Sriwhana Spong: HA HA HA brings together new work by London-based Balinese New Zealand artist Sriwhana Spong, alongside film, sculpture, musical instruments and textile works spanning the last decade and a half of the artist’s career. Concerned with how knowledge is encountered and made perceptible, with states of unknowing, intuition, and belief, the exhibition traces these ideas from well-known and well-loved early works through to two new works commissioned for the project.

AD (2026), a film shot in Dartmoor National Park in south-west England, takes as its starting point Lord Byron’s unfinished poem Don Juan (1818–1824), in which the story of the heroine Adeline breaks off unresolved. Spong worked with AI large language models to extend and ‘complete’ Byron’s text, and Adeline returns in this film as a restless presence. The film’s soundtrack by Lachlan Anderson is composed with the Instrument L (Made Rundu) (2026), developed by instrument maker Ryan Nicol in collaboration with Anderson. It is one of eight instruments in the exhibition that the artist has developed as a personal gamelan orchestra, and a performance will take place at the opening.

Sriwhana Spong: HA HA HA is presented by Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery, Te Whanganui-a-Tara / Wellington in partnership with Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA Naarm / Melbourne and is supported by Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa, the Henry Moore Foundation, and The Chartwell Trust. The exhibition was curated by Pip Wallis and Melanie Oliver for MUMA, and ran 24 April – 28 June 2026; for Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery the exhibition is curated by Abby Cunnane.

Sriwhana Spong was born in Auckland in 1979. Spong studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2001 before completing a Master of Fine Art at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. She was awarded a doctorate from the University of Auckland in 2021, with a thesis examining the practices of medieval and early modern women mystics. Spong currently lives and works in London. Several residencies have shaped her practice, including the International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York; Gasworks, London; and AMANT, Siena.

Spong has presented solo exhibitions nationally and internationally, including Luzpomphia, Michael Lett, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2023), The Poem is a Temple, Western Front, Vancouver (2021), Ida-Ida, Spike Island, Bristol (2019), and A hook but no fish, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Ngāmotu New Plymouth (2018). Her work has been included in major group exhibitions such as the 17th Istanbul Biennial (2022), Trust and Confusion, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2022), Honestly Speaking, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2020), and the 18th Biennale of Sydney (2012). She was shortlisted for the Walters Prize in 2012 and 2019.