Brett Graham / Photograph: Chris Traill / Image courtesy: Gow Langsford Gallery, Aotearoa New Zealand

Brett Graham / Photograph: Chris Traill / Image courtesy: Gow Langsford Gallery, Aotearoa New Zealand / View full image

Brett Graham

Brett Graham conceives of his Māori whakapapa as a Pasifika/Moana identity affiliated with a global network of indigenous and non-Western peoples. From this foundation, his work engages with histories of imperialism and global indigenous issues.

The British colonisation of Graham’s homeland, Aotearoa New Zealand, during the era of European expansionism was a process predicated on assumptions of racial, religious, cultural and technical superiority. Presented in this Triennial, the works in Graham’s Tai Moana Tai Tangata provide portals to this time.

Find out more
Jasmine Togo-Brisby with As above so below 2023, installed for 'Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Inner Sanctum', Art Gallery of South Australia, 2024 / Photograph: Sam Roberts / Image courtesy: The artist

Jasmine Togo-Brisby with As above so below 2023, installed for 'Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Inner Sanctum', Art Gallery of South Australia, 2024 / Photograph: Sam Roberts / Image courtesy: The artist / View full image

Jasmine Togo-Brisby

Brisbane-based artist Jasmine Togo-Brisby’s practice centres on research into the Pacific labour trade in Australia and how it intersects with her own familial history as a fourth-generation Australian South Sea Islander.

Copper Archipelago 2024 has been created as a site-specific architectural intervention for the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial. A large boat-shaped structure, its surfaces recall the ornate ceilings eponymous with the Sydney-based Wunderlich family, famous in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for manufacturing pressed-metal ceilings. Embossed with images relating to blackbirding and her own family, Togo-Brisby’s ceiling affirms her matrilineal lineage to ‘Granny’ (her great-great-grandmother), who was kidnapped from Vanuatu at the age of eight and acquired as a house slave for the Wunderlich family.

Find out more
Dana Awartani / Image courtesy: The artist

Dana Awartani / Image courtesy: The artist / View full image

Dana Awartani

Of Palestinian heritage and raised in Saudi Arabia, Dana Awartani’s practice reflects her skill and knowledge of Islamic geometry — a fusion of art, mathematics and spirituality. Many of her works emphasise handmade materials and collaborations with artisans from South Asia and the Arab world, and her installations often begin with geometric drawings that illuminate her formal and conceptual process.

Standing by the ruins 2022 is an installation of 439 handmade adobe bricks that create a refined pattern suggesting abstract flowers, stars and elements from the natural world. Adobe has been a method of building for centuries in countries such as Morocco and Saudi Arabia, and Awartani learnt directly from artisans whose families have been making these bricks for generations. In removing the binding element and allowing her bricks to show cracks and fissures, she evokes a contemporary experience of ruins and destruction alongside a careful and reverential act of creation and revival.

Find out more

What to Expect

Here’s what to expect at this event.

Everyone is welcome! Please contact events.plus@qagoma.qld.gov.au in advance of the program if you have any access needs or queries about the event. Find out more about Accessibility at QAGOMA and planning your visit.

Participation and content

  • You are welcome to come with a friend or by yourself. Many people attend the Gallery solo.
  • We ask all attendees to be kind, respectful, and courteous to all participants, speakers and staff at this event. This program will be monitored by QAGOMA staff to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our attendees, speakers and staff.

Sensory aspects

  • To find your way to the event, access a map of the galleries.
  • Speakers will use an amplified microphone. Please let us know in advance if you are hard of hearing so we can make this talk accessible for you.
  • A screen will be used during the event.
  • Chairs with backs will be available for seating.
  • The event is outside the Gallery, under the shade of the building and the Bodhi Tree.
  • This event will be photographed by QAGOMA staff. If you do not wish to be photographed, please advise a QAGOMA staff member on arrival.
  • This talk will be live Auslan interpreted. Please email us if you require a reserved seat at the front of the Bodhi Tree Stage.
GOMA Turns 10 Opening Weekend / Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane / December 2016 / Photography: J Ruckli, QAGOMA

GOMA Turns 10 Opening Weekend / Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane / December 2016 / Photography: J Ruckli, QAGOMA / View full image

Asia Pacific Triennial Opening Weekend

Saturday 30 November & Sunday 1 December

View more events