150 years of art making in North Queensland
Now and then are powerfully evocative words that kindle a range of contradictory responses. A positive sense of the present collides with a sense of what has been lost, and our frustration with the life we are living is highlighted by a rosy-hued invention of our history. The two words in tandem reveal our paradoxical relationship with the past as both the bedrock on which we have built our lives and the evidence of our failure to realize its potential. Now and then is therefore a wonderful theme on which to build a sesquicentenary celebration.
Ross Searle’s curatorial plan was to ask fifteen artists based in and around Townsville to respond to an artwork created in the past one hundred and fifty years since Queensland separated from the colony of New South Wales. The selected works, divided loosely into themes of exploration/settlement, wartime/peace, urban growth/natural environment, encapsulate a range of responses within that pendulum swing from euphoria to dismay. The result is a group of works that through a creative interrogation of the practice of making art and the act of paying homage, reflects on the past one hundred and fifty years of change in their place.
James Brown’s reworking of Arthur Streeton’s Moonlight, Magnetic Island combines all of these ideas to give a particular resonance to the idea of sense of place. We are immediately drawn to the alluring presence of this landmark on the horizon with its poetic and romantic connotations given full reign in Brown’s re-interpretation. Additionally, the soft blue to pink hues are very different from Streeton’s original sepia tones and underscore the move into the present. Created as a diptych, the left hand panel echoes