Nine Queensland Art Exhibitions Worth Clearing Your Calendar for in 2026
There is a specific kind of quiet that settles in a gallery room just before it clicks — when the work stops being something you are looking at and becomes something you are inside. Queensland is offering a lot of that this year. TheCollect, an Australian city culture publication, has mapped the state's most compelling art exhibitions for 2026, from a Gold Coast survey of six decades of colour to a chalk-drawn family tree 65,000 years in the making at GOMA in South Brisbane. Here are the nine Queensland art exhibitions 2026 that are worth the trip, the queue, and the drive.
The Big Shows: Immersive and International
Olafur Eliasson: Presence — GOMA, South Brisbane
Until July 12, 2026 · $14–$33
Walk into GOMA's ground floor right now and you step into a different atmosphere — literally. Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson builds environments out of light, water, mist, and temperature, and his Brisbane-exclusive retrospective Presence is the most ambitious iteration of that practice in Australia this decade. A simulated sun pulses and shifts inside the gallery. A full indoor riverbed — complete with running water and a rocky floor — invites you to walk through it (wear shoes you do not mind getting damp). The all-white Lego city at the centre of the show is rebuilt daily by visitors, never finished, always evolving. This is a three-decade career survey made for QAGOMA in partnership with Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin. Nothing about it has been phoned in.
What to know: Book tickets in advance. Friday nights in May and June, GOMA stays open until 8:30pm with DJs and drinks — the best way to see it without the school holiday crowds. The QAGOMA companion app includes a Sense Trail for visitors who want a guided, sensory-led experience.
Archie Moore: kith and kin — GOMA, South Brisbane
Until October 18, 2026 · Free
In 2024, Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore took this work to the Venice Biennale and came home with the Golden Lion for Best National Participation — the first Australian artist to do so. Now kith and kin has its Australian premiere at GOMA, and Brisbane is seeing it before London's Tate does.
The work occupies its own specially built room, replicating the dimensions of the Australia Pavilion in Venice. Moore hand-drew a genealogical chart in chalk across four walls, tracing his ancestry back across more than 2,400 generations — over 65,000 years. In a Kamilaroi understanding of time, past, present, and future are co-present, and standing in the room, that idea stops being abstract. At the centre is a reflective pool, beneath which hang coronial reports documenting 557 Aboriginal Australians who died in police or prison custody. The chalk is fragile. The subject matter is not.
This is one of the most significant works shown in Queensland in years. It is free. There is no reason not to go.
Gold Coast: Two Reasons to Drive South
Ken Done: No Rules — HOTA, Surfers Paradise
Until February 15, 2026 · Ticketed
Ken Done is 83 and still painting like someone who has something to prove. No Rules draws on 45 years of work, most of it pulled directly from Done's personal collection — Australian landscapes, garden scenes, and a series of collaborations with Sydney designers Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales of Romance Was Born, whose 2023 "Done Zone" collection sits alongside the canvases. The work is exuberant, deliberately unruly, and genuinely joyful in a way that is rare in gallery spaces. If you have not taken Done seriously before, this show will change that.
A Bigger View — HOTA, Surfers Paradise
Until June 21, 2026 · Ticketed
A touring exhibition from the National Gallery of Australia, A Bigger View drops David Hockney's A Bigger Grand Canyon onto the Gold Coast and surrounds it with Imants Tillers, Bridget Riley, Sally Gabori, and William Robinson. It is a serious rethink of landscape painting — how it has shaped Australian art history, what it means now, and how radically different approaches to the same subject can coexist in one room. Worth the drive from Brisbane on its own.
Ipswich: The Underrated Double
Lost in Palm Springs — Ipswich Art Gallery
Until March 8, 2026 · Free
Fourteen internationally recognised artists — including photographers Kate Ballis and Tom Blachford — respond to the mid-century modern architecture of Palm Springs, California. The result is a multidisciplinary show curated by Australian writer and conceptual artist Dr Greer Honeywill that manages to be genuinely transporting. Desert light, famous cacti, and swimming pools rendered in ways that are anything but predictable. Ipswich Art Gallery is 40 minutes from Brisbane's CBD and regularly worth the effort.
Christopher Bentley: Machine, Man — Ipswich Art Gallery
Until March 15, 2026 · Free
Ipswich-based digital artist Christopher Bentley has spent years working at the intersection of obsolete media and new technology. Machine, Man invites you into the body of a cyborg — part flesh, part machine — and asks what we own, what we remember, and what we leave behind when machines start carrying those things for us. Interactive, sculptural, and a little unsettling in exactly the right way.
First Nations Storytelling: The Strongest Thread of 2026
Stories You Wear: Magpie Goose — Museum of Brisbane, CBD
Until October 5, 2026 · Free
Aboriginal-owned fashion and social enterprise Magpie Goose — co-directed by Amanda Hayman (Wakka Wakka and Kalkadoon) and Troy Casey (Kamilaroi) — has turned the Museum of Brisbane into a space where clothing becomes testimony. The exhibition centres on collaborations with First Nations artists and designers, with a particular focus on communities from South East Queensland: Jinibara and Quandamooka artists, including senior artists Sonja Carmichael and Belinda Close. Each garment is a canvas for a conversation the wider culture is still catching up to. Located in Brisbane Square, King George Square, in the heart of the CBD.
Ones to Know: Emerging and Under the Radar
Creative Generation 2026 Excellence Awards in Visual Art — GOMA, South Brisbane
March 28 – September 13, 2026 · Free
Every year, Queensland's Creative Generation program identifies the strongest visual art coming out of state high schools, and every year the work surprises. This is not a student show in the sense people dismiss — the standard is consistently high, the range of media is wide, and the exhibition reflects what the next generation of Queensland artists is actually thinking about right now. Worth visiting for the same reason you would visit any good survey show: to get ahead of what is coming.
Nicole Slater: Rose Gold — HOTA, Surfers Paradise
Until March 8, 2026 · Free
Self-taught painter and thoroughbred breeder Nicole Slater brings her equestrian portraits to HOTA in a solo exhibition that is both technically specific and quietly moving. Slater and her husband Billy care for rescue horses at their rural Victorian property, and that intimacy shows in the work — the fading tones of sunset, the physical accuracy of each animal, the warmth in a subject she genuinely knows. An easy addition to any visit to HOTA.
Quick Reference: What Is Still Open
FAQ
What is the best art exhibition in Brisbane right now in 2026? Olafur Eliasson: Presence at GOMA (Gallery of Modern Art, South Brisbane) is the standout. It is a Brisbane-exclusive, multi-sensory experience running until July 12, 2026. Tickets cost $14–$33 and booking in advance is strongly recommended. The exhibition features immersive installations including a full indoor riverbed and an interactive Lego city rebuilt daily by visitors.
Are there free art exhibitions in Queensland in 2026? Yes — most of the major exhibitions this year are free. Archie Moore: kith and kin at GOMA (until October 2026), Stories You Wear: Magpie Goose at the Museum of Brisbane (until October 2026), Creative Generation 2026 at GOMA, and the two Ipswich Art Gallery shows are all free to attend. The only significant ticket price is Olafur Eliasson: Presence ($14–$33).
What is Archie Moore: kith and kin about? kith and kin is a landmark installation by Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist Archie Moore, originally shown at the 2024 Venice Biennale where it won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation — the first Australian work to do so. At GOMA, Moore hand-drew a genealogical chart in chalk across four gallery walls, tracing his ancestry over 65,000 years. At the centre is a reflective pool with coronial reports marking First Nations deaths in custody. The Australian premiere runs until October 18, 2026. Entry is free.
What art is on at HOTA Gold Coast in 2026? HOTA in Surfers Paradise is hosting three shows of note: Ken Done: No Rules (until February 15, 2026), a 45-year career survey of Done's vibrant work; A Bigger View (until June 21, 2026), featuring David Hockney's A Bigger Grand Canyon alongside works by Bridget Riley and Sally Gabori; and Nicole Slater: Rose Gold (until March 8, 2026), a free solo exhibition of large-scale equestrian portraits.
Queensland's art calendar in 2026 is stacked across the breadth of the state, not just in South Brisbane. If you have only been making trips to GOMA, it is time to extend the radius. Ipswich is 40 minutes by train. The Gold Coast is an hour. The work at all of them is worth the effort — and most of it will not cost you a thing.