Ecstasy, Baroque and Beyond: UQ Art Museum

Petrina Hicks

16 Sep 2017 - 25 Feb 2018

Almost four centuries after its creation, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1652) remains the supreme emblem of religious visionary experience and the Baroque sensibility in art. Understanding ecstasy to encompass states of exaltation beyond the sensuous suffering of Bernini’s sculpture, Ecstasy: Baroque and Beyond brings together older depictions of ecstasy with more recent works focused on the transcendence of normal consciousness, including trances, moments of expanded awareness, and visionary insight. From representations of saints and mystics, to dreamscapes and images of bacchanalian revels, this exhibition explores how Baroque style – characterised by exaggeration, high drama, extravagance, frenzy, and excess – continues to inform contemporary art.

Petrina Hicks’ work is shown alongside artists including Louise Bourgeois, Salvador Dali and Bill Henson.