APT9 Exhibition Report

Continuing QAGOMA’s commitment to being a leader in representing contemporary art practices from Asia, Australia and the Pacific, APT9 included artworks and projects from 80 artists and groups frommore than 30 countries, occupying the entire Gallery of Modern Art and the central spaces of the Queensland Art Gallery. This APT included the highest ever proportion of work by Indigenous and First Nations artists, and was also the first time in the Triennial’s history that artworks by women were in the majority. Installed at QAG, the large-scale co-curated project Women’s Wealth 2017–18 comprised weaving, fibre work, ceramics and body adornment by 20 female artists from the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, the Solomon Islands and Australia and a contextual video by Taloi Havini, Habitat 2018. In adjacent galleries were new works by Alair Pambegan (Australia) and Simon Gende (Papua New Guinea), a new series of large- scale paintings by Kawayan de Guia (The Philippines) and a site-specific commission from Boedi Widjaja (Singapore). Created in partnership with Singapore Art Museum, Widjaja’s Black–Hut, Black—Hut 2018–19 drew on ideas of architecture and social spaces from the artist’s birthplace of Indonesia, his place of residence in Singapore and the iconic structure of the tin and timber Queenslander. At GOMA, another major group of works from artists concerned with cultures from the Pacific included Lisa Reihana’s expansive video installation in Pursuit of Venus [infected] 2015–17, paintings by Idas Losin from Taiwan, objects from the Tungaru Collective relating to their Kiribati culture, the Marshall Islands’ jaki-ed weaving project of works made for APT9 and body adornment by Ngāi Tahu artist Areta Wilkinson. Highlights from artists working across the expanse of Asia included Indian artist Shilpa Gupta’s sound installation For, In Your Tongue, I Can Not Fit , 2017–18, Bangladeshi artist Ayesha Sultana’s graphite drawings and Ali Kazim’s landscape paintings of Pakistan. Graphic work by Kim Beom from South Korea playfully engaged with urbanism alongside Iraqi artist Sadik Kwaish Alfraji’s reflections on memories of childhood city experiences. EXHIBITION 12 EXHIBITION