Still from the Brave Girl project by Karike Ashworth. Image courtesy the artist.
In recent decades, Queenslanders have held our cultural heads high. Flagships like the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) feature international artists alongside our local artists, who have garnered a world profile for the quality of their work.
This has caused a certain level of relaxation, even for those with living memory of the cultural darkness of the Bjelke-Petersen era and the exodus of artists, writers and others this created during the 1970s and 1980s.
Louise Martin-Chew has been a freelance writer since 1992, and writes regularly for Art Collector, Art Monthly, Art Guide Australia, VAULT, Artist Profile and other publications. In 2019 she was awarded the John Oxley Fellowship by State Library of Queensland. Her biography Fiona Foley Provocateur: An Art Life (published QUT Art Museum, 2021) was shortlisted for the 2022 Magarey Medal. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Queensland and is Brisbane-based.
