For any Brisbanites with even a passing interest in street art and culture, make sure you get yourselves over to the UQ Art Museum (before the 5 June) to catch the Space Invaders exhibition, in its final week in Brisbane before it moves on to Melbourne and beyond.
And I quote from the brochure/website:
"Playful, edgy, clever and satirical, the works in Space Invaders have appeared in city streets around Australia. Street art has significantly altered Australian visual culture, especially over the last decade. It has announced the arrival of a new generation of contemporary artists.
Drawn from the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, the first Australian institution to have collected this type of work, Space Invaders: Australian . street . stencils . posters . paste-ups . zines . stickers surveys the past 10 years of Australian street art. Featuring 150 works by over 40 Australian artists, this exhibition celebrates the energy of street-based creativity and recognises street stencils, posters, paste-ups, zines and stickers as comprising a recent chapter in the development of Australian prints and drawings.
Space Invaders looks at artists and their iconic street-based works at the point of their transition from the ephemeral to the collectable and from the street to the gallery."
More info and arresting visuals can be found over on the Space Invaders website:
http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/SPACEINVADERS
Having been unable to see the Space Invaders exhibition when it was showing at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra late last year (we were a little preoccupied with pregnancy and preparing to move back to Brisbane), I was super keen to see it when I heard on Triple J that it was showing in Brisbane. So as a bit of an outing for myself and the little man, we walked the pram over to the UQ campus for an afternoon visit to the exhibition, and a chance to check out the UQ Art Museum venue which I'd never visited before now.
What made it all a tad more special was seeing a couple of my own zines included in the exhibition - and I was chuffed to see both Laundromatic and Mini Majellen: Found Things were on display..!
I particularly loved that a good number and selection of zines were pegged up in rows, ready and accessable for reading - I always get frustrated when books in exhibitions are displayed in cases behind glass - and while I get why they may need this protection from public hands, it's a world of difference to be able to hold, open, and actually experience a book inside and out.
I hear in Canberra's exhibition, there was actually a dedicated zine reading room, which would have been pretty fab. At the UQ Art Museum, it's not quite as fancy, and is merely incorporated into the centre of the space as a cut-out wall strung with several rows of string.
But on the upside, the exhibition is located on the light-filled upper mezzanine of the UQ gallery (with parts of the floor being see-through glass!) and the whole space is pretty darn nice.
The exhibition in Brisbane concludes on Sunday the 5 June, but continues on to Melbourne and then Dubbo (WTF?), at these venues for these dates:
Hope you get a chance to see it, wherever you may be in Oz. It's definitely a well-curated exhibition, and well worth a visit :) I'm planning to take hubby to go see it tomorrow...
Michelle
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