Meeting for a weekend date or visiting an exhibition at GOMA before a play at QPAC, seems an instinctual social habit for many Brisbanites. Therefore, when GOMA’s ten-year milestone arrived this summer many of us were left in a state of conflicting thoughts: “Only ten years? But I’ve been going forever,” or “No way! I swear it was only a few years ago that it opened.” Perhaps why we are left in this confused state and part of the reason GOMA has remained so popular, is GOMA’s ability to show internationally and nationally-acclaimed artists creating in diverse mediums, all the whilst maintaining a revolving door pace in their exhibition scheduling. The excitement of GOMA TURNS 10 is met with an assortment of exhibitions that encapsulate GOMA’s personality.

Sugar Spin is the feature exhibition consisting of 250 loud artworks that disrupt the plain GOMA walls. Sugar Spin is an experience that invites us to reconsider our relationship to colour, texture, space and architecture, whilst simultaneously challenging us, as the audience, to engage with our senses at a new level.  Nick Cave’s Heard graze on GOMA’s first floor. For a moment you return to a childhood instinct of wanting to touch and interact with these brightly coloured horse-like creatures. As you navigate your way around these bombastic creatures you hear the music from the projection above, where the creatures explode to life, and their dancing exuberance transfixes the Saturday afternoon GOMA visitors.

In contrast, the next room holds Ron Mueck’s In Bed where an oversized, middle-aged woman peers across the room from behind her bed sheets. Viewers of Mueck’s work are cast out across the gallery, some appear intimidated by her volume and blemished state, others stand close by, inquiring into the detail.

As you turn the gallery’s corner and leave behind the slumber of Mueck’s  In Bed,  your pupils dilate as the immediacy of colour  from Shoplifter’s (Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir) Nervescape demands your attention and affections. The long bright hairs that carpet the walls in a vanity surpassing Kim Kardashian, proves to be a perfect photo opportunity for all of GOMA’s guests. With each pose and photo the audience individualizes their experience with the work. This works as an active reflection of the works premise.

Sugar Spin is an exhibition that identifies the qualities that guests of GOMA adore: the fun and the ingenuity.

 Elizabeth Ralph