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An new attraction is greeting visitors inside the main entrance of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in South Kensington. Standing on one side of the observation hall, facing galleries of classical and Renaissance European art, is a lifelike, fiberglass replica of a burly bouncer. A Māori name hanging from his belt indicates that he has traveled a long way from home.
This character, Kapa Haka (Whero) by Michael Parekōwhai from Aotearoa New Zealand, is the featured guest of the exhibition Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific. Produced in collaboration with the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in Brisbane, the exhibition includes over 70 works never before exhibited in the UK, by artists from 25 countries who have appeared over the years in QAGOMA’s. Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT).
It is the latest exhibition that has brought work from Australian galleries to international institutions. Last year, Tate Modern participated Emily Kam Kngwarray in association with the National Gallery of Australia, and the National Gallery of Victoria exhibition Stars We Can’t See: Australian Natural Art Now visiting the US.
Daniel Slater, director of exhibitions at the V&A, thinks the exhibition is overdue. He said: “We have a responsibility to bring these wonderful works here,” and until recently, “we didn’t.”
When it was founded in 1993, APT was the first major exhibition dedicated to contemporary art from Asia and the Pacific. Since then, it has attracted more than 4 million visitors to QAGOMA and has been the opening venue for some of the biggest names in the arts, including Cai Guo-Qianga Chinese artist famous for his fireworks, and a South Korean star Lee Bulbest known for his sci-fi inspired settings.
Despite APT’s influence in Asia and Australia, QAGOMA has only visited several projects from the trinity once before – to Santiago, Chile, in 2019; This is the first of a three-year global survey.
Slater first dreamed up the show in 2018, when he visited APT 9. At the time, he was working at the Tate. Slater said: “I couldn’t believe we didn’t beat ourselves up trying to make a UK show.
Turning that idea into reality was difficult. For more than two years, the conservation experts at QAGOMA have been looking at the challenges of sustainable management around the world. Among those making the trip are Thai artist Montien Boonma’s massive installation Lotus Sound, a curved wall made from hundreds of stacked terracotta bells; Japanese sculptor Takahiro Iwasaki’s intricate wooden model of the Phoenix Pavilion in Kyoto, which stands nearly three meters tall and is mounted on the ceiling; and delicate works made of feathers, shells and shark teeth.
Then, there were questions about how to make three decades into one show. “How can we understand the meaning?” says Tarun Nagesh from QAGOMA, who co-founded Rising Voices. “What principles will we bring to a project like this, taking this collection and idea to other parts of the world and new audiences?”
Slater and Nagesh created a four-part show. The first room offers visitors a “visual expression”, Nagesh says, with paintings, textiles, video and more to show the diversity of work; pilgrims pass through political, economic and spiritual spheres.
Two of the works in the first place are by Judy Watson, an Aboriginal artist from the Waanyi nation in northeastern Australia. Watson was featured in the first APT and has visited almost all of them since.
One of Watson’s paintings is Memory Bones, which shows white, rib-like lines on top of a red explosion, representing the broken and bloodied bones of Mulrunji Doomadgee, an Aboriginal man who died in police custody in 2004. mass incarceration of Indigenous people and the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in prison remains a national problem in Australia. In 2025 alone, 33 First Nations people died in custody. the highest number since records began in 1980.
Watson describes making this work as “a process of grief”. He says it reflects the “colonial brutality, I would say, that is still going on in Australia”.
Beneath this red stain is a bright blue color of water, which leads to the land of Waanyi, which has many springs and is crossed by streams and rivers. “David Attenborough says it’s one of the most unique places in the world,” says Watson; Attenborough talks very impressively about the fossils found in the area, including ancient bones of marsupial animals the size of sheep that ate on trees. This paleontological record provides a fascinating glimpse into deep time. “Most of the time when I use the color blue, I talk about blue being the color of memory, of water, of underground springs,” says Watson. It’s like a sense of memory surrounds you.
Some of the highlights of colonialism include the work of the Filipino artist Brenda V Fajardo, whose colorful paintings are made with the letters of the tarot cards, through which they give a reading of the history of the Filipino during the Spanish and American rule, showing the courage and bravery of women.
Sri Lankan artist Pala Pothupitiye also uses colonial maps to show how waves of European imperialism changed Sri Lankan art and culture. At Kalutara Fort, they show a garrison built by the Portuguese, captured by the Dutch and surrendered to the British. Today, no evidence of the wall remains. There is a Buddhist temple on the site.
To have so many works from Britain’s past hanging in London – in the museum of the past from British history, and the monuments of the empire itself – is a challenge to history. Slater and Nagesh hope that visitors will understand the meaning: the blue beads in the necklaces painted by Tasmanian Aboriginal artist Lola Greeno, for example, may trigger thoughts about the sapphires in one of Queen Victoria’s necklaces, which is located upstairs. “I know all the visitors who have seen the other shows will see (Greeno’s necklaces) and they will have the same experience as those who have 50 million tiaras,” says Slater.
At Rising Voices, Slater hopes visitors will re-experience the “absolute realization” they felt after visiting APT. “It’s an opportunity for us to try to make it clear to people that the issue of Asian and Pacific art is not a global art issue, but it is at the core.”
