APT9 Exhibition Report

The Gallery’s Collection has deepened and expanded through successive APTs over 27 years, building its special focus and unique representation of art from the Asia Pacific. These holdings of contemporary Asian, Pacific and Australian art are a major strength for QAGOMA, and many acquisitions from previous Triennials are recognised as historically important for having identified and supported major artists, collectives and art centres in countries throughout the region. The Collection provides a solid base for the Gallery’s major surveys of contemporary art, including the recent exhibitions ‘Problem Wisdom: Thai Art in the 1990s’ and ‘No.1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966–2016’. QAGOMA has been able to continue this legacy of Collection development through APT9 thanks to the significant generosity of APT9 Benefactors, QAGOMA Foundation members and donors. This includes a number of major works developed specifically for the Gallery by artists such as Aisha Khalid (Pakistan), Kushana Bush (Aotearoa New Zealand) and Margaret Rarru and Helen Ganalmirriwuy (Liyagawumirr people, Australia), as well as new work from other artists. APT9 acquisition highlights: ▲ A new commission from Pakistani artist Aisha Khalid, Water has never feared the fire 2018, takes its title from the words of Rumi and draws on Persian and Islamic art. These three hanging textiles, measuring nearly five metres high, are made with approximately three million gold-plated pins. Khalid’s geometric design is replete with imagery symbolising Islamic gardens of paradise and makes reference to trade and the movement of peoples and cultures throughout history. ▲ Adapting the form and modest scale of miniature traditions, Kushana Bush’s densely layered gouache compositions draw together objects and figures from different times and realities into an idiosyncratic world of the artist’s imagining that illuminates details of human interaction and behaviour. ▲ A selection of contemporary hollow logs and woven works from Indigenous artists Margaret Rarru and Helen Ganalmirriwuy demonstrate their continuing invention of new forms and effects beyond the traditional. ▲ Steeped from childhood in traditional Buddhist painting techniques, Pannaphan Yodmanee is part of a new generation of Thai artists. Yodmanee’s In the aftermath 2018 is a sharply resolved composition of painted, sculpted and found materials that coalesce into an enthralling mise en scène. Its primary foundations are demolished concrete walls, abstractly ‘grid-lined’ by steel- reinforcing wire. It is as if the impact of an earthquake has ruptured a temple courtyard, its surviving fragments of beauty reduced to ruin. ▲ Untitled (Ruins series) 2017 is a stunning, large- scale watercolour by leading Pakistani artist Ali Kazim. The work is a fine example of the artist’s seemingly empty landscapes that contain evidence of human habitation through remnants of buried cities, such as pottery shards, and often show the force of weather coming across the horizon. ▲ Asia One 2018 is a major new single-channel video production by Cao Fei, one of the best- known Chinese artists of her generation and one of the few women artists from China to achieve a high profile internationally. ▲ Jonathan Jones’s immersive installation untitled (giran) 2018, made for APT9, comprises more than 2000 handmade tools, each one incorporating feathers gathered from the broader community, and a 48-channel soundscape that evokes the relationship between culture, language and landscape. ▲ 18/28: The Singhaseni Tapestries 2018, comprising sewn and embroidered fabrics, is a major new installation by leading contemporary Thai artist Jakkai Siributr that reflects on religious, social and political issues in Thailand from a personal perspective. COLLECTION & ACQUISITIONS 28 COLLECTION & ACQUISITIONS