By Sally Scott
Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art, popularly known as GoMA, has done it again. Recognised as the country’s most visited gallery last year, its newest exhibition – Surrealism, the Poetry of Dreams – is a more than worthy follow-up to its earlier 21st Century: Art in the First Decade, and sure to consolidate its standing with art lovers from around the country.
Surrealism is a 20th-century movement of artists and writers that developed out of Dadaism. It is recognised for its fantastic images and incongruous associations used to represent unconscious thoughts and dreams. Of all art genres, perhaps Surrealism is the one that has the potential to capture children’s imagination the most. It is tailor-made for young fertile minds.
And one of GoMA’s strengths is that it is a free venue, and somewhere that every kid love visiting. Children of all ages (and even accompanying adults) get plenty of opportunities to try their hand at emulating some of the artists whose work is featured.
During the Surrealist exhibition, the large well-staffed children’s area has been turned over to the art and crafts of artists such as Max Ernst, Oscar Dominguez and Marcel Duchamp. In the Surrealist tradition of discovering how unlock the imagination with games and activities involving chance and picture-making, children get to work with pictures, scissors and glue sticks, and crayons and torn paper to come up with their own masterpieces to put up on display or to take home.
The main exhibition, which features the core of the Surrealist collection from Paris’s National Museum of Modern Art housed in the Pompidou Centre, is the excellent and highly recommended main attraction with tickets $10-$20. Children under 12 are admitted free. Artists featured include leading exponents of the movement – Victor Brauner, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Alberto Giacometti and Giorgio De Chirico – and film and photography from notaries, such as Luis Bunuel, Man Ray and Rene Clair.
Until Oct 2. More information at www.qag.qld.gov.ay/surrealism
Above: Northside cousins Olivia Magnay and Greta Kasprowicz ham it up for the Indie camera at the GoMA exhibition.
