APT9 Exhibition Report

APT9 Opening Weekend. Installation view of works by Kushana Bush / The Taylor Family Collection. Purchased 2018 with funds from Paul, Sue and Kate Taylor through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Photograph: Joe Ruckli ▲ Indonesian artist Aditya Novali’s elaborate installation The Wall: Asian (Un)real Estate Project 2018 presents a miniature high-rise apartment building with three different facades and intricately created apartment interiors, comprising a beautiful reflection on the pressing need for accessible housing in Asia. ▲ Yuko Mohri’s installation Breath or Echo 2017 was originally produced for the 2017 Sapporo International Art Festival and was inspired by the island of Hokkaido and the work of celebrated Ainu modernist sculptor Sunazawa Bikky (1931–89). Mohri's work presents a subtle soundscape of electronic pulses and delicate percussion over which automatic pianos play expansive compositions. ▲ Vuth Lyno has been deeply engaged in subjects of social transformation, community relationships and concerns around development in Cambodia. His towering sculpture, House – Spirit 2018, is a collection of family shrines from the once-famous White Building in Phnom Penh. ▲ The video Overexposed memory 2015 and accompanying suite of three book cover paintings by interdisciplinary Taiwanese artist Joyce Ho explore themes of the body and femininity. Ho’s striking, minimal aesthetic foregrounds uncanny takes on gender roles, conventions and expectations. ▲ A selection of vivid realist paintings by Zico Albaiquni incorporate an eclectic mix of influences from Indonesian painting, art history and contemporary visual culture, including references to the first Asia Pacific Triennial in 1993. ▲ A group of 13 expert weavers from across six atolls in the Republic of the Marshall Islands created a series of jaki-ed mats especially for APT9 in a 21-day workshop supported by the Oceania Women’s Fund and the University of the South Pacific. The project fostered experimentation with new designs and included the participation of artist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner. ▲ Iman Raad’s mural Days of bliss and woe 2018 reimagines Persian miniature painting, Iranian folk art and Pakistani truck painting from a high-key colour and contemporary perspective. The staccato repetition of images affords the viewer’s eye quick movement across the wall, adding drama and movement to a composition touching on life and extinction, earth and the otherworldly. 30 COLLECTION & ACQUISITIONS