As I stood in the midday light that was filling the foyer of Redcliffe Art Gallery, hushed chitter-chatter signaled an audience eager to hear from a distinguished Australian artist. I imagined the myriad artist stereotypes and wondered which we would meet today: the colourful free-spirit, the weary soul, or perhaps the suited traditionalist? To my surprise, and self-reflective chastising, Joe Furlonger stood among us, just outside arm’s reach to my right. He was one of the crowd, a head above most, unassuming in attire and humble in manner. He sported a coy grin and made a sideways glance my way when the gallery assistant introduced him, as if he had read my thoughts.
Growing up in Samford Valley on Yuggera Country, travelling locally and globally, Furlonger came to prominence in the 1980s with large-scale figurative works. Four decades later, these are being showcased, together with evocative landscapes and ceramics, in the QAGOMA touring exhibition, Joe Furlonger: Horizons.
As we followed Furlonger into the exhibition, what struck me was the richness of the graphite walls regaling the artworks. Unlike the ubiquitous white of the white cube, this depth of colour was breathtaking. Beguiling hues of warm light brought each artwork to the fore.
Furlonger was generous with his time and insight. With familiarity and warmth, he revealed his inspirations and his process of art making. He shared that he draws and sketches on location and in the studio to embody a subject of work prior to painting. Strokes and drips of paint applied with rollers, large brushes, and scrunched rags to canvas, which he often lays bare on the ground, add texture and another dimension of place to his works.
Apparent was Furlonger’s lifelong desire to collaborate with skilled craftspeople⎯printers and ceramicists amongst them⎯to learn traditional and innovative practices. Two illustrative examples are a woodblock print, South East Queensland landscape (2004), produced in Berlin with the third-generation printer Lutz Nessing, and a white clay vase, Moree landscape (1995), thrown with master potter Errol Barnes. Furlonger spoke with fervour about these collaborative experiences, breathing life into the inanimate objects. As I admired their golden earthy tones⎯the print embellished with emerald streaks and a slate-blue haze, the vase with russet lines and forest-green blotches⎯I pictured the artist and artisan immersed in an otherworldly existence, detached from the ordinary everyday.
At Redcliffe, the exhibition showcased works held by the City of Moreton Bay. Curious to see if other works from regional collections would be on display in other iterations of the show, I visited this exhibition for a second time at its next location in Hervey Bay Regional Gallery. I noticed two things in this second hang.
Displayed prominently on a far wall, Bathers (1987) drew my attention. Like a sentinel on a hill, watching and imploring me to look more closely. Yet in the way stood a plinth and monitor playing footage of Furlonger at work as well as discussions with him, his wife Heidi, artist Pat Hoffie AM, and past and present QAGOMA staff. The video is well worth the 18 minutes to watch in its entirety, but if this was at Redcliffe I missed it completely; enthralled in Furlonger’s presence and discourse.
As I moved towards Bathers, the bold and expressive primary colours of Furlonger’s Circus Paris–Berlin (2006) woodcuts distracted me. Unlike the single row display at Redcliffe, at Hervey Bay these were hung in a jumbled dancing-like pattern, mimicking the acrobats and reminiscent of the travelling circus of yesteryear. The arrangement of this display took me straight to the ringside movement and sound of the Winter Circus in Paris, which Furlonger frequented in 1988 as the Moet & Chandon Fellow, sketching night after night in a habitual process toward the creation of this series.
My visits to Joe Furlonger: Horizons at Redcliffe and Hervey Bay galleries were vastly different experiences. For the first visit, I joined a sizeable group for an artist-led tour of an exhibition I had not yet seen. Furlonger’s authentic charm permeated every aspect of this experience; his delightful storytelling deepened my comprehension and appreciation of the layered processes in his art. The dark walls and smaller spaces of the exhibition displayed in two rooms, felt like an embrace of the audience and the works alike. Yet, my usual inquisitive scrutiny of individual artworks was inhibited by the larger tour audience. The second visit was a solitary viewing. I had time and space to closely examine individual works and contemplate the two hangs of this survey of Furlonger’s career. Although renowned for his large-scale figurative works, it is the feelings of expansiveness and escapist connections to nature in Furlonger’s landscapes that have stayed with me. The audiovisual of the artist at work, enriched his storytelling from my first visit. Taken together I am left with a shared impression, much like a leaf I saw intact on Furlonger’s Bridge to Bribie Island (2010), of an artist comfortable with his compulsion to create and with the indelible mark he has made on the Australian arts ecology.
Joe Furlonger: Horizons continues at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery until 3 August 2025.
Melissa K Dawes is a Masters student in Curating and Cultural Leadership at UNSW with undergraduate degrees in Education and Business. She is an emerging arts and museum worker based on Kabi Kabi land in South East Queensland.
