Public listings checked 25/10/2026. Dates use each event’s local time. Check organiser details before travelling.
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Listings across Brisbane, Brisbane City, Fortitude Valley, Hamilton, Manly, Milton, New Farm, South Brisbane, West End, Woolloongabba.
Free things to do
55 matching events listed in the next 60 days. Admission prices are shown where supplied.
The Brisbane Portrait Prize celebrates the stories and lives of the people of Meanjin/Brisbane. The exhibition showcases the talent of Brisbane's artists and the breadth of Brisbane life.
Each year, the Prize invites artists to look closely at the people around them and consider the faces and personalities that make up our city, from the familiar to the extraordinary.
Questions of identity, sovereignty, belonging and visibility run alongside more intimate inquiries — what it means to be truly seen in an age of rapidly developing technology and what we carry from those who came before us.
As you move through the exhibition, look past the physical likeness and experience a deeper connection. We invite you to take a moment to stare into the Soul of Brisbane.
Ubiquitous yet enduring, aesthetically appealing in their essence and artistry, ceramics are often at the heart of our rituals and ceremonies.
Explore Queensland Museum ceramics, from the artistic to the more practical, many on display for the very first time in this free exhibition.
From pottery fragments thousands of years old, made by the Jōmon people of Japan to contemporary artworks from celebrated First Nations artists, the exhibition showcases ceramics that are truly fragile and forever.
Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Australian South Sea Islander visitors are advised that this display contains artworks by, and accounts of, people who have passed away.
Follow the mermaid in the bay.
Dive into story, culture and hands-on creativity with our latest Artist in Residence, Quandamooka artist Delvene Cockatoo-Collins.
Journey alongside Delvene to the shores of Minjerribah and discover the ancestral story of Warrajamba, the mermaid, a living cultural legacy that Delvene continues to explore as she searches for its lost ending.
Get hands-on and create your own mermaid or dugong using artist-designed stamps, connecting with the stories of Warrajamba and Yungong, the dugong. Discover Delvene's powerful sculptural work made from materials gathered from Country—yungair/yungaire (freshwater reed), talwalpin (beach hibiscus cotton tree), and quampie shell. Come and be immersed in a space that celebrates care for land, sea and story.
MoB's Artist in Residence program is supported by Tim Fairfax AC.
The Creative Space is proudly supported by Major Partner Brisbane Airport and generously supported by Ian and Cass George, and Holly and John Livingstone.
Warrajamba is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
Brisbane Portrait Prize celebrates the stories and lives of the people of Meanjin/Brisbane. The exhibition showcases the talent of Brisbane's artists and the breadth of Brisbane life.
Each year, the Prize invites artists to look closely at the people around them and consider the faces and personalities that make up our city, from the familiar to the extraordinary.
Questions of identity, sovereignty, belonging and visibility run alongside more intimate inquiries – what it means to be truly seen in an age of rapidly developing technology and what we carry from those who came before us.
As you explore this year's finalists, we invite you to pause with each portrait and Stare into the Soul of Brisbane.
Kate Cooper's videos explore how bodies are imagined and imaged, understood and controlled, and how they resist. She is interested in what a moving image can do as a visual somatic experience, instead of what it represents, considering the body as a contested site where conflicts between subject and object, image and flesh, play out. Since 2014, her work has evolved through the use of CGI technology, addressing the representation of women's bodies in popular culture and consumer advertising and how images of bodies are produced within the violence of capitalist labour relations. Cooper's more recent works lean into abstraction by reproducing and manipulating the language of medical imaging techniques.
Museum of Brisbane is excited to collaborate with Magpie Goose, a proudly Aboriginal owned and led fashion and social enterprise, to celebrate extraordinary First Nations cultural stories and designs.
This exclusive to Brisbane exhibition, developed in close collaboration with Magpie Goose owners Amanda Hayman (Wakka Wakka and Kalkadoon) and Troy Casey (Kamilaroi), offers a deep dive into the work of some of the region's most talented First Nations artists and designers. Using clothing as a canvas for storytelling, this exciting collaboration will connect audiences with the rich and diverse cultural expressions of First Nations communities in Queensland and beyond.
Discover the artists and stories behind the brand that's making a difference, one garment at a time.
Stories You Wear: Magpie Goose is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland
Image: Magpie Goose x Quandamooka Artists, by Amanda Hayman & Troy Casey, Country to Couture, 2025, Photo by Dylan Buckee.
Over the last twenty years, Mitch Cairns has emerged as a major Australian painter of flair and originality. His playful work interweaves elements drawn from cubism, comics, and concrete poetry.
Artist's Mouth traces Cairns's artistic journey since graduating from the National Art School in Gadigal/Sydney twenty years ago in 2006, starting with a still life he painted in his last year at the School. Artist's Mouth is the most comprehensive presentation of his work to date. Curated by NAS Gallery Curator Lucy Latella and IMA Director Robert Leonard, the exhibition is a joint project with NAS Gallery, where it opened earlier this year.
Cairns is a cool, calculating, intellectual painter, with a sense of humour. His puzzle pictures play games with pictorial conventions and conundrums—duck/rabbit problems. He scrambles 3D forms and 2D ones, detailed forms and schematic ones. Like a classic cubist, his subject is sometimes hidden—it's not always immediately clear what we're looking at.
What makes a collection?
Museum of Brisbane is giving you the keys to some of the most awe-inspiring collections across our amazing city. An irresistible array of breathtaking curiosities, Precious brings together thousands of remarkable items from more than 30 public and private collections.
From textiles to tin-toys, micro-architectural marvels to marine treasures, this exhibition is a joyful celebration of the art of assemblage. They invite you to immerse yourself into the incredible stories of some of the prolific collectors of Brisbane, and get to know what makes a keepsake and collectible truly Precious.
Queensland's story is a tapestry of thousands of stories – some familiar, some not.
Every story in the Extraordinary stories exhibition on Level 4 sheds new light on Queensland's incredible history. From the people who shaped our communities to the events that changed our state, Extraordinary stories draws on State Library's collections to explore the people, places and moments that have defined our past and continue to influence Queensland today.
Explore the latest displays in the gallery or book a free curator's tour to hear the stories behind the display.
Museum of Brisbane presents In Residence, a landmark exhibition celebrating a decade of bold ideas, creative exchange and artistic innovation through our Artist in Residence program.
Marking a significant milestone, the exhibition brings together the artists, projects and ideas that have defined one of Australia's most dynamic residency platforms.
Often described as the beating heart of the Museum, the Artist in Residence program has welcomed more than 100 artists and supported over 50 original projects, engaging millions of visitors while transforming the Museum into a place where creativity is shared and celebrated. For many artists, it has been a launchpad for ambitious new work, creative discovery and artistic growth.
Through artworks and behind-the-scenes insights, In Residence showcases the ideas and creative outcomes that have emerged over the past decade, while recognising the vision and generosity of Tim Fairfax AC, whose support has established this nationally recognised program.
The exhibition features ten works by artists including Mia Boe, Robert Brownhall, Gerwyn Davies and Elizabeth Willing, alongside a series of artist interviews. Audiences can also delve into the archives through digital content and artist publications produced as part of their residency projects. Together, these works and stories highlight the lasting impact of the program in shaping Brisbane's vibrant creative future.
Across the entire Vault Games network of stores, the Festival of New Games is how to see what awesome new tabletop hobby games are hitting the table, and join in the fun! Learn to play tables, local designer and publisher demos, and the chance to win all rolled into a single weekend at each Vault Games store.
The best part? It's entirely free! Just book your seats in the Aftergame app to ensure you're able to do everything you want to do at the event.
Abdul-Rahman Abdullah (born 1977, Dharawal/Port Kembla NSW) lives on a cattle farm on Bindjareb Nyoongar Country, Western Australia. Shaped by formative experiences as a "Muslim kid with mixed heritage", on his father's side he is a seventh-generation Australian descended from convict arrival in 1815, and on his mother's side, from Bugis and Minangkabau royalty in Malaysia. Abdullah's earliest influences growing up in inner-city Perth included comic books, fantasy novels, skateboarding, hip hop, a haunted family home, Sufism, boxing, and grunge, and "living a very grass-roots existence as a lo-fi creative kid in the 1980s and 1990s".
After working as an illustrator, model maker and zoo designer, Abdullah developed a sculptural practice grounded in storytelling. Here in Undying, his intricately carved and painted works tell a story of our complex relationship with life, death and the afterlife, and of our connection with (and responsibility to) the natural world. Each sculpture is accompanied by a text by Abdullah, in which he reflects on the animal he has depicted.
Commissioned by the Chau Chak Wing Museum, The University of Sydney, and supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, Undying: Abdul-Rahman Abdullah takes inspiration from the Museum's collections of natural history and antiquity to present a story of curiosity, inter-relationship, and perpetuity.
Curator: Katrina Liberiou
