“HA takes plain air and turns it energetic,” writes poet Ariana Reines, connecting the three beats of this exhibition’s title to the expulsion of breath, “pumps it out of the body on the strength of the heart.” Bringing together two new commissions alongside film, sculpture, and musical instruments spanning over a decade of the artist’s practice, Sriwhana Spong: HA HA HA contends with questions of continuity and change, inheritance, and agency. These are works shaped by processes of translation, metamorphosis, and the transformation of energy from one state to another.

The aun-aun, a traditional Balinese motif representing the fullness or energetic intensity of apparently empty space, runs through the exhibition as both visual and conceptual reference. An important precursor to the new works, Spong’s film The painter-tailor (2019) focuses on an untitled painting made by Spong’s grandfather, I Gusti Made Rundu (1918–1993). Working in the Kamasan painting tradition, in his final painting her grandfather transformed the aun-aun motif into mosquito-like insects that reverberate with motion.

In 2025 Spong learnt how to paint the aun-aun from artist Ketut Murki in Bali. The method in which it is painted evoked, for Spong, the phenomenon of mist: “where water hangs suspended in the atmosphere, neither liquid nor air”, giving rise to her new film, AD (2026) commissioned by Monash University Museum of Art and Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery for this exhibition. Shot on 16mm film, AD (2026) follows a road trip to Dartmoor, England, arriving at the moor in opaque fog. The work draws on Lord Byron’s final and unfinished work, the satirical, episodic journey poem Don Juan (1818–1824), with a text written by Spong in collaboration with AI large language models that completes the poem, from the perspective of the heroine Adeline (AD). The film’s soundtrack, by composer and musician Lachlan Anderson, is created using Instrument L (Made Rundu) (2026), and 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.

Instrument L (Made Rundu) is the newest addition to an ongoing series of instruments inspired by the Balinese gamelan—an ensemble of percussive instruments traditionally tuned to a pitch specific to the village to which it belonged—a number of which are included in the exhibition. Since 2015 Spong has been creating these instruments, each of which is named for a collaborator, family member or friend. These instruments will be activated by invited musicians at the exhibition’s opening. Instrument C (Claire) and Instrument F (Alice W) will be intermittently played by a member of the gallery team according to a score determining when each is struck.

Throughout the new film, AD, frames of vivid blue, brilliant red, and flame-colour intermittently appear, the result of the 16mm being exposed to electrical current. Some of these disappear as soon as they arrive, almost eluding visual recognition altogether so that they exist only in recall. Moving us through states of knowing and unknowing, intimacy and distance, these works ultimately emphasise the condition of mobility itself.

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 where it was curated by Pip Wallis and Melanie Oliver and shown earlier this year; for Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery the exhibition is curated by Abby Cunnane. The exhibition is generously supported by The Chartwell Trust, Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa, and the Henry Moore Foundation.