A weekend at QAG or GOMA. Which would you choose?

Fri 28 Feb 2025

Looking for a free weekend outing for the family, a spot to socilaise with friends, or maybe a relaxing space to spend some 'me time'? Head to the cool confines of Brisbane's most visited galleries. The Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) and Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) are both nestled beside the Brisbane River and just a short stroll along the river-front from the South Bank Parklands.

QAG and GOMA are just 150 metres apart — each has a distinct artwork display focus and unique architectural personalities. QAG's characteristic concrete brutalist exterior, emerging from the modernist movement, won the most outstanding public building in Australia when it opened in 1982. GOMA, on the other hand, is defined by a dual black box/white box architectural arrangement, with a bold pavilion-style design influenced by the traditional ‘Queenslander’ home. It won both National and State awards for Public Architecture when it opened in 2006. Both buildings, in their own way, changed the face of the city’s South Bank waterfront.

What they have in common, however, is together they offer a creative and cultural hub for Brisbane and Queensland — a place where people come together to relax, to be inspired and where imagination and creativity spark as visitors young and old, from different walks of life, enjoy a stunning mix of Australian, Pacific, Asian and International art.

Queensland Art Gallery

Gallery of Modern Art

These adjacent buildings are easy to wander through, their spacious interiors exuding calm and allowing rejuvenating daylight to stream inside. QAG speaks to the Brisbane River, with its spectacular cavernous interior and central Watermall parallel with the river just outside, while GOMA and it's vast central Long Galley, is about connecting with the city, every time you step out of an exhibition space you re-engage with the Brisbane skyline and its multiple river vistas.

So now it’s up to you to choose your weekend escape — QAG, GOMA, or maybe both? Visit QAG to reacquaint yourself to our Collection favourites on permanent display — maybe it's the Picasso, Degas or Toulouse-Lautrec, or our best-loved Australian artists, or currently installed in both buildings until 27 April 2025 are innovative, beautiful and thought-provoking works of art from more than 30 countries as part of the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art.

Watch | Asia Pacific Triennial: Art that makes an impact

Queensland Art Gallery

Mit Jai Inn's Triennial Watermall installation

Before installation could begin on Mit Jai Inn's Triennial installation, the Watermall needed to be drained so that our team could prepare the eights parts of the two-sided suspended canvas tunnel which will lead you through a narrow path built above water. Its immense buoyant ribbon panels that hang like warp looms inhabits a space between ground and ceiling. Watch our installation time-lapse before you visit.

Collection highlight: Pablo Picasso

Surrounded by works from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edgar Degas, La Belle Hollandaise (The beautiful Dutch girl) 1905 is a key painting by Pablo Picasso, the work donated to the Gallery in 1959, at the time this major work by one of the greatest living twentieth century masters set a world record price at £55,000. Watch the auction to go back in time before you visit.

Collection highlight: Indigenous Australian art

Artistic expressions from the world's oldest continuing culture are drawn from all regions of the country in the Gallery's holdings of Indigenous Australian artworks.

Walangkura Napanangka's Untitled (Tjintjintjin) 2006 depicts the rockhole and cave site of Tjintjintjin, to the west of Walungurra (Kintore) in Western Australia. The symbols in this painting map out the area's geographical features, through which ancestor figure Kutungka Napanangka passed on her travels across the Gibson Desert during the creation time.

Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa's  Goanna Story c.1973-74 is from one of the traditional dreaming stories, and this work shows four of the reptiles moving towards a waterhole.

Drawing from the Collection

On any day at QAG, get creative and pick up our free drawing materials and draw from your favourite works on display. Just grab a drawing board, paper and pencil, then take inspiration from the art around you in either the permanent Australian or International Art Collections.

QAG Cafe

If you work up an appetite on your visit, enjoy a bite to eat at the QAG Cafe. Perfect for some quiet contemplation beside the Watermall's Dandelion fountains, reflection pond and Sculpture Courtyard or head inside beside Tamika Grant-Iramu's striking landscape mural of frangipani and bougainvillea.

Gallery of Modern Art

Brett Graham's Triennial Long Gallery installation

Five dramatic sculptures of Brett Graham Tai Moana Tai Tangata installed in GOMA's central Long Gallery speak to structures created by both the British and Māori during the New Zealand wars (1845–72). Deeply researched to ensure that they directly address Tainui and Taranaki Māoris’ experiences of British occupation, each of these works is superbly crafted, with materials carefully selected to ensure a strong physical and spiritual resonance for Māori.

Collection highlight: Mele Kahalepuna Chun

Mele Kahalepuna Chun is a kumu hulu — a recognised expert practitioner and teacher of Hawaiian featherwork — based on the island of O‘ahu in Hawai‘i. Chun describes her continued engagement with the artform as the fulfilment of her kuleana — her sacred responsibility to serve her community and honour the ho‘oilina (legacy) of her family through the ongoing custodianship and advancement of this artform. Watch Chun describe the featherwork on display.

Collection highlight: Nomin Bold

Cup of Life 2023 is an imposing curtain of grinning skulls that combines painter Nomin Bold’s use of Buddhist symbolism with sculptor Ochirbold Ayurzana’s practice as a metalworker. Of commanding scale and panoramic format, the work consists of almost 2000 cast-metal skulls suspended on taut wires, fixed floor to ceiling. Watch our installation time-lapse

Free children activities

Children are our future appreciation group, we welcome families with children of all ages to the Children’s Art Centre. Visit GOMA to experience seven activities for Asia Pacific Triennial Kids in collaboration by artists from India, Aotearoa New Zealand, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia/Palestine, Cambodia and Timor-Leste. Choose your favourite before you visit.

Free cinema

The Australian Cinémathèque at GOMA provides an ongoing program of film and video that you're unlikely to see elsewhere. Search what weekend matinee is screening when you visit. GOMA is the only Australian art gallery with purpose-built facilities dedicated to film and the moving image, and hidden beneath the stage and only revealed for special screenings is our much-loved 1929 Wurlitzer Style 260 Opus 2040 Pipe Organ, its original home Brisbane’s Regent Theatre which opened in November 1929. Find out how it ended up at GOMA.

GOMA Cafe

Over at GOMA, our new cafe offers a traditional lunch selection, small plates for sharing and a range of pastries and cakes baked daily, dine at a table inside or on the balcony. This exciting new outlet has opened with the temporary closure of the GOMA Bistro as we install Tony Albert and Nell’s play sculpture The BIG HOSE on the river’s edge. Find out more about the upcoming artist-designed play sculpture.

We look forward to welcoming you to QAGOMA. Enjoy your visit!

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