Imagine standing beneath a colossal, pulsating sun, its surface alive with what appears to be a thousand miniature explosions. It’s both mesmerizing and unsettling, especially when it seems to mirror your every move. This is the experience Olafur Eliasson, the Icelandic-Danish artist, crafts in his latest exhibition, Presence. But here’s where it gets controversial: Eliasson doesn’t just want you to marvel at his art—he wants it to challenge your perception of the world and your place in it. Is art truly capable of uniting us to confront global crises, or is it just another spectacle?
The exhibition, spanning Eliasson’s 30-year career, takes over the entire ground floor of the Gallery of Modern Art (Goma) in Meanjin/Brisbane. Among the highlights is Riverbed (2014), a room filled with 100 tonnes of sand, pebbles, and rock, which returns alongside immersive installations that manipulate light, color, and movement. These works are not just visual treats; they’re invitations to rethink our relationship with nature and each other. For instance, Your Negotiable Vulnerability Seen From Two Perspectives (2025) uses polarized light to shift colors and shapes as you move, reminding us that our perspectives are always in flux—a metaphor for our shared yet diverse realities.
And this is the part most people miss: Eliasson’s art isn’t just about what you see; it’s about how you see it. He calls his audience ‘active co-producers,’ emphasizing that the experience of his work is shaped by the viewer’s position—both physically and metaphorically. This idea of ‘we-ness,’ a sense of shared humanity, echoes his 2003 installation The Weather Project at Tate Modern, where strangers found unexpected connections.
Eliasson’s photographs of Iceland, a land grappling with climate change much like Australia, anchor the exhibition in stark reality. The Glacier Melt series, featuring 30 pairs of photographs taken two decades apart, reveals a haunting transformation. Riverbed, with its trickling water amidst a rocky landscape, becomes a poignant symbol of what remains when glaciers vanish. ‘The collapse is now,’ Eliasson says, urging us to confront our numbness to environmental decay.
But here’s the bold claim: Eliasson rejects the notion that nature inside a gallery is somehow less real than nature outside. ‘There is no outside and inside,’ he asserts. ‘The gallery is inside of what is outside.’ His work, he argues, allows us to see more clearly, unburdened by the politicized and weaponized narratives that often cloud our view of the world.
Despite his despair for the planet, Eliasson calls himself a ‘prisoner of hope.’ He draws inspiration from Indigenous philosophies that view nature as kin and movements granting legal rights to natural entities like mountains and rivers. ‘It’s comforting to know people have the capacity to change how they see things,’ he reflects. This hope is embodied in The Cubic Structural Evolution Project (2004), where visitors collaboratively build a dream city with 500,000 white Lego pieces, reimagining how energy, materials, and creativity can coexist sustainably.
Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow, the exhibition’s curator, spent two months with Eliasson’s studio team—a rare opportunity for both artist and curator. She describes the studio as an ‘ecosystem of experimentation,’ where architects, craftsmen, historians, and technicians collaborate. Eliasson’s humility shines through in his question to Barlow: ‘Where am I blind? What can you see that I can’t?’ This openness to perspective is the heart of his creative philosophy.
As our conversation extends beyond its allotted time, Eliasson’s generosity becomes palpable. ‘This gallery, like Iceland, is a place where I can exhale,’ he says. ‘That softening is the currency of tomorrow. That type of tenderness is actually fierce. And that is presence.’
Olafur Eliasson: Presence is more than an exhibition; it’s a call to action, a space to reflect, and a reminder that our presence matters. But the question remains: Can art truly unite us to save the world? What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments—let’s spark a conversation that’s as dynamic as Eliasson’s installations.
