Art exhibition offers a psychedelic experience
New Psychedelia takes over the entire ground floor of the UQ Art Museum from Saturday, May 7 with pieces by 43 contemporary Australian artists, including one that requires 3D glasses.
"A new psychedelia has undoubtedly emerged in the past decade as an off-spring of the rave party, but also out of the décor of virtual reality and what William Gibson dubbed the 'consensual hallucination' of cyberspace,” Dr Edward Colless writes in the exhibition catalogue.
Curator Sebastian Moody said it was debatable whether recent explorations of psychedelia are in fact a countermovement to the "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" mentality of the 1960s.
"The contemporary interest in psychedelia is not driven by a drug culture
as in was in the 1960s, though the term ‘psychedelic' arose from trials of LSD, mescaline and other hallucinogens for therapeutic purposes," Mr Moody said.
"However, conjuring the spirit of the 'psychedelic' experience remains critical to the aesthetic, and the idea of expanding consciousness – finding a bridge between inner and outer worlds – is central to all of the artworks in the exhibition."
Among the featured works are a pulsing abstract painting by Dale Frank, Sandra Selig's fluoro spider webs, and a painting by Indigenous artist Roy McIvor. Geoff Kleem's The Good Forest even comes with 3D glasses to provide a unique viewing experience.
Mr Moody said in addition to being visually striking, the works offered intriguing explorations of society's increasing reliance on technology, and the growing interest in neo-shamanism and other forms of mysticism.
"If our consumer society seeks to understand and control the unconscious through market research, opinion polling and other Big Brother tactics, then psychedelia is its opposite – a weapon to blast the inner policeman out of our heads," he said.
New acquisitions to The University of Queensland art collection on display for the first time in New Psychedelia include work by Nathan Gray, Irene Hanenbergh, Brendan Huntley, Madeleine Kelly, Tim Maguire, Laith McGregor, Roy McIvor, Kate Shaw, and Jemima Wyman, while existing collection works by Dale Frank and Sandra Selig will be seen in a new light."
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