Ostensibly curated to instil young audiences with the joy of art, Wonderstruck at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) puts aside any notion of what an exhibition curated for children should be – and in fact just ignores that bit completely. This is an exhibition, drawn from the gallery’s collection, that stands on its own for all ages and should not be perceived through such a limited lens.

Co-curated by Tamsin Cull, Head of Public Engagement, and Laura Mudge, Senior Program Officer, Children’s Art Centre, QAGOMA, Wunderstruck is quite simply an exhibition to delight. “To be struck by wonder is not to escape reality, but to live with heightened awareness, and this exhibition reminds us that opportunities to experience awe and wonder are everywhere if we just stop and notice,” said Cull.

Director Chris Saines is in accord: “Wonderstruck is a journey through spectacular large-scale installations, captivating small treasures and immersive experiences that reveal how wonder abounds in many things.” And this is the point, this is an exhibition for all, as Saines clearly states. “Wonder enters our world through play and imagination, and can be inspired by our interactions with nature and encounters with the intangible.”

That said, the exhibition is augmented by activities for children in collaboration with contemporary artists. Chief among these is the dotty surfaces expanding The Obliteration Room by Yayoi Kusama (2002–present) which features white walls and furniture covered in an ever-increasing array of multi coloured dots.

The exhibition also considers how wonder emerges from combinations of colour, pattern and visual illusion and the project room led by Gemma Smith is a delight that clearly instils an appreciation of the extraordinary within the ordinary. ‘We’re thrilled Australian artist Gemma Smith — whose work explores the interaction between colour and surface, intention and chance— recently led a workshop with a small group of Brisbane State High School students to make an ambitious, large-scale painting for inclusion in the exhibition,” said Cull.

Including more than 100 works by international and Australian artists, each of the six rooms has a unique character. Ranging from the wild to the meditative, colour, scale, reflection and illusion are all considered through combinations of artworks. Patricia Piccinini and Ron Mueck’s hyperreal sculptures, for example, offer a window into the fragility of the human experience. Adventurously exploring scale, each of these works challenges perspective, through expression, such as with the woman in Mueck’s oversized In bed 2005, or human fragility with the child perched precariously on a stack of chairs in Piccinini’s The Observer, 2010.

Pushing against expectations and provoking thought, familiar objects are transformed into works of beauty and intrigue. Slovenian artist Tobias Putrih’s Connection, 2004, for example, reconfigures humble cardboard boxes into a monumental arch, while Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s display of Neolithic pottery has been dipped in brightly coloured paint. The dozens of lives represented in miniature in N.S. Harsha’s massive triptych We come, we eat, we sleep,1999-2001 offers life as a process to be cherished whereby no one exists in isolation.

Presented across six chapters, Wonderstruck includes more than 100 works by international and Australian artists including Ah Xian, Nick Cave, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Gordon Hookey, Madeleine Kelly, Yvonne Koolmatrie, Craig Koomeeta, Yayoi Kusama, Rosemary Laing, Ron Mueck, Patricia Piccinini, Brian Robinson, Sandra Selig, Gemma Smith, Yuken Teruya, Judy Watson, Louise Weaver, Jemima Wyman and more.

QAGOMA
qagoma.qld.gov.au