I gasp as it comes into view: an enormous sun looming above, its surface roiling with what looks like thousands of tiny atomic explosions. It seems to notice me as well: when I stop, it stops too. It\u2019s both awe-inspiring and unnerving.<\/p>\n
In the mirrors around the glowing orb, I spot Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson<\/a> \u2013 globally renowned for large-scale installations that challenge your sense of perception \u2013 posing for selfies with the crowd.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the opening night of Presence, a major exhibition spanning Eliasson\u2019s 30-year practice that occupies the entire ground floor of the Gallery of Modern Art (Goma) in Meanjin\/Brisbane<\/a>. His 2014 work Riverbed \u2013 a room filled with 100 tonnes of sand, river pebbles and rock \u2013 makes its return, alongside immersive works that play with light, colour and movement, and photographs spotlighting the climate crisis.<\/p>\n Presence (2025) by Olafur Eliasson. Photograph: \u00c1goston Hor\u00e1nyi\/Studio Olafur Eliasson<\/p>\n The sun \u2013 also titled Presence \u2013 brings to mind The Weather Project, Eliasson\u2019s acclaimed 2003 installation for Tate Modern\u2019s Turbine Hall. That became a kind of public lounge room<\/a>, where strangers found what Eliasson calls \u201cwe-ness\u201d: a sense of shared humanity, which seems to be forming here, too.<\/p>\n I\u2019d first heard about this sun a few days earlier, when I sat down with Eliasson and the exhibition\u2019s curator Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow. \u201cWhen you move, it moves. So the sun is asking you to notice that your presence makes a difference,\u201d Eliasson told me. \u201cIt holds up in front of you the fact that your actions have consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n Eliasson views the audience as \u201cactive co-producers\u201d of his work. What you see depends on where you\u2019re looking from; a reminder that we don\u2019t all see the world the same way. One of two new works in the show that uses the polarisation of light, titled Your Negotiable Vulnerability Seen From Two Perspectives (2025), also shifts as you do. Black becomes white; vibrant colours flare.<\/p>\n Detail of Your Negotiable Vulnerability Seen From Two Perspectives (2025). Photograph: \u00c1goston Horanyi\/Studio Olafur EliassonBeauty (1993). Photograph: Ela Bialkowska, OKNOstudio<\/p>\n In Beauty (1993), something as ordinary as dripping water becomes a transcendent experience. It\u2019s not magic \u2013 just a curtain of tiny droplets and a light set at the right angle \u2013 but it feels like it. The water almost floats, like a thin veil between this world and another. Stand in the right place and a rainbow appears.<\/p>\n Presence turns the gallery into a kind of Tardis, each turn opening into something unexpected. Many rooms are dimly lit; one is so dark an attendant reminds me to give my eyes time to adjust. Others are so bright they feel antiseptic.<\/p>\n Firefly City (2025). Photograph: Jens Ziehe\/Photographie<\/p>\n Eliasson grew up between Denmark and Iceland<\/a>, attending school in Copenhagen and spending holidays with his grandparents in the Icelandic countryside. The primordial landscapes captivated him in ways many locals, who saw them every day, struggled to understand.<\/p>\n His photographs of Iceland anchor the exhibition in a reality that is both beautiful and confronting. Like Australia, Iceland is experiencing huge climatic changes. The Glacier Melt series \u2013 30 pairs of photographs taken two decades apart, in 1999 and 2019 \u2013 shows a disturbing difference.<\/p>\n Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow and Olafur Eliasson stand in Riverbed (2014) at Goma. Photograph: Jason O\u2019Brien\/AAP<\/p>\n