Audio descriptions for artworks in The University of Queensland Art Collection.

The UQ Art Collection is one of Queensland’s most significant public art collections. The Collection fosters new artistic inquiry, and features works of contemporary Australian art that articulate and complicate conditions present at the time of their making.

Collection artworks are displayed in exhibitions, in the dedicated Collection Study Room, and in buildings across the University's campuses. It is used by students and staff for teaching, learning and research, and enjoyed by members of the public who visit UQ and its campuses.

UQ Art Collection audio descriptions

Semester 2 2025 Exhibitions

Kate Crawford_Vladan Joler_Anatomy of an AI System_2018.WAV

Suzanne Treister_Networks in Reverse..._2013.WAV

Monira Al Qadiri, Divine Memory, 2019

Joyce Hinterding - Floric Oscillator, 2018 - 22

Eglé Budvytytè - Songs from the Compost: Mutating Bodies, Imploding Stars, 2020

UQ: We Are Electric

Mavis Ngallametta - Nhoom (After the Bush Fires the Green Shoots Sprout), 2007 (Audio Description)

George Tjungurrayi - Tingari, 2004 (Audio Description)

Mare Amoris | Sea of Love
25 July 2023 - 20 January 2024

Artists: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Christopher Bassi, Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick, Seba Calfuqueo, Sonja Carmichael, Elisa Jane Carmichael, Chun Yin Rainbow Chan, Mariquita ‘Micki’ Davis, Djambawa Marawili, Santiago Mostyn, New Mineral Collective, Leyla Stevens, Shannon Te Ao, Unbound Collective, and Judy Watson.

Curators/Researchers: Peta Rake, Léuli Eshrāghi, Isabella Baker, Jocelyn Flynn.

Drew Kahuʻāina  Broderick_a handful of sand...,2020

Judy Watson’s "sacred water" is a gesture of respect and care for Waanyi Country. Unbound by framing, the canvas references the waters of Watson’s matrilineal Waanyi heritage, who are known as ‘running water people’. The stained blue and yellow made of wet and dry pigments are symbolic of the symbiotic relationship between water and land. 

Despite the arid landscape of Waanyi Country, there are many significant sites of water, including Boodjamulla Lawn Hill Gorge, and the many creeks and rivers that are fed by springs rising from ancient subterranean aquifers. 

"sacred water" is a tribute to the waters that have sustained Judy Watson’s ancestors as nourishment, and have strengthened her sense of belonging and identity. Water has been a source of inspiration physically and metaphorically for the artist.

Audio description: "sacred water" by Judy Watson

The rich red and brown ochres of Judy Watson’s sacred ground evoke the dry savannah landscape of the artist’s ancestral Waanyi Country. Gestures of love and care graciously held in the work emanate from the deep and rich pigments.

The encompassing swirls that extend across the canvas resemble the springs of Waanyi Country that rise to the surface from an artesian basin. The oval shape makes reference to a coolamon, a multi-use vessel in which to carry food or cradle infants that is often used in ceremony. The curved shape of the vessel is divinely feminine to the artist, and a link to her matrilineal ancestors. The shadow of a frond is indicative of plants that flourish despite arid conditions, particularly alongside swamps and waterways.

Audio description: "sacred ground" by Judy Watson

"Yathikpa" is a bark painting depicting the sacred saltwater territory where fire was received by Yolŋu People from the Ancestral Crocodile Bäru. The artwork features a variation of miny’tji (sacred clan designs) that describes the Sea Country belonging to the Maḏarrpa clan. Yathikpa is the spiritual base for Maḏarrpa people, of whom artist Djambawa Marawili is a Senior Leader. Marawili is also a prominent leader for Indigenous land and sea rights. 

The saltwater estate of Yathikpa lies in Blue Mud Bay, Arnhem Land, the region where the first Native Title rights were recognised over Sea Country. The Blue Mud Bay decision, handed down in July 2008 by the High Court, was the first significant ruling of its kind in Australia, because it granted exclusive ownership of the intertidal zone to Traditional Owners. 

The campaign for Blue Mud Bay Native Title arose from the concern of Yolŋu Elders whose Country was regularly violated by illegal fishing and the desecration of sacred sites. Marawili as Maḏarrpa leader coordinated Yolŋu Elders to express their pain and frustration through the depiction of their care and custodianship for Country in bark paintings that are known as the Saltwater Collection. These paintings were legal documents in the Blue Mud Bay case

Audio description: "Yathikpa" by Djambawa Marawili AM

How we remember tomorrow 
13 February - 15 June 2024

Artists: Cora-Allan, Brook Garru Andrew, Atong Atem, Sonja Carmichael and Elisa Jane Carmichael, Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser, Latent Community, Shivanjani Lal, Napolean Oui, Lisa Reihana, Teho Ropeyarn, Katerina Teaiwa, Jasmine Togo-Brisby.

Jasmine Togo-Brisby - Mother Tongue, 2020

Katerina Teaiwa - Project Banaba / Mine Lands, for Teresia, 2017

Open Spatial Workshop (Terri Bird, Bianca Hester, and Scott Mitchell) - Metabolic Scales, 2022-25

Gabriella Hirst - Darling Darling, 2021

James Tylor -Un-resettling (Series), 2016

Audio label of introductory wall text for exhibition 'Northern Waters' by Rachel O'Reilly, exhibited at UQ Art Museum 22 July - 6 December 2025.

Northern Waters - Rachel O'Reilly - Introduction

to come together as water - Introduction

WE CALL YOU! Sisters! Mothers! Workers!  - Introduction

SUNA (Middle Ground) - Introduction

Nici Cumpston - Oh my Murray Darling, 2019, Lake Bonney Barmera, place of large water, 2022

Brian Robinson - Zugubal: The winds and the tides set the pace, 2023

Heather Koowootha - Ngak Yangka, 2021

YOYI_pro_1

Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association - YOYI, 2020

Lucy Simpson - Dhanggal/(large) river mussel, 2022–23

Numbulwar Numburindi Arts - Lharagula Ngididin (Crocodile Trap), 2022

Megan Cope - Whispers (poles), 2023

Petra Bauer & Southall Black Sisters - Sisters!, 2011

Petra Bauer & SCOT-PEP, Workers!, 2019

Petra Bauer & collaborators - fifteen zero three nineteenth of january two thousand sixteen, 2024

Carole Roussopoulos, Vidéo Out - Les Prostituées de Lyon Parlent, 1975

University of Queensland Art Museum7 May 2011
A panel discussion of the themes surrounding 2011 exhibition 'New Psychedelia', chaired by curator Sebastian Moody, with panelists Dr Mark Pennings, Dr Edward Colless, and artist Kate Shaw.

Panel Discussion: 'New Psychedelia'

History of Emotions Lecture 2015
Professor Charles Zika: 'Witches as 'Others': Mobilising Emotions in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Images'
University of Queensland Art Museum 15 October 2015

Those accused of witchcraft during the European witch-hunt were generally understood to be extremely malicious and aggressive. As a moral and social threat, they had to be excluded from the benefits and protections of church and state, if not wholly exterminated. For this reason they were made to appear alien and other, and emotions were mobilised to make them such.

Professor Charles Zika: History of Emotions Lecture 2015

History of Emotions Lecture 2014
Professor Laurinda Dixon: 'A privileged profession: artists and melancholia'
University of Queensland Art Museum 22 October 2014
Presented in partnership with the UQ Node, ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100–1800). 

Professor Laurinda Dixon: History Of Emotions Lecture 2014

Mayne Centre Lecture 2015
Dr Mary Eagle: 'Imperturbable Mr Earle’s visit to New South Wales'
University of Queensland Art Museum 26 August 2015
Augustus Earle 1793–1838 is evoking interest internationally these days as virtually a mind-traveller whose take on events and activities in his time, long ago, chimes with our sensibilities in the twenty-first century.  In this talk about his three years in the Australian colonies I ask whether, by choosing to represent the conventional imagery of colonial life, he positioned himself to give an unexpected twist to the meaning? Or did he try but fail to conform to the mind-set of Britain’s empire makers?

Dr Mary Eagle: 'Imperturbable Mr Earle’s visit to New South Wales' (Mayne Centre Lecture 2015)

Daphne Mayo Lecture 2013
Professor Tim Ingold: 'Lines and the Weather'
University of Queensland Art Museum 16 October 2013
According to the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, one can only be sentient in a sentient world. We see with eyes that already know moonlight and sunlight, hear with ears already accustomed to the sonorities of wind and weather, feel with hands that are already familiar with the roughness and smoothness of wood, stone, clay and other materials. Neither sun and moon, nor wind and weather, nor wood, stone and clay are themselves sentient. But immersed in sentience – by invading the awareness of sentient bodies – they can, so to speak, double over and see, hear and touch themselves.

Tim Ingold: 'Lines and the Weather' (Daphne Mayo Lecture 2013)

Indigenous writer Graham Akhurst has created a series of poems in response to five photographs in 'Over the fence: Contemporary Indigenous photography from the Corrigan Collection'.

Recorded 31 August 2016, UQ Art Museum

Graham Akhurst is an Aboriginal writer and academic from the Kokomini of Northern Queensland. He has been published with Mascara Literary Review and Westerly for creative non-fiction, and the Australian Book Review, Cordite, Verity La and Off the Coast (Maine America) for poetry. He contributed to the Brisbane Poetry Map, and was poet of the week for the Australian Book Review in early April 2016. Graham has been a featured reader at the Queensland Poetry Festival and Clancestry. He received an Australia Council Grant to complete his debut novel Borderland. Graham was a participant on the 2015 Aurora Indigenous Scholars International Tour. He received a Bachelor of Creative Arts with first class honours in 2015 and is currently enrolled in an MPhil in Creative Writing at The University of Queensland, where he also lectures and tutors through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit.

Response: Poetry by Graham Akhurst​

In 2004, UQ’s James and Mary Emelia Mayne Centre (formerly Mayne Hall), designed by Robin Gibson OAM (1930–2014), was converted into the UQ Art Museum by Wilson Architects. While differences of opinion continue to surround this project, we open up the discussion to consider the philosophies and politics of this extraordinary conversion in the context of the Museum’s 40th year anniversary exhibition 'beyond the Tower: UQ Art Museum – 40 years and counting'.

Featuring Hamilton Wilson (conversion architect), Bill Heather (architect, who worked with Gibson on the design of Mayne Hall) and Alan Egan (Director, UQ Properties and Facilities Division). Chaired by Dr Campbell Gray, Director, UQ Art Museum.

Recorded 4 October 2016
Image: Opening of Mayne Hall 31 March 1973. University of Queensland Archives.

UQ Art Museum

Pinned to spotlight

Popular tracks