The Monto Museum of Art (MMOA) has been established as a permanent home to showcase the legacy collection of Gil Jamieson. Gil was a well-known local painter and a nationally significant artist who portrayed life on the land in rural Queensland and northern Australia.

The MMOA is an artistic and cultural hub for both locals and visitors to Monto, providing an insight into the stories & history, enhancing its sense of place.

THE MUSEUM VENUE

The MMOA is situated at 15-17 Newton Street, Monto. The Museum building has wide doors that open into the middle of the main street. The premises comprises about 1000 square metres, with wide rooms and high ceilings. It was purchased by the Jamieson family for express purpose of establishing the Museum. The two art deco style buildings which once housed Jamieson Brothers Furniture and a supermarket.

GIL JAMIESON THE ARTIST FROM MONTO

Gil Jamieson was a nationally recognised Queensland painter. He was born in Monto in 1934 and died there in 1992. While a major part of Gil’s painting career was based in Monto, he was considered to be an influential contemporary of the Melbourne based ‘Antipodean’ painters. Gil painted many works in oil and gouache on location. While he maintained a studio in Monto, he also lived, travelled, and set up studios and exhibited in Melbourne, Perth, Rockhampton, and Sydney.

He was a prolific artist whose figurative work celebrated life in the Queensland and extensively chronicled the Australian landscape working open air in his nearly annual painting trips across the north and west. His paintings interpret the realities of Australian history, society and culture. Much of Gil’s work depicted landscape, sometimes with mystical interpretation of the bush but also depicted its turbulence & harshness. Figures in the works coped with natural disasters such as fire, flood, and drought, while other works address routine tasks such as feeding animals, working cattle, branding, cattle sales, clearing scrub and cultivating.

The MMOA continues the process of cataloguing this collection and curating works for public display both in Monto and elsewhere. A large number of Gil Jamieson’s artworks are also held in public institutions and private collections.