A social media post this past weekend, of the installation of Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s epic work Riverbed, has led to an eruption of emotions over sustainable exhibition practice.
The artwork is owned by the Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) and is currently being installed for the Gallery’s major summer exhibition of Eliasson’s work, Presence, opening on 6 December.
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The social media post shows a timelapse of Riverbed’s first installation at the Gallery in 2019 for the exhibition Water, and was intended as a teaser ahead of next week’s opening of Eliasson’s important survey exhibition.
The artist and Gallery have been accused of an excessive overuse of natural materials. As one commentor states: ‘All that money and effort and resources would be better spent protecting natural habitats.’
Another adds: ‘Great artist, but that’s too many fallen trees,’ while others called the artwork ‘hypocritical’ and ‘grim’.
The irony is that Eliasson is globally celebrated for his probing installations that critique and question our impact on the environment.
Is it justified or uninformed criticism of Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Riverbed’?
QAGOMA was quick to respond in the social media thread, explaining that, ‘Riverbed circulates 4,000 litres of water, with occasional top-ups for evaporation, through a pool filter and ioniser. Hydraulic consultants advised the Gallery on water filtration, refreshing and purification for audience safety.
The Gallery continued: ‘The rocks and gravel in Riverbed are supplied through commercial landscape suppliers. All medium and large rocks from the previous installation in 2019 were stored for reuse in this and future displays. New sand, smaller gravel and some replacement rocks have been sourced for this version.’
In conversation with ArtsHub, the Gallery added: ‘To create an engineered structure that can support the weight of Riverbed, allow the safe and free navigation of visitors, while allowing the hydraulic system to safely recycle, purify and circulate the water is a complex undertaking.
‘The Gallery has a “bank” of materials like the plantation pine timber that we store, reuse and then donate or recycle. In building exhibitions, our teams are always balancing the resources required with the message the artist/s and Gallery are trying to communicate.
‘To create an exhibition such as Presence requires structural material, but sustainability is at the core of Olafur Eliasson’s practice and QAGOMA. It’s a synergy that aligned so beautifully in the early discussions for this exhibition.’
While it may not have been the way the artist and Gallery had intended to kick off this exhibition – one commentator on Instagram even described it as ‘a misstep’ – Riverbed clearly continues to raise questions for people, and questions our physical, emotional and conceptual connections to our environment. In that, the artwork is doing its job.
‘Social media discussion is important,’ the Gallery tells ArtsHub. ‘It means people are engaging with the Gallery, the exhibition and the work. Art can act as a conversation starter, and we hope Olafur Eliasson’s forthcoming exhibition allows visitors to share conversations and perceptions in a thoughtful and caring way.’
More about Olafur Eliasson’s Riverbed
Riverbed was created specifically for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, where it was first installed in 2014. Eliasson used the architecture to create a maze-like environment, filling the museum’s entire south wing with a river rocks and a stream threading through the galleries. Visitor chose their own path through the installation.
Recreated for QAGOMA in 2019, the installation was significantly different, adapting to the lofty architecture of the Gallery, and encouraging visitors to climb the rocky field and challenge their expectations of the traditional ‘white cube’.
‘I don’t think he expected an invitation to present it again on the other side of the world in Brisbane,’ says QAGOMA’s Head of International Art, Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow in an interview with In Daily. ‘I think he appreciated our ambition and how relevant it was to this completely different context.’
Riverbed was first staged in Brisbane as Queensland was in a prolonged drought, and while elsewhere across the nation, bushfires raged and floods devastated. It offered a very immediate connection for audiences to consider water as a resource.
It was at this time that Barlow planted the seed for a deeper look at Eliasson’s work, and over the past six years has been in conversations with Eliasson’s studio in Berlin (Germany), included embedded residencies with his team, to deliver this year’s exhibition Presence.
And, in the intervening years, Riverbed was acquired by the Gallery through the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Charitable Trust in 2022. ‘Riverbed 2014 is one of QAGOMA’s most loved works,’ the Gallery adds.
‘Like all of Olafur’s works, he is challenging our perceptions and expectations. Visitors are encountering a rocky riverbed and stream indoors – it is unexpected – and by changing the environment he is inviting audiences to reconsider what this means. When hiking outdoors we might expect to see a stream and not think too much about its existence or importance, but in a Gallery space it is a completely different encounter,’ the Gallery team explains to ArtsHub.
Barlow adds: ‘Bringing it back now allows us to share more of how it relates to Olafur’s Icelandic heritage. For him, this is also what remains as the ice melts and glaciers retreat. Like Australia, Iceland is experiencing enormous climatic changes.’
In an earlier interview with ArtsHub, Eliasson said of Riverbed: ‘When you take a piece of landscape – a whole riverbed formation and put it in a museum – it is a reframing, and suddenly in the situation becomes “interesting”, it looks real and it has this opportunity to turn reality around,’ adding that, ‘if we feel that we are in dialogue with the world, then I am more likely to vote and take social impact into consideration, and less likely to be radicalised … You benefit a lot more if you look, listen, touch, engage. If you dare to take the defences down, you will see and hear the art, no matter how abstract.’
Read: Olafur Eliasson on the tipping points for artists to act
Environmental art in our times: putting Riverbed in context
Barlow draws upon the three‑decade career of Eliasson, who is believed to be one of the most influential living in our times. She explains of Eliasson’s exhibition: ‘The works exist most fully in our eyes, in our body, our movement through space, in our mind and senses – in our presence and perception.’
The exhibition starts by locating visitors with Eliasson’s birthplace of Iceland, then moves through a sequence of large installations, including his celebrated early work Beauty (1993), which has been acquired by the Gallery.
Two new installations – Presence (2025) and There are no bad parts (2025) – are very sensory, using the polarisation of light, with Presence in particular having an affinity with Eliasson’s most well-known work, The weather project, created for the Tate’s Turbine Hall. These works bring people together in their consideration of the environment, and our role in its celebration, its shifts and protection.
And of course, the Gallery will again present Eliasson’s much loved installation of white Lego, The cubic structural evolution project (2004), where visitors sit side-by-side to create a collective dream city.
Barlow tells ArtsHub: ‘Challenging perceptions and how we respond within Olafur’s immersive installations is a key part of this forthcoming exhibition. Giving us an opportunity to slow down and consider the fragility of our natural world, while providing us with hope and the space to creatively solve our challenges is at the core of Olafur Eliasson: Presence.’
Minister for Tourism Andrew Powell said the exhibition ‘is poised to deliver up to 80,000 visitor nights to Queensland.’
