miffy & friends

Group exhibition, 2020 — 2021

The first major exhibition of Dick Bruna's work in Australia alongside seven contemporary Australian artists.

miffy & friends was a travelling exhibition curated by Vanessa Van Ooyen of QUT Art Museum.

QUT Art Museum : 21 November 2020 - 14 March 2021
Bunjil Place Gallery : 27 March - 13 June, 2021

miffy & friends pairs original Dick Bruna drawings and illustrations with early book covers and posters, through to the iconic figure of Miffy. The exhibition celebrates Bruna's underlying philosophy of allowing room for the imagination, and introduces the influence of Miffy on the work of seven contemporary Australian artists. It teases out concepts that Bruna and other artists have grappled with over the ages, including colour, line and form, and brings these ideas to audiences to instill a love of art, as Bruna did over his lifetime.

Featuring Dick Bruna, Stephen Bird, Sadie Chandler, Nadia Hernández, Carla McRae, Nell, Brian Robinson, and Vipoo Srivilasa.

In ‘Dick Bruna’s shelf’, Carla McRae has created a homage to Dick Bruna by interpreting his Utrecht studio and objects that she encountered on a visit there in 2018. It is her memories of the experience that install a sense of reverence to Bruna. McRae elevates the seemingly mundane tools of his trade — a typewriter, sticky tape, pencils and paint brushes, distilling them in their simplest form.

Drawing upon the De Stijl movement that informed Bruna's practice, McRae works across disciplines and materials to highlight the philosophical objectives of the style. De Stijl proposed a world where function and beauty could co-exist, and where hierarchies between arts disciplines would fall away. Dick Bruna's shelf, while illustrative and joyful, embeds the ideas of a more equitable world, where disciplines meet and co-exist. — QUT Art Museum


See more: virtual tour of the exhibition at Bunjil Place Gallery