Tania Nugent : The Asia Pacific Triennial is the most extensive exhibition of contemporary art from our region held anywhere in the world. With 100 artists from Australia and 25 from throughout Asia and the Pacific, held every three years, it's the flagship event for the Queensland Art Gallery and it's huge. It runs for four months and takes up just about every inch of space, here at the Gallery of Modern Art.

Maud Page - Curator, Contemporary Pacific Art: It's the only event in the whole world that actually every time looks at Pacific Art and Pacific culture and it places it in the context of Asian art as well. So it's the Asia Pacific Triennial.

The last Asia Pacific Triennial had 700,000 people visiting. It's a real way for us to show the incredibleness of Pacific art, the way that it's so diverse and the breadth of it, but also the way that it's still living and still connecting with people.

Tania Nugent: Here in this prestigious location, amongst the works of the region's most exciting artists, a group of youths from Vanuatu have presented a series of prints that just leap out of the wall and make me smile, especially when I think about how far removed this location is from the environment in which they were created, Ohlen village in the capital Port Villa.
The people of Ohlen Village are not native to this area. They are settlers from nearby Mataso Island.

Jack Martau - Mataso islander: Mataso is a small island so we can't afford to find money for the living, so some of us have to come to Vila to work for some money to help in the village Island.

Tania Nugent: There are fewer than 100 people left on their Island, most of the Mataso - more than 200 - have moved here.

Jack Martau: We live here to put us together, because we live in a small island, which is very small and them we decide to live together to help each other.

Tania Nugent: This collection of paintings, produced by nine Mataso youths, reflects their new urban environment.

Maud Page: I think what I really love about the Mataso prints initially was when I first saw them was the brightness of them. They are reall, really vibrant, they communicate immediately. For me they have an international language, but they are seeped in tradition.

Herveline Lit, artist: Mi first statim pent, mi pentim wan pigeon. Pigeon blong Mataso. (When I first started painting, I painted a pigeon. Pigeon from Mataso.)

Jack Martau: Some of them draw things like to make us remember all our custom. If you ask one of those boys, 'why do you draw papaw?', he'll say because it save us after the hurricane.

Eddy Bule, artist: Mifela I mekim fullup ol stail which em about kustom laif bilong mifela. (We make it full of the style which is about our kustom laif.)

Jack Martau: All our artists are not well educated boys. Some of them don't know how to work, they didn't go to school, so they do the artist to help them for their living.

Maud Page: I think a lot of the Asian artists get to travel the world, experience different things, look at different materials, look at different techniques, while I think in the Pacific there is a different reason for travelling or there may be no travelling at all. Having said that you can't ghettoise it and say there is nothing happening, there are arts schools in the Pacific, like in Samoa, in PNG, there are quite a few. Things are happening but it's at a different pace.

Tania Nugent: "Polyfantastica" is the work of Hawaiian artist Solomon Enos. His illustrations tell stories based around Polynesian mythology and they've been presented here at the Asia Pacific Triennial, for the first time in comic book form.

It is a contemporary art exhibition but there are a lot of things, I guess like with all cultures, where they tie back their tradition, to their custom.

Maud Page: Yes, That's what I think makes the Pacific really interesting is that there is that history, not that the Asian artworks don't, but in the Pacific we particularly see that to and froing, that conversation with the past that occurs.

Tania Nugent: This huge four metre Masi - the traditional Fijian bark cloth - is the work of three Pacific women, New Zealand artist Robin White and Leba Toki and Bale Jione from Fiji.

Leba Toki, artist: First of all, it's not traditional, a part of it is traditional work we are doing. We have a story about it, the piece of tapa we have been making.

Bale Jione, artist: The name of our work is tai tai vo wai. It means a new garden. So we plant everything in one garden, like dalo, taro, and pineapple, massi, tapa, can plant in our garden, just like the world, different people around the world can live in this world.

Leba Toki: Because of so many difficulties in our country and this tapa is for Fiji.

Tania Nugent: These sculptures from Ambrym Island in Vanuatu, represent for the first time, the inclusion of customary objects in the Asia Pacific Triennial.

Principal Norbet, Ambrym Islander: They come from many various nasaress, various places where men meet.

Tania Nugent: So these are all very traditional works that are still being produced today?

Principal Norbet: Yes, they are all traditional. Some of them are very old. Those in the front are more recent than the ones behind.

Maud Page: Bringing the customary objects says that they are alive now and that people are making them now so they are contemporary art as well.

Pacific art comes in many different ways, and often I have to think about how that sits next to Asian art, and Asian art has had a lot more, to be frank, a lot more resources poured into it. There is a lot more money to be able to create art. People have the luxury of time to create art. But I think in the Pacific, I think people are often working hard and there is less materials and less money to be able to work on what we would call more conservative media like drawing and painting. But as you can see it sits fantastically, you wouldn't be able to tell and that's what's so wonderful is that the Pacific comes out really well and strong because of all the different elements that we have been talking about.

Principal Norbet: I was surprised when I came in first, they appeared in a new world, but they seem to be identical that from the ones that are in the island. Their spirits align, even though they have gone through many countries. I feel like they are still in Ambrym. I think they are happy here.