Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson invites us on an expansive, multi-sensory journey that engages our sense of perception. Choose your path through a primordial landscape, encounter moments that heighten awareness and envision the future form of our city.
This Brisbane-exclusive exhibition draws from the three‑decade career of one of the world’s most influential living artists. Spanning GOMA’s ground floor galleries, it includes important early works and expansive site-specific installations, many developed especially for ‘Presence’.
From the early work Beauty 1993, which suspends a rainbow in a veil of mist, to Pluriverse assembly 2021, a spatial installation that unfurls ever-changing reflections of light, Eliasson’s creations come to life as they meet the viewer’s senses and body.
Two much-loved QAGOMA works feature: the rocky landscape and running water of the immense and immersive Riverbed 2014 (wear comfortable shoes); and The cubic structural evolution project 2004, a huge all-white LEGO city perpetually built and rebuilt by visitors throughout the exhibition.
Eliasson’s artistic practice is grounded in the distinctive forms of his familial home Iceland, which will be reflected in a selection of photographs of the landscape, light and human experience of the country.
Image: Olafur Eliasson, Denmark b.1967 / Beauty 1993 (installation view, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy, 2022) / Spotlight, water, nozzles, wood, hose, pump / Purchased 2025. The Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Charitable Trust / Collection: The Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Charitable Trust, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © 1993 Olafur Eliasson / Photograph: Ela Bialkowska, OKNOstudio
