Free exhibitions are a great way to encounter art, whether it is at your local gallery or a big institution.
Here is a hand-picked list of free exhibitions in Queensland this August.
Free exhibitions – quick links:
Geoffrey Schmidt, Barbara Pierce and Gail Mabo at Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts, Townsville (1 August to 14 September)
Three artists present concurrent solo exhibitions. Schmidt’s Neural Architecture follows the artist’s ongoing interest in the human condition, emotional and vulnerable behaviors, meditations on awareness and impermanence, and the disconnect between reality and the mind. Scattered is an installation by Pierce, which composed collected fragments, objects and created artworks to form a tactile landscape dispersed across the gallery walls. Meanwhile, Wer Wer (Boundaries) features a body of work by Mabo that translated repurposed archival mark-making by her father, Eddie Koiki Mabo.
Open Tuesday to Friday 9am-5pm and Saturday to Sunday 9am-1pm.
Immerse: The Dance of Light and the Coming of Form and The Familiar Faces at NorthSite Contemporary Arts, Cairns (4 August to 27 September)
In Immerse, artist Kim Rayner explores the threshold where coastal rainforest meets the radiant light of the Coral Sea. This body of work reflects a deep and ongoing relationship with the northern Queensland landscape – an experience of living within it, observing it intimately, and translating its visual and emotional impact through paint. Meanwhile, Papua New Guinean artist Lesley Wengembo presents a powerful visual narrative drawn from his lived experience in The Familiar Faces.
Open Monday to Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday 10am-4pm.
What Remains Grows at Red Hill Gallery (from 8 August)
Dean Reilly’s new exhibition comprises paintings that “carry symbols, chalices, boats, blades, birds, flowers, not as fixed metaphors, but as evolving fragments in a visual archive”. The artist hopes that “in a time of extraction and forgetting”, the show “becomes an act of care”.
Open everyday 10am-4pm.
Under a Modern Sun: Art in Queensland 1930s-1950s at Queensland Art Gallery (16 August 2025 to 25 January 2026)
Under a Modern Sun showcases the work of Queensland artists and those working in the state in the middle decades of the twentieth century. The display includes artworks by renowned Brisbane-based painters Vida Lahey and William Bustard and luminaries from the regions, including Kenneth Macqueen and Joe Rootsey. The exhibition explores connections between these artists and others – such as Sidney Nolan and Max Dupain – who travelled to Queensland to explore its histories and subject matter and, in doing so, contributed to the development of a modernist sensibility here.
Open everyday 10am-5pm.
New Light: Photography Now + Then at Museum of Brisbane (17 August to 6 October)
New Light: Photography Now + Then is an exhibition where past and present converge in a mesmerising display of photography spanning 1890 to 2024. The show draws on the collection of Brisbane photographer Alfred Henrie Elliott, whose images lay dormant for decades until they were discovered in 1983. Seven contemporary Brisbane photographers will debut new commissions responding to different parts of the Elliott Collection.
Open everyday 10am-5pm.
Light and Land at Edwina Corlette Gallery (until 19 August)
This is a group exhibition curated by Alex Grady who brings together a group of contemporary artists that rethink the practice of landscape painting. Through varied approaches to mark-making and colour, the exhibition explores how artists receive and respond to land and light, drawing on both lived experience and reflection.
Open Tuesday to Saturday 10am-5pm.
