State of the Art: Reimagining Queensland
Group Exhibition.
Rockhampton Museum of Art, Queensland Australia.
19.07.2025 – 12.10.2025
An introspective and memory-honouring consideration of Queensland is the premise of State of the Art: Reimagining Queensland. This showcase of Queensland artists contests and explores the idea of the State in all of its conceptual and geographical character. Artists blur borders to clarify the meaning of Queensland through stories about people and places before and since colonisation. This diverse assembly of Queensland artists remind us of who and where we come from, and explore where we are going.
Featuring James Bourbon, Darren Blackman, Rachel Burke, Ruth Cho, Jamie Congdon, Ernest Garrett, Naomi Hobson, Seinileva Huakau, Tara Lewis, Noel McKenna, Wendy Mocke, Sally Molloy, Glen O’Malley, Teho Ropeyarn, Joel Sam, Clare Jaque Vasquez, Judy Watson, and Keemon Williams.
Co-curated by Robert Connell, Ashla Doherty, Melinda Mann, Jonathan McBurnie, Tessa McIntosh and Emily Wakeling.
Featuring James Bourbon, Darren Blackman, Rachel Burke, Ruth Cho, Jamie Congdon, Ernest Garrett, Naomi Hobson, Seinileva Huakau, Tara Lewis, Noel McKenna, Wendy Mocke, Sally Molloy, Glen O’Malley, Teho Ropeyarn, Joel Sam, Clare Jaque Vasquez, Judy Watson, and Keemon Williams.
Co-curated by Robert Connell, Ashla Doherty, Melinda Mann, Jonathan McBurnie, Tessa McIntosh and Emily Wakeling.
Between Sun and Shadow
by James Bourbon
Hand Painted Acrylic on 1.5m x 5m Canvas Hangings, 2025
Between Sun and Shadow explores the dual nature of Queensland. It’s a place that is both represented as paradise and on the other hand, portrayed as unsettling. Sun-drenched and seductive, but with an undercurrent of something gritty and rough around the edges.
Drawing from vintage ephemera, Ozploitation cinema and forgotten fragments of print media, the work reflects how Queensland has been imagined, sold and mythologised. Three large-scale hand-painted banners are suspended like relics from a dream, fading in and out of focus.
Painted in black and white, each banner collages together fragments of Ozploitation, tourism and nostalgia. The contrast is never resolved. It sits there, asking to be felt rather than explained.
As both researcher and outsider, I’m drawn to how place can carry multiple truths. Between Sun and Shadow asks us to sit with that contradiction. To see Queensland not as one thing, but as many... layered and unresolved.
Drawing from vintage ephemera, Ozploitation cinema and forgotten fragments of print media, the work reflects how Queensland has been imagined, sold and mythologised. Three large-scale hand-painted banners are suspended like relics from a dream, fading in and out of focus.
Painted in black and white, each banner collages together fragments of Ozploitation, tourism and nostalgia. The contrast is never resolved. It sits there, asking to be felt rather than explained.
As both researcher and outsider, I’m drawn to how place can carry multiple truths. Between Sun and Shadow asks us to sit with that contradiction. To see Queensland not as one thing, but as many... layered and unresolved.
