Smokescreen 2026/2027

The Gallery of Modern Art is located at Stanley Place in South Brisbane within the Queensland Cultural Centre.

South Brisbane railway station is within easy walking distance.

Cultural Centre bus station provides connections across Brisbane.

Visitors can also walk from the central business district across the Brisbane River.

Taxi and rideshare services can drop visitors near the cultural precinct.

Paid parking is available at the Queensland Cultural Centre.

Brisbane Airport connects with the city through rail services, taxis, rideshare and private transfers.

Accommodation

South Bank is the most convenient area for visitors who want immediate access to QAGOMA and neighbouring cultural institutions.

Brisbane CBD provides a wider range of hotels across the river.

West End offers independent restaurants, cafés and a more local atmosphere.

Fortitude Valley may appeal to visitors interested in nightlife and creative venues but requires transport to GOMA.

Visitors planning several days of museum visits should prioritise South Bank or central Brisbane.

Both areas make it easy to combine QAGOMA with the Queensland Museum and Queensland Performing Arts Centre.

Allow at least one hour for the exhibition.

Do not assume that every symbol or pattern needs to be decoded.

Respect the possibility that some cultural knowledge is deliberately not explained.

Stand at different distances from the larger paintings.

Patterns that appear abstract from close range may behave very differently when viewed across the gallery.

Compare contemporary urban practices with works grounded in remote and regional communities.

Avoid treating all Indigenous Australian art as one visual tradition.

Check QAGOMA’s programme for curator talks or Indigenous-led interpretation.

These can provide context without reducing cultural complexity.

Tips from the ArtExpoWorld

Do not enter Smokescreen with the expectation that good interpretation means everything should become clear.

Sometimes the opposite is true.

The exhibition becomes most interesting when the visitor accepts that concealment can be deliberate, culturally necessary and artistically powerful.

Look carefully, but do not demand ownership of every meaning.

Smokescreen matters because museums usually reward revelation.

For ArtExpoWorld, this exhibition is powerful precisely because it questions whether everything must be accessible to everyone.

Indigenous Australian artists have long worked within systems where knowledge is guarded, with custodianship, responsibility, and boundaries.

Smokescreen incorporates those boundaries into the viewing experience.

The result is an exhibition about art, but also about humility: understanding that looking closely does not always grant us the right to know everything.