In 2019, the Institute of Modern Art (IMA) will bring visionary new works by artists to Brisbane audiences and give global context to important questions of our time. Next year’s highlights include the first survey exhibition of Brisbane-based artist Dale Harding’s practice, and the first Australian solo exhibitions by Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Ana Mendieta. The full exhibition program will be announced at the end of 2018.

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

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, featuring new and recent works. 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 10^th Liverpool Biennial (2018).

Harding has exhibited in Beautiful world, where are you?, the Liverpool Biennial (2018), Soon Enough: Art in Action and Art and shops, Tensta Konsthall (2018); From will to form, the TarraWarra Biennial (2018); Continental Drift, Cairns Art Gallery (2018); Documenta 14, Athens/Kassel (2017); The National: New Australian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2017); I refuse you my death, Milani Gallery, Brisbane (2016); The Eight Climate (What Does Art Do?), 11th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea (2016); With Secrecy and Despatch, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney (2016); GOMA Q: Contemporary Australian Art, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2015); string theory: Focus on contemporary Australian art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney.

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

The IMA is pleased to present an exhibition by Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985), guest curated by Prof. Susan Best, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. Connecting to the Earth brings together two series of works that are about connection to land: the Silueta series and the Rupestrian Sculpture series. Rarely considered together, the two 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.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Earwitness Theatre
21 September–21 December

The first solo exhibition in Australia by Beirut-based artist and ‘private ear’ Lawrence Abu Hamdan is Earwitness Theatre. 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.

Abu Hamdan has had solo exhibitions at Portikus, Frankfurt (2016); Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Switzerland (2015); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands (2014); and The Showroom, London (2012). He has participated in the Sharjah Biennial 13, UAE (2017); Liverpool Biennial (2016); 11th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2016); and New Museum Triennial, New York (2012). Other notable group exhibitions have taken place at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2017); Museum Folkwang Essen, Germany (2016); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2014); Beirut Art Center, Beirut, Lebanon (2014).

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.