AD — Owen Pratt

AD (2026) - a film by Sriwhana Spong with score by Lachlan Anderson.

16mm transferred to HD video

Sriwhana Spong: HA HA HA was the first major solo exhibition in Australia of the London-based Balinese New Zealand/Aotearoan artist. Spanning the breadth of Spong’s practice, it includes film, sculpture, textiles and drawings and features two new works commissioned for the exhibition. The exhibition was curated by MUMA Senior Curator Pip Wallis and Melanie Oliver, and will travel to Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery, where it was co-curated with Director Abby Cunane in October 2026.

Mist moves through Sriwhana Spong: HA HA HA as a metaphor. This phenomenon signifies instability, unknowing as a means of knowing and refusal of cultural reductionism. The phenomenon of mist, gave rise to her new film, AD (2026) commissioned by MUMA and Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery for the exhibition. Shot on 16mm film, AD takes the form of a road trip to Dartmoor, England. The footage is accompanied by a text written by Spong in collaboration with AI large language models that extends Lord Byron’s final and unfinished poem Don Juan (1818-1824), written toward the end of the Industrial Revolution.

The film’s soundtrack, composed by Lachlan Anderson, is created using a new addition to Spong’s evolving personal orchestra. Instrument L (Made Rundu) proposes a sonic dimension to the aun-aun motif and its metamorphosis, through the work of the artist and her grandfather, into insects and mist. Since 2016 Spong has been creating a series of sculptural instruments inspired by the Balinese Gamelan—an ensemble of percussive instruments traditionally tuned to a pitch specific to the village to which it belonged. Each of Spong’s instruments is dedicated to a collaborator, interlocutor, family member or friend. At MUMA, the instruments will be activated by invited musicians at particular moments during the exhibition. At intervals Instrument C (Claire) and Instrument F (Alice W) will be played by a member of the MUMA team according to a score determining when each instrument is struck.

Recognising the practice of gamelan performance, from which Spong draws inspiration, components of the Gamelan Digul from the Music Archive of Monash University will be included in the exhibition. This Javanese instrument was made by Surakarta-born musician and political activist Bapak Pontjopangrawit (1893–c.1965) and fellow inmates in 1927 at the Dutch prison camp at Tanah Merah in the jungle on the Digul River, West Irian (now Papua New Guinea). The inmates crafted the Gamelan from items at hand, including food tins, old doors and animal hides. It was brought by the “Digulists” to Australia, presented to the Museum of Victoria in 1946 and later transferred to Monash University in 1976. The Gamelan Digul will be played at the opening event of the exhibition, a very rare event due to the fragility of the instrument.

The exhibition was accompanied by an exhibition catalogue featuring essays and poetic responses by Ariana Reines, Tessa Laird, Vera Mey, May Adadol Ingawanij and the artist, published by MUMA and Perimeter Editions. The book is edited by MUMA curators Pip Wallis and Stephanie Berlangieri and designed by Narelle Brewer for Perimeter Bureau.

I mixed + mastered the score by Australian composer Lachlan Anderson.