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Tuesday 10am - 5pm Wednesday 10am - 5pm Thursday 10am - 8pm Friday 10am - 5pm Saturday 10am - 5pm Sunday 10am - 5pm

Institute of Modern Art

Name: Institute of Modern Art
Address: 420 Brunswick Street, Brisbane, QLD, 4006, AU
Telephone: +61732525750

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Australia's oldest independent public art gallery. Free entry. Open Tuesday–Sunday, 10am–5pm.

The IMA is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, the Australian Government through Australia Council for the Arts, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Federal, State, and Territory Governments. The IMA is a member of Contemporary Art Organisations Australia (CAOs).

20/10/2026

Thank you to our national community of collaborators and supporters who joined us in celebrating our final exhibitions for the year.

We are proud to host ‘Artist’s Mouth’, a survey exhibition of major Australian artist Mitch Cairns, presented with NAS Gallery National Art School. A painter of flair and originality, Cairns interweaves elements of cubism, comics, and concrete poetry across over fifty works spanning his twenty-year career.

In the Screening Room, Kate Cooper’s videos explore how bodies are imagined and imaged, understood and controlled, and how they resist.

Missed the opening? Drop in to see the exhibitions until 20 December 2026.

Quarter Four:
→ Mitch Cairns: Artist’s Mouth
→ Kate Cooper: Infection Drivers and Untitled (After Somatic Aliasing)

Free entry, all welcome.
Open 10am-5pm Tuesday–Sunday

Cairns is represented by The Commercial
Photos: Katy Bedford.

16/10/2026

Next Saturday 24 October, the IMA hosts a talk by Australian photography historian and Oxford Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Batchen, presented in partnership with UQ School of Communication and Arts.

Since the introduction of hand-held cameras, people have been captured blinking. Though mid-blink images are often deleted, an online trend has seen celebrities posting photos with their eyes closed in manufactured candids.

Unpacking this phenomenon, Batchen will consider how the desire to be viewed as ‘unseeing’ can be placed in a history of photography, while reflecting on the generative relationship between sight and blindness in photography from 1839 to now.

Geoffrey Batchen: Eyes Wide Shut - A History of Photography
Saturday 24 October, 2pm
Free, all welcome
Registration essential

Image:
Claude Brevet ‘François, a teacher in Neuville-les-Dames [with eyes closed]’ 1847.

15/10/2026

Free Range sounds, sunny side up. Our final Thursday night sound club for the year is a big fry-up.

Clocked Out (Clocked Out) is a duo of restless sonic explorers, Vanessa Tomlinson and Erik Griswold. Working across composition and improvisation, they draw on experimental sound, jazz, and minimalism, often creating site-specific work.

Scott Tinkler is a trumpeter extraordinaire, poly rhythmic maestro, diminished substitution practitioner, and sharp-edged pointillist.

Local Painter brings together Kahl Monticone, Eric Liao, and Liam Eaton. Monticone’s usual delicate and understated guitar work is rewired into a noisy conversation with twin guitars and drums.

Peyo (.appadopoulous) performs solo on the piano in a burning energy flow, hypnotic clusters of notes cascading into solid tone blocks.

Thursday 29 October, 6pm
All welcome, pay what you can.
🔗 Ticket link in bio

Doors at 6pm.

Image: Local Painter.

13/10/2026

What if the ways we create knowledge also shape the worlds we can imagine?

Drawing on feminist thinkers and writers, Janina Gosseye janina.gosseye (Professor of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology) asks who gets access to knowledge—and what might become possible when we move beyond familiar ways of producing it.

Off Grid 7 explores how architecture and the built environment might be understood differently through new forms of writing, storytelling, and creative practice.

Gosseye will share examples of experimental writing by feminist scholars, alongside work from her TUDelft seminar, ‘Building Stories’—where masters students use creative methods to question established ideas and imagine alternative ways of understanding our world.

Off Grid 7: Building Stories with Janina Gosseye
Wednesday 21 October, 6pm

Free, all welcome.
🔗 Ticket link in bio.

Gosseye’s visit is supported by the Queensland Architecture research group at QUT.

Off Grid is a series of architecture discussions led by Andrew Wilson, Senior Lecturer in Architecture at University of Queensland, and Andrew Leach, Professor of Architectural History at Queensland University of Technology.

Image: Max Loeschke, Eva Vlasblom and Lara Walter, 2024.

09/10/2026

Container Brisbane Film Society and the IMA present Big Cinema: a program of recent experimental 3D films by Johann Lurf, Victor Van Rossem, and Blake Williams.

Join us for the screening at New Farm Cinemas New Farm Cinemas 7pm, Tuesday 27 October.

The films presented push against the 3D realism of narrative films, instead exploring the possibility of spatiality, contradictory vision, and histories of seeing.

For more, visit the link in bio.

Tickets available via New Farm Cinemas website or counter.
Free entry available on request. Please email [email protected] or ask in-person on the night.

Container x IMA: The Big Screen
Tuesday 27 October, 7pm
New Farm Cinemas

Image: Blake Williams ‘Laberint Sequences’ (2023)

08/10/2026

REMINDER | OPENING WEEKEND

This weekend we celebrate ‘Mitch Cairns: Artist’s Mouth’, the major Australian artist’s most comprehensive exhibition to date. A joint project with Institute of Modern Art and NAS Gallery National Art School, the show brings together over fifty works charting Cairn’s twenty year career.

→ Opening Night
6pm, Friday 9 October

→ In Conversation: Mitch Cairns with curators Robert Leonard and Lucy Latella
2pm, Saturday 10 October

The Screening Room hosts computer-generated videos by British artist Kate Cooper, exploring how bodies are imagined and imaged, understood and controlled—and how they resist.

Free, all welcome
Registrations essential

🔗 More details in bio

Cairns is represented by The Commercial.

Images:
Install in progress Institute of Modern Art.
Installation view ‘Mitch Cairns: Artist’s Mouth’ at National Art School Gallery. Photo: Zan Wimberly.

02/10/2026

QUARTER FOUR OPENING WEEKEND

→ Exhibition Opening: Mitch Cairns and Kate Cooper
Friday 9 October, 6-8pm

→ Artist and Curator Talk: Artist’s Mouth
Mitch Cairns in conversation with Lucy Latella (NAS) and Robert Leonard (IMA)
Saturday 10 October, 2pm

Celebrate our newest exhibitions opening next weekend, including major Australian artist Mitch Cairn’s most comprehensive exhibition to date. A joint project with Institute of Modern Art and NAS Gallery National Art School, ‘Artist’s Mouth’ brings together over fifty works charting Cairn’s twenty-year career.

The Screening Room hosts computer-generated videos by British artist Kate Cooper, exploring how bodies are imagined and imaged, understood and controlled—and how they resist.

Free, all welcome
🔗 Register at the link in bio

Images:
Mitch Cairns ‘Redpath Shoes or Cover Charge’ 2025. Murdoch University Art Collection. Photo: The Commercial.
Mitch Cairns in studio, 2025. Photo: Peter Morgan.
Kate Cooper ‘Infection Drivers’ (2018) Antibodies, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2020.

01/10/2026

Registrations open 10am Friday 2 October. Everyone welcome but space is limited—prompt registration essential.

Join exhibition designer and curator Holly Riding for Essay Club No. 9 at the IMA, unpacking Sylvia Sadzinki’s ‘Discomfort, Disruption, Disgust: Q***r Feminist Curating and the Affective’ (2026). Sadzinski’s text examines how q***r feminist curating operates through affect, emphasising discomfort, disruption, and disgust as politically productive forces.

Holly works at the intersection of public art and purpose-led digital technology to create accessible cultural experiences. They navigate the symbiotic interplay of exhibition design, spatial planning, and inclusive practices as critical drivers of cultural engagement. Together we’ll discuss Holly’s work and the analysis of q***r feminist curating as suggested by Sadzinski.

Essay Club is a reading group, meets salon, meets networking drinks.

Everyone welcome. Space limited.
Register at the link in bio.

Essay Club No.9
Holly Riding on Q***r Feminist Curating
Wednesday 28 October, 6pm

Registrants will be sent the reading material via email upon registration.

30/09/2026

Our team is hard at work installing our next exhibitions, opening with an event on Friday 9 October.

While our main galleries are closed, our store and Screening Room is brimming with video, publications, and vinyls to sink your teeth into.

IMA Gallery Shop
Open 10–5pm Tuesday–Sunday
🔗 Shop online 24/7

Images:
IMA Gallery Shop. Photo: Katy Bedford.
Installation view Ho Rui An ‘Ultimate Coin Test: High-Speed China Rail’ 2018. Josef Ruckli.

Address

420 Brunswick Street
Brisbane, QLD
4006

Opening Hours

Tuesday	10am - 5pm
Wednesday	10am - 5pm
Thursday	10am - 8pm
Friday	10am - 5pm
Saturday	10am - 5pm
Sunday	10am - 5pm

Telephone

+61732525750

Website

http://www.ima.org.au/

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