BRISBANE.-The first major survey of work by leading Queensland contemporary artist Eugene Carchesio opens today at the Queensland Art Gallery.

Queensland Art Gallery Director Tony Ellwood said the exhibition ‘Someone’s Universe: The Art of Eugene Carchesio’ would feature more than 300 works from the early 1980s to 2008 by the Brisbane-based artist.

‘The survey includes many rarely seen works from private and public collections,’ Mr Ellwood said.

‘‘Someone’s Universe’ will be on display from October 25, 2008 until February 1, 2009 and coincides with ‘Contemporary Australia: Optimism’, the first in a new series of triennial exhibitions of contemporary Australian art.’

‘All through summer, these concurrent exhibitions offer audiences an insight into some of the most fascinating contemporary Australian art practice today,’ he said.

Mr Ellwood said ‘Someone’s Universe’ included paintings, drawings and sculptural assemblages that reflected ideas and imagery central to the artist’s practice for more than two decades.

‘Carchesio is a self-taught artist and a musician who has been working in Brisbane for more than 25 years,’ he said.

‘He uses common materials to explore the big questions in life and to reveal the sublime in the mundane.’

Mr Ellwood said audiences would experience the artist’s delicately translucent watercolours, iconic matchbox constructions and geometric imagery.’

‘Carchesio’s ongoing interest in the intersections between art and science, and the repeated use of the cone shape, a symbol that links ideas about sound, image and energy are revealed in his work,’ he said.

‘Included in the survey is Dead leaves of Tokyo, an important work in the Gallery’s Collection, which hasn’t been seen since the ‘Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ in 2002, as well as 187 works for the People’s Republic of Spiritual Revolution 1975-90.’

‘Another major work by Carchesio is Museum of Silence — one hundred watercolours that have been on public display at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre — and three collaborative series with other artists including Gordon Bennett,’ Mr Ellwood said.

Carchesio first began performing and exhibiting in independent and artist-run spaces in Brisbane in the 1980s, including John Mills National, THAT Space Brisbane and One Flat Exhibit.

He has been included in major group exhibitions including ‘Australian Perspecta’, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1989; ‘The Boundary Rider, The 9th Biennale of Sydney’, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1992; and ‘Balance 1990: Views, Visions, Influences’ at the Queensland Art Gallery.

Carchesio has also participated in significant international projects, including the ‘10th Indian Triennale of Art’ in 2001, and completed Australia Council residencies in Italy in 1991 and in Tokyo in 1999.

The exhibition has been curated for the Queensland Art Gallery by guest curator, Michael Snelling.