๐๐ฃ ๐๐ค๐ฉ๐๐ค๐ฃ, ๐๐ฃ ๐๐ก๐๐๐
๐๐๐จ ๐๐๐ ๐ฎ๐ฌ ๐๐ฎ๐ซ๐ง๐จ๐ฆ๐จ, ๐๐๐ญ๐ซ๐ข๐จ๐ญ ๐๐ฎ๐ค๐ฆ๐ข๐ง and ๐๐ข๐๐จ ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐ข๐ช๐ฎ๐ง๐ข
30 March – 18 April, 2025
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Ideas are more than feelings, more than thought. They’re in the way we lean into the wind, or how the hairs on our skin stand at attention. How a finger lingers on the corner of a page, anticipating an arrival, or how a paintbrush hesitates, caught between momentum and regret. Ideas don’t just exist – they happen.
We like to believe ideas belong to us, that we shape them like clay, holding them in our palms, hardened by the fires of research or deep contemplation. But ideas are not only what we carry – they happen between and around us – the footprints in the sand, laughter rippling through a room, the way a child is held by their mother. Ideas are both, in motion and in place.
Leo Bagus Purnomo is an artist and researcher, born in Central Java, Indonesia, who lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne. Working across diverse mediums – including installation, performance, and lukisan – his research and practice explore identity through the lenses of mysticism, critical theory, and conceptual art. By engaging with diverse fields of thought, he maps a constellation of ideas, bridging epistemic divisions to expand art’s capacity to foster deeper dialogues about selfhood and identity.
Patriot Mukmin is a PhD researcher at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. His research explores the artistic representation of Indonesian political struggles during the mid-Cold War (1955–65), examining post-colonial identity amid global ideological tensions that influenced the bloody events in Indonesia in 1965-66. His practice integrates text, archives, video, and his personal approach, woven photography. Solo exhibitions include Revolution: Cross Points of Power of 45–65 (Melbourne, 2024), La mer (La Rochelle, 2023), Empty Unempty (Narita, 2019), Treachery of Paintings (Jakarta, 2017), Vox Populi (Jeonbuk, 2016), and KUP: Cross Points of Power of 6698 (Bandung, 2015). He won the People’s Choice award in the 2024 UMSU Art Prize, University of Melbourne, and the 2022 Bandung Contemporary Art Award from ArtSociates, Indonesia.
Zico Albaiquni is an Indonesian painter whose work explores the socio-political, spiritual, and geopolitical challenges faced by the people of the Indonesian archipelago, both in the present and throughout its long history. Albaiquni examines the intergenerational transfer of knowledge, the enduring legacies of pre-colonial cultures, and how these histories continue to shape the lives of those who inhabit the archipelago today.
Albaiquni’s work is deeply rooted in the tradition of lukis (painting), and he engages with the Mooi Indie (‘beautiful Indies’) painting style – a genre that romanticised Indonesian landscapes and people during Dutch colonial rule. Albaiquni’s large-scale paintings break from conventional formats through trompe l’oeil illusions and irregular borders. He uses collage and historical imagery to interrogate accepted narratives and disrupt hierarchical representations. His work contributes to broader conversations on decolonization, exploring the transformative potential of artistic practice in reshaping and renewing cultural narratives, challenging traditional hierarchies, and expanding the definition of what art and culture can be.
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