Have you ever been to an exhibition and wondered what the inspiration for an artwork was, or how it was created or even installed? Before the opening of the 11th chapter of the Gallery’s flagship exhibition series — the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art — on Saturday 30 November 2024, we take you behind-the-scenes as we prepare Tunnel #APT, one part of Thai artist Mit Jai Inn’s dramatic Queensland Art Gallery Watermall installation.

Using brushes, palette knives and his hands to structure thick fields of colour with a concoction of specially prepared pigments from oil and acrylic paints, gypsum powder and linseed oil — a combination designed for sculptural rigidity and enduring luminosity — Jai Inn consciously employs all his senses in the act of painting, in a process both physically rigorous and meditative.

Specific qualities and conditions of the site, both physical and social, are important considerations for the artist. Responding to the unique architectural characteristics of the Gallery space to explore his interests in time and transformation, his large-scale sculptural works are layered views that reveal and conceal to enact portals between worlds.

Before installation could begin, the Watermall needed to be drained so that our team could prepare the eights parts of the two-sided suspended canvas tunnel which will lead you through a narrow path built above water. Its immense buoyant ribbon panels that hang like warp looms inhabits a space between ground and ceiling that is counterpoised by a towering scroll extending vertically from the ground, and three cascading ‘totems’ descending from the ceiling above.