Detail of Joel Geolamen’s Habilin, Tausug 2 (2021). Photo: Helen Musa

Eleng Luluan’s typhoon installation, Maka Irualrumalame. Photo: Helen Musa

Detail of Tribute to Sangiang Serri (2021), a woodcut by Muhlis Lugis. Photo: Helen Musa

Zhang Xu Zhan, from Taipei, Mousedeer puppet. Photo: Helen Musa

Brett Graham’s Grand Folly Egmont (2020), wood and synthetic polymer paint. Photo: Helen Musa

Arts editor HELEN MUSA reports from 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, in Brisbane, one of the biggest and most important cultural summits of our region.

Australian eyes have been turning north to Brisbane in recent weeks with the advent of the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, one of the biggest and most important cultural summits of our region.

Seventy artists, collectives and projects from more than 30 countries feature in the event held in the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art complex known as QAGOMA, and for the first time since covid, which clipped its wings.

I was there for the opening, which saw artists pour in from around the country and the Asia Pacific, but the show goes on until the end of April and with an APT kids’ section featuring lots of hands-on action designed by participating artists, it’s the obvious place to spend a day or two if you’re holidaying in Queensland.

Each time there is a broadening of the Triennial’s sweep, so that for the first time it included creators from Saudi Arabia, Timor-Leste and Uzbekistan. 

With a staggering line-up of more than 500 works of art on show, deputy director of QAGOMA, former Canberran Simon Elliott, said that at least half would be permanently acquired by the Brisbane-based collecting institutions.

When the APT began in 1993, he said, standing in for indisposed director Chis Saines, it had been “a real gamble”, one they thought might last for three shows over 10 years, but now after 30 years it was still going and more than four million visitors had passed through the door.

Former director of the ANU School of Art David Williams, backed by top Canberra curators, was one of the driving forces behind the initiative, which they planned as a way to showcase our region’s artists as they responded to contemporary issues.

The official opening took place in GOMA, the state-of-the-art building that opened in 2006 primarily to house the APT, and the natural place for some of the huge installation artworks that have always been at the centre of the event. 

Of these, it was Tai Moana Tai Tangata by NZ artist Brett Graham that stood out. A mall of monumental sculptures and video speaking to the historical NZ Wars, it takes up the full length of GOMA’s Long Gallery.

But hundreds of works can also be seen in the adjacent Queensland Art Gallery where there is a fun, splashy new installation in its famous Water Mall along with abundant space for installations, paintings and prints, a good thing, with more artists exhibiting than for many years..

To me the triennial looked fresh, with artists from non-mainstream social groups and ethnicities speaking to important changes in the Asia-Pacific, but it’s huge and it took me a full two days simply to walk through then pop back to take notes on favourites.

One of the exciting things about the APT is how “now” the art looks. Even more exciting is the conversational chit-chat among artists, most of them visiting Australia for the first time, who were seen rubbing shoulders in the exhibitions, at the floor talks and in the nearby coffee shop.

There, I found myself engaging in a lively conversation with a bunch of artists from Makassar in Indonesia including former director of the Makassar Biennale (most countries in Asia have such events now) Jimpe Rachman and exhibiting artist Muhlis Lugis, whose huge woodcut prints depicting the culture of the Bugis community were installed in a section of the QAG.

There were many representations of the unexpected, including an installation evoking a ferocious typhoon by Eleng Lulian, an indigenous artist from the Rukai tribe in Pingtung, Taiwan.

There was a strong contingent from the Pacific this time, with traditional art from PNG, NZ artist Zach Langdon’s amazing one-to-one scale marble sculptures and a video installation created by Dreamcast Theatre and the Kawaki women’s collective from the Solomon Islands. 

A quirky take on the very idea of art is seen when Malaysian town-planner Harold Egn Eswar, from his architectural training, created large. reimagined posters of the built environment in his hometown, Kota Kinabalu, while also participating in APT Kids.

A new project, Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, sees works by indigenous and Islamic communities alongside paintings, video, sculpture and exquisite textile art, reinterpreted by Joel Geolamen in his two Habilan paintings, which show Tausug textiles forming mountainous landscapes.

And my favourite? Zhang Xu Zhan, from Taipei, has created tiny puppets in Lakeview Square – Gamelan Band 2021- 22, then filmed them to tell the pan-southeast Asian story of how the clever mousedeer defeats the stupid crocodile – delicate, scary and fun.

The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA, Brisbane, until April 27.