In 2019, the Institute of Modern Art will bring visionary new works by artists to Brisbane audiences and give global context to important questions of our time. Next year’s exhibition program includes the first survey exhibition of Brisbane-based artist Dale Harding’s practice; the first Australian solo exhibitions by Ana Mendieta, Christopher Kulendran Thomas in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann, and Lawrence Abu Hamdan respectively; the group exhibition Haunt; as well as a large solo exhibition by Agatha Gothe-Snape.

Throughout the year, the IMA will be working with Liquid Architecture on a series of experimental sonic events titled Contra Listening, that will culminate during Abu Hamdan’s exhibition Earwitness Theatre.

Offsite a number of IMA exhibitions will tour nationally and internationally in 2019. Ross Manning‘s Dissonant Rhythms continues to tour to the country, heading to Caloundra Regional Gallery, QLD, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, VIC, and Latrobe Regional Gallery, VIC. Haegue Yang‘s Triple Vita Nestings is on display at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, Aotearoa New Zealand, until March 2019. Current exhibition The Commute will transform into its second iteration The Layover for Auckland Arts Festival, before travelling to Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada, as Transits and Returns in late 2019.

Alongside these exhibitions will be our usual ambitious schedule of public programs. 2019 is bound to be another exciting year with more artists’ projects to be announced in the new year!

—Executive Directors, IMA, Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh

Dale Harding: Current Iterations
9 February–30 March

After having exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, Current Iterations will be Dale Harding’s (Bidjara, Garingbal and Ghungalu peoples) largest exhibition to date. Together, works in this exhibition consider objects dislocated by museum practices, as well as living culture activated in and outside the confines of an art context. Harding’s major new body of sculptures serve as a testing ground for the artist’s latest and most ambitious strategy of cultural continuation. Harding’s exhibition is generously supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and The Keir Foundation, and features a co-commission with the 10th Liverpool Biennial (2018).

Dale Harding, ‘Know them in correct judgment’, 2017. Installation at The National, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Photograph by Art Gallery of New South Wales. Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

Ana Mendieta: Connecting to the Earth
9 February–30 March

Connecting to the Earth brings together two series of works by Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) that are about connection to land. The project is guest curated by Prof. Susan Best, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. Rarely considered together, the Silueta series and the Rupestrian Sculpture series powerfully demonstrate Mendieta’s idea of feminised nature. Using this ancient idea enabled her to posit alternatives to patriarchal culture in the name of the feminine, including: an ecological sensibility that emphasises the reciprocity between body and land; a resistance to colonialist conceptions of land and territory; and a complicated intertwining of terms that are traditionally polarised, such as transcendence and objectification, presence and absence and so forth.

Ana Mendieta, ‘Corazón de Roca con Sangre’, 1975, super-8mm film transferred to high-definition digital media, color, silent, 3:14 minutes. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.

Haunt
13 April–8 June

In an age marked by mass migration, technologically accelerated dislocation, and rapid urban development, notions of home and belonging need to be imagined anew. At once located and displaced, how to live together is one of the crucial questions of our time. These ideas have even greater urgency in settler-colonial contexts where notions of ownership have very real consequences historically and in the present. Artists in this exhibition—Zanny Begg, Heman Chong, Fiona Connor, Megan Cope, Brian Jungen & Duane Linklater, Joar Nango, Christian Nyampeta, and Amie Siegel—present works focusing on the conceptions, creations, developments, and experiences of home. Ultimately, a growing population, changing climate, and dwindling natural resources demand that we envision what our shared future may look like.

Megan Cope, ‘RE FORMATION part 3 (Dubbagullee)’, 2017, hand-cast concrete Sydney rock oysters, copper slag, dimensions variable. Installation view: AGNSW: The National: New Australian Art. Courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY dianne tanzer + nicola stein

Christopher Kulendran Thomas
New Eelam: Brisbane
In collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann
13 April–8 June

New Eelam is a long-term artwork in the form of a start-up—a real estate technology company founded by the artist Christopher Kulendran Thomas to develop a flexible global housing subscription based on collective co-ownership rather than individually owned private property. Originated in collaboration with curator Annika Kuhlmann, the venture takes as a starting point the art field’s involvement in the global processes through which cities around the world are transformed and explores how to reconfigure what art can actually do in the world structurally.

Sitting like a new development in a rapidly changing neighbourhood, New Eelam: Brisbane presents a sci-fi vision of an alternate reality. The speculative documentary, 60 million Americans can’t be wrong introduces the post-capitalist housing proposal and the political and historical horizons of the venture. Taking as a departure point the once self-governed—but now non-existent—homeland of ‘Eelam’ from which the artist’s Sri Lankan Tamil family originates, the film explores how a new economic model could emerge out of the existing economic system rather than in opposition to it. Thomas’ first exhibition in Australia provides a timely opportunity to consider new possibilities for the architecture and experience of citizenship.

Christopher Kulendran Thomas, 60 Million Americans can’t be wrong (2018) in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann, is commissioned by the IMA, DIS, and Tensta konsthall.

Christopher Kulendran Thomas, ‘New Eelam’, 2018, in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann; Installation view: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Agatha Gothe-Snape: Certain Situations
29 June–31 August

This solo exhibition brings together a number of energetic strands of Australian artist Agatha Gothe-Snape’s practice: visual and spatial interventions, score-based improvisation, and collaboration. Text, sculpture, moving image, and performance are organised into a series of ambient spaces that merge with the artist’s internal monologues, producing a kind of psychic architecture. Acknowledging the performative interplay between audience and exhibition, visitors are choreographed by the spaces and objects they encounter.

The exhibition centres around Five Columns, a five-channel video installation by Wrong Solo—Gothe-Snape’s longstanding collaboration with performance artist Brian Fuata. This new work is supported by the IMA in partnership with Monash University Art Museum, and sets the stage for a series of live performances by five interlocutors who will each interpret Wrong Solo’s complex visual score.

Agatha Gothe-Snape is represented by The Commercial Gallery, Sydney.

Wrong Solo, ‘THE GUEST HOUSE’, 2017, performance documentation, Gwangju Biennale, 12 June 2017. Photo: Lee Seung Min. Courtesy of artists and the Gwangju Biennale.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Earwitness Theatre
21 September–21 December

Earwitness Theatre is the first solo exhibition in Australia by Beirut-based artist and ‘private ear’ Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Working across multiple media, Abu Hamdan’s practice examines the politics of listening. Abu Hamdan’s exhibition is commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery in partnership with: Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; and the IMA. Throughout the year, the IMA will be working with Liquid Architecture on a series of experimental sonic events titled Contra Listening, that will culminate during Abu Hamdan’s exhibition.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, ‘Earwitness Inventory’, 2018. Commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London in partnership with: Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Andy Keate.

The IMA’s 2019 exhibition program has been generously supported by Australia Council for the Arts; Arts Queensland; the Keir Foundation; and our Commissioners Circle and Supporters Group.

For media enquiries and high res images, please contact Sarah Thomson, Communications Officer: press@ima.org.au, or call +61 (0)73252 5750.