Artists tackle an Australian obsession in sporting exhibition at UQ Art Museum

A distinctly Australian exhibition bringing together a decade of artwork exploring sport and sporting culture will open on 24 November at UQ Art Museum.

Play On: The art of sport celebrates 10 years of the Basil Sellers Art Prize, a prestigious biennial exhibition that examines the personal and collective significance of sport and sporting culture.

The exhibition features works by leading Australian artists from five instalments of the Prize, and includes painting, sculpture, video, drawing and mixed-media installations.

The artworks respond to an equally extensive range of sporting genres, including community footy, women’s boxing, ground-keeping, gymnastics and AFL.

According to exhibition curators Jacqueline Doughty, Samantha Comte and Alyce Neal, Play On: The art of sport portrays the sports arena as a powerful theatre of emotion – where hope, fear, adversity, triumph, glory and defeat are writ large.

“Sport is used as a lens through which to contemplate a number of society’s most cogent issues: from mechanisms of cultural belonging and marginalisation, gender and race relations, to technology’s impact on our physical limits,” Jacqueline Doughty said.

UQ Art Museum Associate Director Dr Holly Arden said Play On: The art of sport offered audiences fresh and sometimes challenging perspectives on a national obsession.

“This exhibition asks complex questions about the intersection of sport with culture, politics and human rights so it’s not just sports lovers who’ll find the ideas and artworks presented intriguing,” Dr Arden said.

The free exhibition runs from 24 November until 9 February at UQ Art Museum.

Play On: The art of sport 10 years of the Basil Sellers Art Prize is a NETS Victoria and Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne touring exhibition.

A list of participating artists can be found here.

Download images for print and web here. 
 

Image: Shaun Gladwell The archer (after Chuang Tzu) 2014, Single-channel HD video, 16:9 ratio, colour, sound, 10:47 minutes, courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Media: Sonia Uranishi, sonia@soniauranishicommunication.com, +61 409 387 623; Sebastian Moody, s.moody@uq.edu.au +61 7 3346 8761.