Works by Mia Khin Boe and Gian Manik will be included in the annual curated group exhibition Octopus at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne. Now in its 26th edition, this year’s exhibition is curated by Krisna Sudharma of Non Frasa Gallery, Bali, Ubud, Indonesia.
On the genesis and concerns driving the exhibition, Sudharma states the following, “The premise of this exhibition lies in a phonetic accident, a slip of the tongue between two languages that reveals the tension of our shared geography. On one hand, there is the melange: a mixture, a medley, a distinctively anti-essentialist state where Indonesian and Australian identities blur and entangle. On the other, echoing in the local vernacular, is the Balinese imperative melahang: a command to handle with extreme care, to fix what is broken, or to split a material along its natural grain.”
Octopus 2026: Melange
11 April – 30 May 2026
Gertude Contemporary
Preston, VIC