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Although Brisbane suffers from a dearth of more than a couple of artist run-initiatives (such as Christopher Bennie's Moreton Street Spare Room project based in a 3 x 4 metre room in his New Farm house) and a similar lack of commercial galleries, the contemporary art scene is thriving and growing. Perhaps there is something to be said for critical isolation from the southern states, as increasingly Sydney and Melbourne-based artists are exhibiting or are represented in Queensland; Melbourne-based Juan Ford, for example, shows with Jan Manton, and recently, Sydney artists John Nicholson and Giles Ryder exhibited with the newest galleries on the block - Ryan Renshaw Gallery in Brisbane, and George Petelin Gallery on the Gold Coast, respectively.

Maybe it is due to the comfortable Queensland climate (literally 'beautiful one day, perfect the next'), and metaphorically comfortable (slower pace and laidback attitude) or the cheaper housing and studio rents, but the sunshine state is called home by a crop of emerging and established painters that includes Dane Lovett, Anthony Lister, Kirra Jamison, Madeleine Kelly, Julie Fragar, Arryn Snowball, Gemma Smith and Michael Zavros, who are producing arguably some of the most visually exciting work in the country. Mostly Brisbane based, and predominantly young, ranging in age from twenty-three to thirty-two, they frequently cross professional paths and enjoy a collegiate relationship through commercial dealers and university campuses engendered by the nature of Brisbane's small but loyal and supportive art community. As a disparate group of painters they are experimenting with scale, media and subject matter in diverse and intriguing forms across figuration and abstraction. Painting, it seems, is still enjoying a flush of attention and a critical currency in contemporary art circles in Australia, riding the wave of commercial and curatorial interest in artists such as David Griggs, Ben Quilty and Del Kathryn Barton.

This article appears in excerpted form. You can read the full article in the Spring 2007 issue of Art & Australia.

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