The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) was initiated by the Queensland Art Gallery in 1993 to focus on the extraordinary contemporary art of Asia, the Pacific and Australia. APT is the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art’s most internationally recognised contemporary art project. The exhibition’s immediate audience has grown from 60 000 in 1993 to more than 600 000 in 2015, and the opportunities it provides for scholarship, cultural dialogue and engagement with diverse communities are similarly expansive.

Exploring contemporary practices in Asia, the Pacific and Australia forms the basis of the Triennial’s curatorial framework, which continually questions definitions of contemporary art, the geography inferred by the exhibition’s title and the context and relevance of art in different societies throughout the region. APT is noted for engaging audiences in significant and innovative practices from the Asia Pacific.

Women’s Wealth is a major project commissioned for APT9. The project draws its title from anthropological debate in the 1970s over the value of women’s material cultural practices in Papua New Guinea. Some 40 years later, Women’s Wealth celebrates women’s material culture in Bougainville and nearby Choiseul and Shortlands Islands. New voices are drawn into the story to explore connections between these practices and the indigenous knowledge and governance systems of the Bougainville and Solomons people. Objects created by women in groups are valued not only for their aesthetic beauty but also the connections they enable with the land and kin, both living and deceased. The work resists forces of alienated labour, mechanised production and environmental destruction that have had such a devastating impact on this region. In addition to being significant forms of cultural and artistic expression, the works in Women’s Wealth are statements of cultural resilience and pride.