The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

197 ESSAYS Indigenous peoples of South Brisbane, the Turrbal and Yugara (Jagera), and all other First Nation peoples. With one of the largest representations of First Nation artists in any Triennial, APT9 explores the concerns, practices and knowledges that extend from various indigenous world views. As Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll has proposed, indigenous artists are not only re-enacting traditions, they are revealing anew how culture and interactions with settlers were negotiated historically. 22 Vincent Namatjira paints portraits of power, and Latai Taumoepeau depicts her performative response to authority from a position of vulnerability. In addition, particular understandings of the continuity of space and time can collapse the past, present and future in indigenous art. James Tylor’s photography and the charcoal drawings resulting from the Erub/Lifou Project explore intercultural connections as much as the production of aesthetic objects. For Alair Pambegan, Margaret Rarru and Helen Ganalmirriwuy, Jonathan Jones, Tcheu Siong and Areta Wilkinson, art embodies ancestral knowledge and forms distinct cultural repositories. These artists are all compelled to share the world views of their culture. RELATIONALITY AND DISTINCTION APT9 reveals the Gallery’s deep connections with our Pacific neighbours — as well as the importance of relational ways of making — through one of the largest participations of artists from the Pacific in a Triennial to date. This is a valuable opportunity to consider the collaborative projects of the Gunantuna community from Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands weavers of the Jaki-ed Project, and the women from the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, the Solomon Islands and Australia who contribute to the Women’s Wealth project. Extraordinary presentations of Tutana (shell money) and jaki-ed weaving, together with ceramics and other forms of weaving and making, have been created through these new Pacific collaborations. For both Pacific and Australian indigenous artists, a duty of care is at the heart of their making processes — not only to fellow collaborators, but also to ancestors and descendants — a concept understood by commentators such as historian Prasenjit Duara as one that defines contemporary (Asian) society. 23 Ingrained and intertwined patterns of social and cultural relationality operate within the making and exchange of cultural objects in these projects, which are often more intrinsic than those sociality engineered by artists with communities and categorised as social or relational art. In her essay, curator Ruth McDougall unfolds the intersections and politics of relations and exchange in the Pacific, and discusses how the making of objects and the conception of value is based in different relational systems where culture is collective, rather than the product of a unique author. An important example of alternative ideas of wealth are the Tutana and Loloi made from Diwarra or Tabu (shell money) by the Papua New Guinean Gunantuna community, which reflect social and spiritual connections and merit, as well as acting as currency. Monetary and symbolic schemes of exchange that bridge customary and neoliberal structures, the Tutana and Loloi are also indicative of a culturally based debt system, a distinct form of loan liability common to many across the globe. The hoods, baskets, pottery, mats, tapestries and body adornments of the Women’s Wealth project convey some of the significance of women’s matrilineal standing and material culture in Bougainville and the Solomon Islands today, as well as their interest in sharing this culture with a wider audience. Like other works by First Nation artists, they convey the resistance of individuals and communities to the loss of cultural knowledge resulting from the incursion of Euro-American culture. The survival of the Marshall Islands tradition of jaki-ed weaving has been precarious, but its innovation is apparent in the Jaki-ed Project. Along with objects from the Tungaru (Kiribati) Project led by Chris Charteris and the creative practice of Areta Wilkinson from Aotearoa New Zealand, these works celebrate ancestral knowledge, while transforming forms of production. They interrogate traditional art historical understandings and present new questions regarding the authority of the maker, and ideas of labour and commodity. Lisa Reihana imagines a greater space of cultural exchange and social reciprocity between Pacific peoples and European voyagers by depicting a range of possible behaviours and interactions, while the collaborative, public printing processes of the collective Pangrok Sulap, who work in remote areas of Sabah, Malaysia, evidence the idea of community in action at a local level. The works by island-based artists in APT9 reflect the artists’ enjoyment of local community life, but often reveal troubled histories and ecological issues. Shown to be much more