Audio tours

Queensland artist Dr Fiona Foley’s connection with State Library of Queensland began in 1994 when she found a copy of the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 in the John Oxley Library. This discovery set Foley’s curiosity in motion – and was the starting point for Black Opium. The Act is one of the most significant, far-reaching and devastating pieces of Queensland legislation. While it was ostensibly about ‘protecting’ Indigenous people from using opium and being paid in opium, its impacts were oppressive and destructive for generations of families.

Inspired by the Act, Foley created Black Opium, an installation commissioned for State Library as part of the Millenium Art Fund. Black Opium asks us to consider the flower that gives opium its narcotic properties. 

Look up to see 777 poppies cast in aluminium, arranged in a large figure-of-eight – the infinity symbol – visible from the Knowledge Walk below. On level 4, Foley’s 7 semipublic reading rooms foreground how First Nations people intersected with Chinese people in North Queensland. The rooms are named: Bliss, String, Silver, Shrine, Mangrove, Gold and Slow Burn. Look up above the room “Gold” to see 300 heartshaped leaves from the Bodhi tree suspended from the ceiling. 

Foley’s non-fiction book Biting the Clouds, based on her doctoral research, won the Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance at the 2021 Queensland Literary Awards. The judges called it, “An original and creative exploration [...] of the devastation wrought upon Queensland’s Badtjala people at the end of the nineteenth century. The little-known story of how Badtjala workers were paid in opium is inventively told in dialogue between her art and text, reclaiming the story for her own people and for the wider Australian community.”

In 2014, State Library of Queensland hosted the exhibition Hot Modernism dedicated to showcasing mid-century art, architecture and ideals. Curated around 5 themes – Climate and Regionalism, Urbanism and Infrastructure, Colour and Art, International Influences and Lifestyle – the exhibition attracted record crowds keen to learn more about design in Queensland between 1945 and 1975. 

Prior to its opening, the design team at State Library, led by graphic designer David Ashe, created 3 posters to market the exhibition. They chose 3 sites to illustrate the diversity of modernist architecture in Brisbane: a section of the 2-kilometre Riverside Expressway, Torbreck Home Units in Highgate Hill, and Centenary Pool in Spring Hill. Using photos and onsite visits for research, the designers then sought a strict, bold colour palette that would highlight the importance of sunlight and contrast in modernist architecture. The red, teal and golden yellow also evoke the hues often used in advertising and décor of the modernist period. Ashe visited Centenary Pool to get a better look, then ventured with State Library photographer Leif Ekstrom for the perfect shots of Torbreck from Rydges Hotel South Bank. 

Ashe recalls that the 3 advertising images attracted admiration from visitors who wanted a copy for themselves. The design team arranged for printing so customers could buy their art print from The Library Shop to hang on their own walls. The design for Hot Modernism was awarded a silver medal at the Printing Industry Craftsmanship Awards.

The work of Perth-born artist Ian Strange is driven by his fascination with houses, streets, communities and landscapes. His practice encompasses site-specific installations, documentaries, painting, drawing, sculpture, and more. 

Opening in 2018, State Library's exhibition Home: a suburban obsession ran for 8 months. It explored thousands of Queensland homes captured by photographers Frank and Eunice Corley in the 1960s and 70s. 61,000 images were donated to State Library of Queensland – an enormous cultural heritage legacy detailing the style, ambition and variety of suburban Queensland architecture and gardens. 

To celebrate the exhibition, State Library commissioned Strange to produce the triptych Sixteen, a large-scale work on paper. The mini slice of suburban life is depicted at night. It’s a trio of neighbouring residences beneath powerlines and clouds, dark skies with shadows and reflections from the moon. Strange recalls that he trawled collection photos at State Library. The house that caught his eye was the typical Queenslander we see in the middle. He matched the photo with a suburban site (a number “16” on a street in Annerley) and photographed the 3 blocks in a row. Back in the studio, armed with the photos, Strange began to sketch. The drawing took about 3 months to complete – and the whole project about 6 months. After exhibiting in Home: a suburban obsession, Strange’s research material, sketches and development imagery became a book that is now part of the Asia-Pacific Design Library collection. 

He says, “The three homes in the drawing frame the central house in its evolving context. While the middle home comes directly from the Corley archive, the others – particularly the more recent flats on the right – reflect how the surrounding landscape has changed. I wanted the drawing to hold that contrast and feel like a moment suspended in time, rendered impressionistically rather than precisely.”

State Library of Queensland stands at Kurilpa Point on a beautiful bend in the Maiwar. Kurilpa means place of the native water rat. The large-scale mural Kurilpa Country by Dr Lilla Watson was commissioned by State Library and installed in 2006. Dr Watson is an Aboriginal artist and human rights activist with ties to the Gangulu people of the central Queensland coast. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and an honorary doctorate from the University of Queensland. In 1979, Dr Watson was employed as the university’s first ever Aboriginal tutor. 

Watson laid out sketches and designs for Kurilpa Country on large sheets of white paper that detail patterns, stories and landscapes. Working with sticks and smoke, the artist burnt holes in the paper and moved the scorch marks with her fingers. Watson calls these marks “burnings”. No paint, just the pokerwork to give what she refers to as an “ant’s view” of the landscape as though the images are being pushed up from the earth. Beneath some of the original designs for Kurilpa Country, Watson has laid a second layer of paper – a patchwork of brightly coloured paper. These smaller scale artistic designs and drafts are housed in the John Oxley Library. 

Illuminated behind the reception desk that welcomes visitors to the Infozone and kuril dhagun, the mural is a story of the native kuril and its habitat. It is a striking artwork that highlights First Nations’ people’s relationship to the land and water. If you can catch it lit up at night, Kurilpa Country is particularly beautiful.

Below this window, the river winds past us towards Moreton Bay. The Yuggera people call this life-giving river Maiwar. The formidable Quandamooka artist Megan Cope’s connection and interest in bodies of water finds a home here in kuril dhagun where the reflection of the sun on the river highlights the piece MAIWAR Yunggulba. The word Yunggulba is from the Jandai language, meaning “floodtide”. 

Cope’s installation is site-specific – an old topographical military map taking up much of the north-facing window of kuril dhagun, place of the native water rat. Her work considers the question “What would the city look like if sea levels rise 5 metres?” The blue covers where State Library of Queensland sits now. What else is underwater in Cope’s vision? 

Some parts of the map are familiar to us: we can recognise the language of geography, the language of a flood map, as well as settler placenames. Other parts might feel unfamiliar, unidentifiable, unsettling. Time has stopped on this map but with Maiwar and the blue sky outside you might feel as though the water on Cope’s map is still moving. kuril dhagun as a space – and the artwork itself – encourages visitors to slow down, observe and reflect. Built as a dedicated First Nations gathering place, kuril dhagun is believed to be the first of its kind in any state library around the country. 

Cope’s artwork challenges colonial narratives and the static nature of historical maps. MAIWAR Yunggulba speaks to the threat of rising sea levels but also of failing to remember the history of a place and the names that have existed here for thousands of years.

World Expo 88 changed Brisbane forever. It took place at South Bank, just down the road from here, between April and October 1988 and in that time welcomed more than 15 million visitors. Around 25 million dollars’ worth of public art was commissioned for the site, including two pieces from US-born sculptor Jon Barlow Hudson. 

Hudson's sculpture, Paradigm, resembles the double-helix structure of DNA. For the six months of Expo 88, it towered 30 metres above the site, and each night was festooned with 66 aeroplane landing lights. Every petal, or blade, of stainless steel was fabricated offsite then assembled before installation outside the USA Pavilion. 

After Expo 88, dozens of artworks were auctioned off and found new homes in shopping centres and malls and into private hands across the state. Another of Hudson’s sculptures called Morning Star II can be found at City Botanic Gardens. 

A scale model, or maquette, of Paradigm is located here in the forecourt of State Library of Queensland, installed in 2015 and unveiled by former Lord Mayor Sallyanne Atkinson. Originally, Museum of Brisbane lent the scale model to State Library for 5 years, but this was extended. Brisbane’s Paradigm and Morning Star II are the only artworks of Hudson’s to be hosted in Australia. 

State Library also holds a collection of original items from the artist, including letters, sketches, invoices, photographs, and slides documenting his commission, design and installation of Paradigm at Expo 88. This collection can be found in the John Oxley Library and includes a 20-centimetre shard of stainless steel from the original sculpture, engraved by the artist.

Raised in Brisbane and now based in New York, Cj Hendry is a contemporary commercial artist famous for her drawings, exhibitions and installations. Hendry’s work is often hyper-realist, focusing on precision and details. But she also creates works that are excessive and artificial, playing with luxury, location and scale. Consider the appeal to our child-like wonder and sense of play with Pink Chairs. 

Part of Hendry’s series called Inflatable, the two pink chairs on the lawn outside State Library of Queensland appear squishy, buoyant and light, as though they are filled with air. We might expect to see them in a puddle of water beside a swimming pool. On the left-hand side you will even notice inflating valves. However, each chair is made of brass and weighs one hundred and thirty kilograms. 

Covered in shiny ‘Torana pink’ paint and originally made from hard recycled plastic, Hendry's chairs first appeared in New York City and Venice in 2024. Hendry placed her Pink Chairs as temporary art installations on train platforms in Brooklyn, in parks, in public plazas, and on busy street corners. Their colour and texture were a surprise for the passers-by who stumbled upon them. 

As a teenager in Brisbane, Hendry was a frequent visitor to State Library and has fond memories of coming here with her friends. So, after months of touring the chairs, Hendry decided they needed a permanent home in Australia – and she chose State Library. We are the only place in the world to have Pink Chairs as a permanent installation. They brighten up the southside of the building next to the Library Cafe, with a poolside view of Queensland Art Gallery.

Designed by Brisbane-born architect Robin Gibson, the Queensland Cultural Centre echoes the cultural centres of other capital cities in Australia and overseas that were constructed in the decades after the Second World War. One of Australia’s most iconic modernist ventures, the Queensland Cultural Centre was built in stages between 1976 and 1988. The site features material palettes of glass and bronze, vibrant subtropical gardens, spacious plazas and – unusual for the time – a towpath along the river. 

Immediately recognisable throughout the cultural centre is the concrete made of a strict composite of South Australian white cement, Minjerribah/Stradbroke Island sand and aggregates from Pine Rivers. Construction started with Queensland Museum and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Gibson was influenced by the shape of the Brisbane River and the Taylor Range to the west. Brisbane had never seen anything like his designs. 

The State Library of Queensland building closest to the river is now called The Edge but was originally named the Fountain Room Restaurant and Auditorium. The Fountain Room was an upmarket restaurant, named after the Queen Elizabeth Silver Jubilee Fountain installed in 1977 in honour of the Queen’s visit to Brisbane. The fountain itself lived a short life on the Brisbane River – finally sinking into the muddy waters in 1984. Inside, the auditorium hosted audiences from the Queensland Art Gallery, State Library of Queensland and local theatre companies. Between 1993 and 2004, Queensland Theatre Company made The Edge its home for administration and production. 

After State Library’s major renovation in 2006, designs were sought to transform the Auditorium into a digital cultural centre. Renovations included installing a new 300-square-metre auditorium floor and closing in the open verandah to create cosy study bays. In February 2010, State Library opened The Edge to the public. Today at The Edge you will find study spaces, workshops, creative labs, a cafe, meeting rooms, and a recording studio where I stand today. And although the Fountain Room Restaurant closed in the early 1990s, elements of its iconic decor remain – like the bathroom basins patterned with flowers.

The Talking Circle is an important gathering place for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples at State Library. It is also a popular space for all library visitors – and the native possums and water dragons who call it home – to find solace all year round. Forming a circle to meet encourages connection and listening, which are key tenets of many First Nations cultures. Sandstone seats encircle a fire pit where friends and strangers sit and yarn together, cook, eat and laugh and pass on knowledge. A few steps down and you’re on the boardwalk that floats above the river Maiwar, with the lights of the city beyond. 

Suspended above the Talking Circle is a coolamon by Laurie Nilsen, a First Nations Queensland artist with Mandandanji and Norwegian heritage. Coolamons are a traditional carved vessel that some Aboriginal groups use for carrying babies, storing water, gathering food and as protection from the rain. State Library commissioned the coolamon as part of the redevelopment in 2006, when the Talking Circle was designed. Inside kuril dhagun, past the children’s play corner, you will also find Nilsen’s “Dolly”, a barbed-wire sculpture of an emu, Nilsen’s family totem, gazing out at the river. 

The Talking Circle’s external panels that face the Gallery of Modern Art were designed by Nilsen and students from Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art and Design. The vine on the northern wall of the building is Oxera splendida, a twining flowering plant native to Far North Queensland as well as parts of Indonesia, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. The circle and fire pit are made of sandstone from Helidon in the Lockyer Valley. An intimate, outdoor space that must weather the elements, the Talking Circle sits well in Brisbane’s sunny climate offering an open room to gather, observe and listen.

The original entrance to State Library – the one first used in 1988 – was located on the southern end of the building and accessed via a raised plaza parallel to the river. When the building was remodelled between 2004 and 2006, that entrance was demolished and the Knowledge Walk added. In time, the building would grow from 10,000 square metres to 22,000 square metres. With its open-air atrium, the Knowledge Walk merges the old and the new. 

The Knowledge Walk is a defining feature of State Library. It is a thoroughfare, a retreat, a place to wait, read, use wi-fi, a place for children to play. We’ve hosted sit-down dinners and conferences in this space that is both internal and external. It remains open 24 hours a day, no matter the weather. Architecture historian Paul Walker calls the Knowledge Walk a “truly public interior space”. Through the Knowledge Walk you might catch glimpses of Maiwar Green to the north and Queensland Art Gallery to the south. Rather than a single access point to the revitalised State Library, visitors are welcomed at multiple entries, all flooded with lights. 

The 2006 architecture team of Donovan Hill and Peddle Thorp included designs to build window bays as well as a large custom table and timber cabinets. Like furniture in a home, these can be moved around. In September 2019, Brisbane Writers Festival hosted an installation in the Knowledge Walk, designed by Anna Spiro and inspired by Tirra Lirra by the River, the novel by Jessica Anderson. Visitors stepped into a recreated living room complete with sewing machines and frocks, paintings on the walls, and trays set out for tea – a scene from the book’s 1950s setting. 

With a nod to the domestic again, Paul Walker points out that as visitors move from the Knowledge Walk to the interior of the library proper, the carpet inside “suggests suburban lounges and bedrooms”. Each level features a different coloured bespoke carpet that is patterned with the flowering plant tulipwood, native to Meanjin.

State Library was designed by Brisbane architect Robin Gibson as part of the Queensland Cultural Centre project. The library was the last building to be completed. Construction began in 1986 and was opened to the public in time for World Expo 88. Gibson's original designs had a different north-east facade than the one we have now. Richard Stringer, whose collections of architectural photographs are held by State Library, captured the stepped concrete facade of the library perched on the river. In a shift from the strict concrete used throughout the precinct, architects during the Millennium Arts Project decided to add the Red Box. 

Builders had to demolish some of the original terraces and planter boxes to create the Red Box, which is a small auditorium and reading space with tiered timber seating. The red concrete inside and out bears the marks of construction, much like the three-different-shades-of-green concrete elsewhere in the library that reveals rather than hides its seams and divots. The Red Box is used for weddings, public readings and parties. Regular visitors enjoy this space to write or read on the couches while treated to yet another unique view of the city and river. The skylight and the airy, double height reading room on level 2 are careful considerations, part of the 2006 renovation project by Donovan Hill and Peddle Thorp. 

One of Gibson’s strategies to soften the ubiquitous concrete was to embed “spillage planting” via integrated planter boxes. They overflow with the species the Firecracker plant, and Cissus antarctica, a native Australian vine. The Red Box projects out towards the river, pushing past Gibson’s original terraced design. It is red to honour the oldest poinciana tree on public land in Queensland, downriver, that blooms red in spring and summer.

A room like Queensland Terrace would not be possible in many libraries in many cities around the world. The floor is marble, the ceiling and northern wall comprise mirrored acrylic panels, and the southern end of the space is open to the elements. It echoes a veranda or a sunroom and offers views of the city, Queensland Museum, and the gardens at Queensland Art Gallery – another of architect Robin Gibson’s designs, completed in the 1980s. The view from the dazzling Juliet balcony is even better. The northern wall can open completely – in case you need a state-of-the-art auditorium for 264 people right next to your Queensland sunroom. 

Architecture critic David Neustein says it’s typical of designers Donovan Hill "to create rooms that are neither inside nor outside but somewhere in-between, dematerialising the expected boundaries between public and private realms”. Neustein argues the 2006 remodelling was not so much a renovation and extension as a process that turned “the entire building inside out”. In doubling the footprint of the original State Library of Queensland, the Donovan Hill Peddle Thorp-designed Queensland Terrace juts out beyond the envelope of Gibson’s designs. It offers a place for weddings, musical performances, parties and quiet morning teas visible to pedestrians just one floor below. 

Speaking of morning teas, bespoke tea cabinets made of Tasmanian oak line the walls. Five years after re-opening, State Library launched a project called Tea & Me, asking Queenslanders what a cup of tea means to them. We received hundreds of submissions from across the state, including mugs, dainty china cups, and enamel pannikins. Central to State Library’s remit as a home for Queensland memories and a place where stories thrive, Tea & Me comes with stories about home, love and connection. Set on mirrors and panes of glass, the teacups and saucers are the heroes, on display in a way that is different from in the home. Look closely for details on the undersides (sets made in Japan, England and China) and the illustrations on each saucer (churches, roses, wattle, horses, a goose, and a rabbit).

Named after the English colonialist surveyor John Oxley, the Oxley Memorial Library built its first collection between 1924 and 1934 with materials purchased via public fundraising and significant individual donations. Later housed in William Street, and then moved to South Brisbane, it remains a centre for research and study about Queensland. Visitors to the John Oxley Library – or JOL – often stay for hours, enjoying sweeping views of North Quay while they work at the custom-made Tasmanian oak tables. JOL is a calm and quiet space treasured by writers, students, readers and researchers. 

In 1988, Library staff organised the removal and transfer of furniture to the new premises in South Brisbane, including 2 vintage card catalogues that stand near the entrance, ready for public use. Among thousands of index cards are popular catalogues such as the “Collinson index to North Queensland” compiled by the historian JW Collinson, and the “Architectural & Building Journal of Queensland” covering hotels, churches and homes from the 1920s onwards. Collection items from the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame are also gathered and celebrated in this space. 

In JOL you will find maps, audio and visual items. You will find books by Queensland authors Alexis Wright and Susan Johnson, and books about famous Queenslanders such as Cathy Freeman and Hugh Lunn. Patrons come to research histories of Gayndah, Mooloolaba, Bundaberg and Esk. They search for details in the histories of Cardwell, Cairns, Maryborough and Mackay. Imagine the stories contained in the Queensland Post Office Directory 1931–1932. 

JOL remains a peaceful, specialist library open to all. Construction plans drawn up in 1984 by architect Robin Gibson specified strict lighting and temperature levels, bespoke chairs and television units, as well as 30 microfiche readers, drawers for maps and stamp collections, and a single cash register.