The Silver Jubilee Fountain: A Queensland Art Gallery landmark

The Queensland Art Galley will rejoice 40 a long time at South Lender on 21 June 2022. In the lead-up we choose a glance at a missing but not forgotten landmark — The Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Fountain — even so the set up of a fountain in the Brisbane River in entrance of the Queensland Art Gallery was not portion of the first plans for the Queensland Cultural Centre.

When the Queensland Federal government turned aware that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was to stop by the state in 1977 as part of her Jubilee celebrations, the Government was eager to have her go to the Cultural Centre internet site even while only preliminary web page will work would have been concluded.

DELVE Deeper: The heritage of the Queensland Artwork Gallery

It was thought that the Queen would be unwilling to just lay a foundation stone at the site of the long run artwork gallery, so Cultural Centre architect Robin Gibson proposed a significant fountain in the river in time for the Queen’s pay a visit to. Queen Elizabeth II activated the Jubilee Fountain on 11 March 1977 and laid the Basis Stone ahead of a crowd of official guests and the public, surrounded by a flotilla of pleasure craft.

The Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Fountain was intended as a tetrahedron, a pyramid of a few triangles of equivalent dimensions, that sat earlier mentioned the drinking water line with 30 large hidden pipes that shot drinking water significant into the air, and at night time it lit up the metropolis skyline with additional than 90 lights.

The Jubilee Fountain became a Brisbane landmark and marked the situation of the long run everlasting house of the Queensland Artwork Gallery right up until its opening some five yrs later. The relationship of the Brisbane River to the Gallery was reinforced with drinking water components in its interior, giving equally a physical link and serving as a parallel reflection of the river. When the Gallery opened at South Financial institution on 21 June 1982, the most well known and hanging attribute of the inside was its central Watermall, a perfect companion to the exterior river fountain.

The Watermall also extended outside of the Gallery’s interior from 5 forged bronze Pelicans by Queensland sculptors Leonard and Kathleen Shillam from the japanese-facet to the Dandelion Fountains established by modern fountain designer Robert Woodward (identified for his fountain at Kings Cross in Sydney) by way of to the Gallery’s Sculpture Courtyard pond and waterfall to the west.

The Fountain malfunctioned regularly, the pumps owning to not only contend with the river’s tidal estuary and brackish drinking water, but the sand and mud silt flowing through the river. Unfortunately Brisbane’s distinctive landmark in entrance of the Queensland Art Gallery was only savored for a further 3 years immediately after the Gallery’s opening just before it was decommissioned in 1985. 

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Extra research and supplementary material by Elliott Murray, Senior Electronic Advertising and marketing Officer, QAGOMA, sourced from the QAGOMA Investigation Library Unique Collections.

Featured image: Queensland Artwork Gallery and the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Fountain, 21 June 1982 / Selection: QAGOMA Analysis Library / Photograph: Richard Stringer
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