Brisbane's cultural magnetic pull is getting stronger every year. As a long-standing arts partner to many not-for-profit arts and cultural organisations, we've been onboard to see our city's art scene attract exclusive global artists, performances and exhibitions creating a don't-miss-this vibe that travellers from around Australia and the globe flock here for. More importantly, we've watched our Brisbane-based art community elevate their practice to the world stage, marvelled at their increased commitment to connect Queensland's regions with their programs and deliver phenomenal cultural development to our city that our community loves.
Every year, our arts partners deliver a bigger and bolder season of thought-provoking, world-changing and deliciously fun events and we're proud to support their full theatres, teeming galleries and creative ideas.
We'll be in the audience showing our support, will you?
Summer events guide: December 2023 - February 2024
From the Collection: Gordon Bennett
Museum of Brisbane, Level 3, City Hall
Open daily | Until 21 January 2024
Gordon Bennett (1955–2014) remains one of Australia’s most significant postmodern artists. Throughout his practice, he worked in a wide range of media including painting, drawing, printmaking, video, performance and installation. His bold and challenging art continues to engage with questions of cultural and personal identity, particularly within the context of
Australia’s colonial past and postcolonial present.
Museum of Brisbane (MoB) invites you to come and explore an intimate display of Gordon’s works from the MoB Collections, including two recent acquisitions generously donated by Leanne Bennett.
Making Place: 100 Views of Brisbane
Museum of Brisbane
Open daily
Place, in Brisbane, is not a static thing. We are at a crucial point in Brisbane’s urban development, with extreme changes to the city predicted over the next decade. With the city we know shifting so rapidly, this is the ideal moment to ask—what makes a place? Which sites are significant for individuals and communities and why? Are the landmarks we recognise as characterising the city today the same landmarks we’ll see in the future? And can memories make a place? With these questions front of mind, Making Place presents more than 100 historical and contemporary depictions of the Brisbane region from Museum of Brisbane’s Collections.
Focus Shift
Museum of Brisbane
Open daily
Focus Shift showcases Museum of Brisbane Collection works that celebrate Brisbane from completely different perspectives, reflecting the dynamism of our encounters with the city. A selection of panoramas depict an intriguing Brisbane and track its growth from a modest town nestled in the river’s curves to the bustling metropolis we know today. Alongside these works, local artist Carl Warner shifts our focus to the micro aspects of the city through closeups of one of Brisbane’s most iconic structures, the Story Bridge.
Perspectives of Brisbane
Museum of Brisbane
Open daily
Perspectives of Brisbane offers a captivating insight into the people, events and changing landscape that is our city. The evolving life of Brisbane, its history and its culture, is revealed through stories, photographs and film. The place we now call Brisbane has a rich history going back 65,000 years and beyond. Situated on Traditional Lands, it remains home to some of the world’s oldest living cultures. Since European settlement began in the 1820s with the Moreton Bay penal colony, Brisbane has experienced conflict, growth, innovation and celebration.
Today, Greater Brisbane is home to more than 2.5 million people from diverse backgrounds. The city continues to transform, its cultural landscape shaped by the ongoing care of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, waves of migration and powerful social change. Museum of Brisbane respectfully acknowledges ‘Warunghu’, Aunty Raelene Baker, for her insight, conversation and participation in writing the text presented in this exhibition.
The Local
Museum of Brisbane
Available until 21 January 2024
As Artist in Residence, Taloi Havini was invited to investigate the City of Brisbane and Museum of Brisbane Collections and subsequently developed The Local, framed as an ‘artistic intervention’. She looked at the language of architecture, museum display and curatorial selection. In collaboration with Dirk Yates of Speculative Architecture, Taloi has curated an experience that evokes a scene from inside a Queensland pub. On display are some of the earliest works in the MoB Collections, through to contemporary works that give prominence to Indigenous, women and migrant voices.
Rearranged: Art of the Flower
Museum of Brisbane, Level 3, City Hall
Available until 11 August 2024
Still life takes on new life in this celebration of the art of the flower. Brisbane has a strong culture of artists using floral imagery to tell stories of this place. In a space reminiscent of a quintessential Queenslander house, Rearranged: Art of the Flower invites visitors to stroll through a lush collection of paintings, textiles, sculptures, ceramics and new media.
Commonly associated with domestic settings and still life compositions, flowers continue to be reimagined and evoke contemporary concerns. Rearranged beholds the beauty of this ever-popular subject and looks beyond to explore notions of place, memory and history. The exhibition illuminates diverse perspectives, always acknowledging that flowers have long been cared for by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities as an integral part of Country.
Vertigo Brisbane
Brisbane Powerhouse, New Farm
Available Thursday - Sunday
Step over the edge where gastronomic excellence meets heart pounding adrenaline.
Experience the first vertical restaurant as you dangle from the precipice of Brisbane Powerhouse. Push your limits. Dine on the edge.
Your exclusive locally sourced Vertigo menu includes a two-course meal from fine dining restaurant Bar Alto and a matching wine to be enjoyed while you’re suspended from the edge of Brisbane Powerhouse.
Fairy Tales
Gallery of Modern Art, South Bank
2 December 2023 - 28 April 2024
Fairy tales from across the world have held our fascination for centuries and visual storytellers draw on these narratives to entrance, delight and disconcert audiences.
Bringing together painting, sculpture, film, costumes, and more, this exclusive-to-Brisbane exhibition highlights the archetypal figures we know so well – wicked witches, stalwart princes and princesses, and magical animals, both fierce and friendly.
Exclusive to Brisbane, tickets go on sale mid-2023.
An Italian Vista
Saturday, 10 February, 7.30pm & Sunday, 11 February, 3:00pm
QSO Studio, South Bank
Queensland Symphony Orchestra's first Up Close performance features a triple bill of chamber orchestra delights.
Strings gallop into the entry of Grieg’s Holberg Suite. During the first and last movements, you’ll picture yourself letting loose on the dance floor, and in the middle you’ll fantasise about how smoothly you glide along the ballroom. The suite was composed to celebrate the birth of a playwright; Puccini’s Crisantemi then marks the death of a king. His elegy is named after the chrysanthemum flower, a mourning bloom. Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony bursts with the ecstasy of being alive and travelling the world. As the composer told his dad of the sun-drenched country, ‘I am loving it!’ Directed by Natsuko Yoshimoto
Camerata & Alex Raineri: Beethoven
Saturday, 17 February 2024, 7:30pm
Concert Hall, QPAC, Brisbane
A stunning concert full of beauty and virtuosity, brought to life by Camerata and acclaimed pianist, Alex Raineri
Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture is one of the most thrilling and dramatic overtures in Classical Music. You’ll be captivated by Beethoven’s ability to evoke Coriolan’s inner conflict between the 15th Century warrior’s determination to wage war on Rome and his mother’s protests from the sidelines. All this, through some of the most virtuosic and exciting orchestral music – a truly exciting way to start the year!
Worlds Collide A MUSICAL TRAVELOGUE
Sunday, 18 February, 11:30am
Concert Hall, QPAC
From melodies as old as time, to more contemporary masterworks: distant worlds collide. Under the baton of Douglas Boyd, tradition and innovation are intertwined in our first Music on Sundays concert for 2024.
Harry Sdraulig’s Torrent is a fanfare tense with the chaos of the modern age, while the longing second movement of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante is a glimpse into a bygone era of classical elegance performed by soloists from within our Orchestra. New frontiers abound in Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, which brims with the adventure of the composer’s years in America.
Umberto’s Mahler THE JOURNEY CONTINUES
Friday, 23 February, 7:30pm & Saturday, 24 February, 1:30pm
Concert Hall, QPAC
There’s a reason Mahler’s Symphony No.7 was chosen to open our Maestro season for 2024: it’s an absolute epic!
Clocking in at over an hour, this turn-of-the-century masterwork is packed with action. A rollicking first movement holds glimmers of victory between boasting brass and feverish flutes. The centre of the work conjures the dark of night, birds calling from their hiding places – but do sinister figures lurk in the shadows? You’ll hear it all under the baton of our Chief Conductor Umberto Clerici, who lifts this symphony to its tremendously happy ending.
Autumn events guide: March - May 2024
Closer
Roundhouse Theatre, La Boite
4 - 20 April 2024
After 24 years, Closer, a cult classic by Patrick Marber returns to the La Boite stage to get under the audience’s skin once again.
Artistic Director Courtney Stewart will direct an all-star Queensland cast in this critically acclaimed work that blends classical tragedy, comedy, and melodrama in a contemporary and relatable setting.
Blue
Roundhouse Theatre, La Boite
16 May - 1 June 2024
Blue, a tender and exquisite monologue written and performed by Logie Award-winner, Thomas Weatherall (also known as Malakai from Heartbreak High), makes its Queensland debut at La Boite in 2024, following its premiere season at Belvoir as part of Sydney Festival 2023.
Blue is a “very personal fiction”, drawn from Weatherall’s experiences as a teenager and young adult, finding his place in the world and overcoming an onslaught of emotional circumstances.
Camerata & Karin Schaupp: Serenade
Wednesday, 22 May 2024, 7:30pm
Concert Hall, QPAC, Brisbane
Featuring Australian guitar virtuoso, Karin Schaupp, “one of the world’s most accomplished classically trained guitarists” (Sydney Morning Herald) this performance showcases two exquisite pieces of music for guitar and strings.
Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, usually for solo piano, will be performed here in a delightful new arrangement for guitar and strings. You’ll hear some of Mendelssohn’s most favourite tunes in this lyrical music, imbued with feeling – music in its most pure and simple form.
Winter events guide: June - August 2024
Spring events guide: September - November 2024
Camerata, Lou Bennett & Lior: Ngapa William Cooper
Saturday, 7 September 2024, 7pm
Concert Hall, QPAC, Brisbane
Not to be missed! Following their moving creation, Compassion, Lior and Nigel Westlake have teamed up with Lou Bennett to create Ngapa William Cooper, the extraordinarily powerful story of Yorta Yorta man, Uncle William Cooper.
Ngapa William Cooper was born out of a rich collaboration between composer Nigel Westlake, singer-songwriter Lior, and performer and academic Dr Lou Bennett AM. In this very special, completely unconducted, world premiere arrangement for chamber orchestra, Camerata and Lior once again join forces, this time with Lou Bennett, for this moving and heartfelt performance.
Fancy Long Legs
Roundhouse Theatre, La Boite
12 - 22 September 2024
Fancy Long Legs is a brand-new glittery and vibrant musical adventure for children, based on a new picture book by international tinsel and craft icon, Rachel Burke.
This uplifting story takes a wholesome and relatable look at neurodivergence, offering a playful and glitter-covered adventure of acceptance, staying true to yourself, and finding friends who love you and celebrate your differences.
Camerata & Davide Monti: Baroque Labyrinth
Wednesday, 13 November 2024, 7pm
Concert Hall, QPAC, Brisbane
Baroque violin virtuoso, Davide Monti, who thrilled audiences with the 2018 Camerata smash hit, Viva Vivaldi, team ups with Camerata to uncover a labyrinth of bold, adventurous baroque music.
Baroque Labyrinth sees the long-awaited return of one of Camerata’s favourite collaborators, the Italian Baroque violinist, Davide Monti. A much sought after director, soloist and chamber musician, Davide’s playing possesses incredible freshness, where “all appears extraordinarily spontaneous and organic”. His prize-winning recordings include his Vivaldi’s Four Seasons which has been reviewed as “definitely one of the best versions of the decade”.
Yoga Play
Roundhouse Theatre, La Boite
7 - 23 November 2024
A sharp comedy that interrogates what it takes to find your authenticity in a world determined to sell enlightenment.
The uproarious exploration of cultural appropriation, exploitation, consumerism, fat shaming and yoga pants at any cost is written by US playwright Dipika Guha and plays at La Boite as part of its Australian premiere season, directed by internationally renowned director Mina Morita.