Joe Furlonger: Horizons
Celebrating and exploring the career of Queensland artist Joe Furlonger | 11 Dec 2026 to 31 Jan 2027
Drawn from the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) Collection, Joe Furlonger: Horizons traces the artist’s career through a range of media from painting to ceramics, sculpture and drawing. The exhibition also includes works from Caloundra Regional Gallery’s own collection, showing them in the context of Furlonger’s broader oeuvre.
QAGOMA Director Chris Saines CNZM said the exhibition would showcase Furlonger’s expressive, painterly figures and vast Australian landscapes in all their brilliant diversity. ‘No matter what medium Furlonger chooses, an uncommon, affirming and optimistic humility underscores his art,’ Mr Saines said. ‘He has produced a body of work that flows in and out of different genres and mediums using line to give form and substance to his ideas, all of which have arisen from an intensely focused and sustained curiosity about the world.’
Born in Cairns in 1952, Joe Furlonger grew up in the Samford Vallery on the outskirts of Brisbane. Working on his uncle’s farm and as a deckhand on fishing trawlers off the Queensland coast, he was instilled with a love of the outdoors from an early age. During this time, he learned his artistic craft under leading teachers such as Roy Churcher, studied at the Queensland College of Art and refined his skills, particularly the drawing that would become a daily practice.
Furlonger came to national prominence in the late 1980s when his large-scale figurative painting Bathers 1987 won the prestigious Moët & Chandon Fellowship, providing him with a residency in France and crystallising the trajectory of his artistic development.
Throughout Furlonger’s 40-year practice, the human figure, land and seascapes have been recurring themes, and his works are instilled with an assured spontaneous dedication to the world around him.
‘Joe Furlonger: Horizons’ was curated by Michael Hawker, former Curator, Australian Art to 1980, QAGOMA, and originally displayed at the Queenslander Art Gallery, August 2022 to January 2023.
| Location | Event | Date and time | Cost | Registration |
| Caloundra Regional Gallery | Exhibition | Friday 11 Dec 2026 to Sunday 31 Jan 2027 | Free | Not required |
| Caloundra Regional Gallery | Launch | Thursday 10 Dec, 6-8pm | $15 | TBA |
