October has been a busy month for Jackie Ryan! With shows at the Rockhampton Museum of Art, Brisbane Powerhouse and her portrait featured in the 2026 Brisbane Portrait Prize, this month sees Ryan continues to push creative boundaries. Moving between comics, portraiture and popular culture, Ryan playfully challenges conventions and explores the complexities of identity, culture and representation. Whether reimagining familiar faces or inviting us to see well-known figures through a new lens, her work rewards a closer look.
Curated by Jonathan McBurnie and Shanna Muston, Smashup: Comics x Art is an exhibition of drawing, print media, and remix media, and artists who cannot be, or refuse to be pigeonholed into one category.
Comics, zines and other printed graphics have a surprisingly long history, bound with the history of print and mass media. What is surprising is their continued exclusion from the visual arts institution, treated more as oddity rather than art form. Smashup: Comics x Art brings together art inspired by comics, alternative and popular culture, presented side by side with original pieces from artists and cartoonists, focusing on those whose works push the boundaries of media and subvert the expectations we have of what does and doesn’t constitute a work of art.
Jackie Ryan’s works are back for this year’s Brisbane Writers Festival!
Writers on the Wall 2 took over the Underground Theatre Foyer at the Brisbane Powerhouse, for a dramatic second chapter of images featuring storied authors and creatives who’ve appeared at Brisbane Writers Festival.
As you entered the industrial chic of Brisbane Powerhouse for this year’s Brisbane Writers Festival, your eye is drawn – powerfully, irresistibly – to a series of images that adorn the walls. Is this for the Portrait Prize? you wonder. World Press Photo? But no – as you step closer, as your vision adjusts in the cool dark of your surrounds, you begin to realise that these artworks may lie beyond your frame of reference.
Do you see anyone familiar?
Essay writer, Carody Culver, states “The Writers on the Wall series doesn’t just demonstrate what exceptional posers these authors are. It celebrates its subjects’ magnificence through a new lens, playfully embodying BWF’s mandate to put the festive in festival and reminding you of art’s boundless capacity to entertain and enchant.”
Just before taking the stage at Brisbane Powerhouse, comedian Alice Fraser sat for this portrait. Her solo show, A Passion for Passion, was a love letter to the romance genre. A comedy writer, broadcaster and performer, Fraser is a regular at Australian comedy festivals and the Edinburgh Fringe. Upon meeting Fraser, artist Jackie Ryan recognised a kindred spirit.
The Catch places Fraser inside a claw machine, surrounded by feminine archetypes including the trad wife, the romantic heroine and the businesswoman, all chaotically piled like prizes.
Fraser has been chosen. But is that a good thing? Pointing at the arbitrary nature of visibility and success, the portrait asks who decides a woman’s worth and whether being the catch is something worth wanting. The title is deliberately ambiguous, the mood darkly playful. The longer you look, the more there is to find.
You can view all these works, and many more of Jackies, in our stockroom!
Images: Courtesy of the artist and Onespace
