At the 2025 India Art Fair (IAF), the Australian High Commission was represented by a delegation featuring two leading figures in the nation’s contemporary art scene. The first was Chris Saines CNZM, director of Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), who helms a museum featuring two side-by-side galleries (QAG and GOMA) that follow a programming model shaped by Australia’s place in the Asia Pacific region. The second was Darrell Sibosado, a contemporary artist and member of the Bardi community, an aboriginal Australian people who inhabit parts of Western Australia. STIR interviewed both to explore QAGOMA’s programme and Sibosado’s practice.
Within QAGOMA, QAG is the main building and the older of the two galleries. It was established in 1895 as the Queensland National Art Gallery, and was housed in a series of temporary premises, eventually moving to its permanent home in Brisbane in 1982 as the Queensland Art Gallery. The second building, GOMA, was opened in 2006. QAGOMA has long since focused closely on art by First Nations artists, including those who originate in the Torres Strait, a part of Queensland governed by the Torres Strait Regional Authority. The museum has an extensive Indigenous Australian art collection featuring visual artists Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, who belongs to the Anmatyerr community, and Djambu Barra Barra (1946 – 2005), who came from the Ngukurr community, both from Australia’s Northern Territory. Tjapaltjarri paints humans and animals dreaming, while Barra Barra depicted traditional ceremonies and totemic animals in his art. Both artists have produced vivid bodies of work featuring painting and wood carving.
'I think the Asia Pacific Triennial has become our flagship program for a good reason. In short, it is the only recurrent exhibition of its kind globally that engages as deeply, widely and consistently with the region it encompasses.' - Chris Saines, director, QAGOMA
Saines spoke at the IAF’s DNA of Cultural Institutions talk, discussing strategies to build inclusive public programming in institutions such as museums. He discusses the curatorial strategy at QAGOMA, telling STIR, “Our collection display galleries share their walls, all but equally, between works of First Nations and non-First Nations origin. Where once we presented Australian landscape painting through a roll call of its non-Indigenous modern masters, now works by iconic Australian artists such as Sidney Nolan (1917 – 1992) sit beside historical Indigenous objects and contemporary images.” Nolan is remembered for his landscape paintings portraying the Australian outback as a desolate and alienesque expanse that endlessly stretches on into the horizon. QAGOMA contrasts such images with contemporary and historical First Nations depictions of Australian landscapes, which are often colourful and teeming with life.
Upon exploring QAGOMA’s Indigenous Australian art collection, one can observe that the painter Stanley Ebatarinja’s depictions of central Australian mountain ranges in his WestMacDonnell Ranges series (2008) are lush and colourful. The visual artist hails from the Western Arrernte peoples, who are also native to the region. In sharp contrast, Nolan’s portrayal of mountain ranges in central Australia appears nearly like Martian landscapes, as the terrain in these works is entirely composed of shades of reddish-brown and seems extremely inhospitable. This comparison foregrounds an interesting difference of perception between natives and the descendants of colonisers. Even Nolan, who was interested in the art and teachings of Indigenous Australian communities, did not truly love the landscape of his country despite his well-known fascination with it.
QAGOMA’s focus on traditional art stretches beyond Australia into the wider Asia Pacific region, and recently, it has endeavoured to show more contemporary work from the broader region. Saines tells STIR, “Thirty years ago, Asia was largely represented in our collection through historic ceramics and ukiyo-e prints, and the Pacific through the Maori and Pacific diaspora of New Zealand. That has changed profoundly since then.” He mentions that this is not part of a deliberate strategy against dominant Euro-American narratives but rather came about as a result of the Asia Pacific Triennial, launched by QAGOMA in 1993. The triennial is spread across both galleries and features an exhibition programme, along with film screenings and learning initiatives, including those for the children. As Saines puts it, “(The art fair) shifted our gaze onto the regional neighbourhood that was right at our doorstep, despite much of it being culturally unknown to Australians at the time…I think the Asia Pacific Triennial has become our flagship program for a good reason. In short, it is the only recurrent exhibition of its kind globally that egages as deeply, widely and consistently with the region it encompasses.”
Saines was accompanied to India by Darrell Sibosado, whose works were presented at India Art Fair 2025 through a partnership between the Australian High Commission and N.Smith Gallery, which is based in New South Wales, Australia. The presentation follows last year’s Walking through a Songline (May 26, 2024 – July 10, 2024), an aboriginal-led art exhibition at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), New Delhi. The art fair was Sibosado’s first time exhibiting work outside his country and can be read as a part of the growing global interest in Indigenous art. The Australian artist is known for his eye-catching blend of traditional and contemporary art, as he creates large-scale sculpture works using metal and LED lights that are inspired by Riji (carved pearl shell) traditions. Sibosado tells STIR, “I don’t do anything that is purely contemporary or abstract. Everything that I do links me back to my ancestors and my culture and my traditions. That’s where my inspiration and my content comes from.” His light installations explore Aboriginal Australian lore, particularly the story of Aalingoon the Rainbow Serpent, a figure that appears across creation myths from various First Nations cultures. The Bardi people believe that the mother-of-pearl often used in Riji designs comes from Aalingoon’s scales, which the snake sheds on full moon nights when he rests on the surface of the ocean.
Sibosado’s work at IAF 2025 expresses the adaptability of traditional art forms through the materials he uses.
“To me, it’s what indigenous people have done around the world forever anyway. We utilise what is in our world. For me, using metal and lights is not taboo because if my ancestors were around, that’s what they’d be using.” - Darrell Sibosado
The artist’s perspective resonates with Saines and QAGOMA’s approach to contemporary art from the Asia Pacific region by provoking typical perceptions of what is ‘traditional’ or ‘indigenous’ in art.
India Art Fair 2025 ran from February 6 – 9, 2025, at NSIC Exhibition Grounds in Okhla, New Delhi.
