Carmichael (Quandamooka), Léuli Lunaʻi Eshraghi (Sāmoa), Tarah Hogue (Métis, Dutch Canadian) and Lana Lopesi (Samoa) are developing a series of projects in collaboration with Indigenous artists. These projects will assert complex, wide-ranging, contemporary Indigenous experiences including deep ancestral knowledges and global connections.

IMA Travelling Exhibitions

In 2018, the IMA will continue to actively tour our exhibitions to institutions across Australia and beyond. In 2017 our acclaimed Gordon Bennett exhibition, Be Polite, toured to the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, Canada, and will continue on to the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Canada, in early 2018.

Our recent exhibition, Ross Manning: Dissonant Rhythms, will be touring across Australia 2018–2020, in partnership with Museums and Galleries Queensland. In 2018 the exhibition will tour to Caboolture Regional Art Gallery (QLD), Tableland Regional Gallery (QLD) and Pinnacles Gallery, Townsville (QLD).

Our current exhibition, please open hurry, by Argentinian artist Amalia Pica will continue on to the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2018.

If you would like more information on our touring exhibitions, please contact IMA Development & Touring Manager Jenna Baldock here. For media enquiries and high res images, please contact Sarah Thomson, Communications Officer: press@ima.org.au, +61 (0)73252 5750.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The IMA is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the Australian Government through Australia Council for the Arts, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Federal, State, and Territory Governments. The IMA is a member of Contemporary Art Organisations Australia.

The IMA’s 2018 exhibition program has been generously supported by Australia Council for the Arts; the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA); Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA); Arts Queensland; Brisbane City Council; Creative Partnerships Australia; Iaspis, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual and Applied Artists; the Keir Foundation; Monash Art Design & Architecture (MADA); and our Commissioners Circle and Supporters Group.

Image caption:
Tom Nicholson: Cartoons for Joseph Selleny 2012-14 (detail, installation view from TarraWarra, Victoria), charcoal drawings, perforated; wall drawing with crushed charcoal; artist’s book to take away, dimension variable. Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery.