About

'Under a Modern Sun' showcases the work of Queensland artists and those working in the state in the middle decades of the twentieth century. The display includes artworks by renowned Brisbane-based painters Vida Lahey and William Bustard and luminaries from the regions, including Kenneth Macqueen and Joe Rootsey. The exhibition explores connections between these artists and others — such as Sidney Nolan and Max Dupain — who travelled to Queensland to explore its histories and subject matter and, in doing so, contributed to the development of a modernist sensibility here.

The exhibition foregrounds the important role that women artists such as Lahey and Daphne Mayo played in fostering artistic practice in the state. Their work features alongside artworks by their peers Gwendolyn Grant, Rose Simmonds and women ceramicists associated with the Harvey School.

A later group of paintings by Margaret Olley, Margaret Cilento, and Jon Molvig points to the more expressive directions that art in Queensland followed in subsequent decades.