The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

art markets, which, in turn, affect art production and critical discussion. 15 Institutional publishing is also contributing to the understanding of art and art history, especially for English language readers, as theory and methodologies are constantly being revised. 16 Driven by curiosity and discontent, these methods of exposition and critical inquiry are moving away from one set of prevailing assumptions to more productive ideas, which are often locally grounded and more inclusive. As an event based in Australia and thereby implicated in the continual reframing of these interpretative histories, what can APT9 offer to the developing understanding of the art of the region? Over time, the Triennial has encouraged audiences to think about art in terms of multiplicities and hybrids, rather than in terms of nation, place, time or ethnicity. The latest iteration, APT9 is a collective space of the contemporary, reflecting our fluctuating engagement with past, present and future. SIMULTANEOUS WORLDS It is the Triennial's role to engage with the dynamic, subjective and contested field of contemporary art in the Asia Pacific. To that end, APT9 continues to locate art within the context of thought and relations that characterise the region’s unique combination of politics, history and geography, and to offer a framework for thinking about art, as argued by Chinese academic Sun Ge in her discussion of Asia. 17 For APT9, QAGOMA curators focused on artists whose recent work is of increasing interest to the field, including several senior figures with practices that are regaining influence. 18 APT9 also features five repeat participants, a number of major new commissions, and a majority of female artists. 19 In addition, First Nation artists and artists from Bangladesh participate in greater numbers than in previous APTs, and artists from Laos appear for the first time. The artworks and projects comprising APT9 — spread across the Gallery's two buildings — present a complex amalgam of concerns, modes of expression and artistic schema. These include distinct world views, customary value systems, and a shared concern for the natural and machine-made worlds. Additionally, these artworks allow us to explore a wider realm of dominant and personal histories, poetic modes and socially inflected formal languages. Audiences will therefore find many intersections between works across the exhibition. The inclusion of a number of artists in APT9 from previous Triennials invites a deeper analysis of their work since their last involvement. New works and projects by Taloi Havini, Anne Noble, Shinro Ohtake, Lisa Reihana and Peter Robinson provide opportunities to engage with the very different concerns and contributions of these established artists at different stages of their careers. 20 The work of these five artists critically responds to current conditions, especially colonial and neoliberal attitudes to society and the environment, and adds to the transformative potential of APT9. Even as a more nuanced understanding of the region’s contemporary art has emerged in recent decades, Isabel Ching writes: ‘amongst the various art historical discourses in South East Asia, conceptualism remains one of the least explored’. 21 As artists who developed strong practices in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Rasheed Araeen, Roberto Chabet and Hassan Sharif are of interest internationally for the way their contributions — which have at times been discussed within modernist paradigms — have helped to influence other artists’ thinking, and are now being written into new art narratives. In her essay ‘Entangled histories’, curator Abigail Bernal discusses how the pioneering and political achievements of Araeen, Chabet and Sharif were shaped by the artists’ particular environments in the United Kingdom, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates, respectively. Bernal highlights how Araeen’s rigorous formal and intellectual provocations, Chabet’s artistic and professional advocacy, and Sharif’s sophisticated response to the excesses of commercialism were rooted in an unapologetic criticality born of their situation, as well as distinct attitudes to Western systems and values. Their works were highly personal responses to local conditions that also acknowledged other international contemporary art. Other senior artists featured in APT9 — Okinawan artist Mao Ishikawa, Palawa artist Lola Greeno, Tcheu Siong from Laos, and the late Herman Somuk and Gregory Dausi Moah, from the Autonomous Region of Bougainville — demonstrate how art is formative in and beyond its place of making, and contributes to both local and regional histories. Often countering the silences and misrepresentations of institutional accounts of history, First Nation artists contest the past and present in specific ways. Founded within a former colony of empire, QAGOMA acknowledges the