Exhibition
Jasmine Togo-Brisby: ungeographic
26 July–9 November 2025
A large-scale exhibition by internationally acclaimed, Australian South Sea artist Jasmine Togo-Brisby.
A large-scale exhibition by internationally acclaimed, Australian South Sea artist Jasmine Togo-Brisby.
The ambitious scale of Jasmine’s work – some measure almost ten-metres – means that most audiences have only ever experienced them as individual installations. Jasmine’s works from across Aotearoa and Australia can now be viewed together for the first time – brought together in the exhibition ungeographic.
Jasmine Togo-Brisby has been pivotal in raising awareness of Australian South Sea Islanders, the Australian-born descendants of people brought to Australia as “indentured labourers” from over eighty Moana nations between 1847 and 1904. Her own great-great-grandparents were taken from Vanuatu to work as domestic servants. For over a decade, Jasmine has created large artworks that draw on icons and materials of the Pacific slave trade to create a specific visual language unique to South Sea Islanders’ histories and experiences. Together, Jasmine’s works can be read as a form of counter-mapping. Like a red thread strung across a corkboard, Jasmine’s art practice crosses geographical and contextual divides to connect the places and spaces, fragments and traces where South Sea Islanders can be found.
This mid-career, survey exhibition includes photography, video and installations and is accompanied by a beautiful publication of the same name. Designed by Extended Whānau, it features texts by Jasmine Togo-Brisby, Simone Togo-Brisby, Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Ruth McDougall, Imelda Miller and Nina Tonga.
About the artist
Jasmine Togo-Brisby is an Australian South Sea Islander artist based in Meanjin/Brisbane, Australia. In 2015, Jasmine moved to Wellington in search of a place for South Sea identity within Pasifika dialogues. She earned her BFA in 2017 and MFA in 2022 from Massey University, Wellington.
Jasmine credits Pasifika and Māori communities in Aotearoa with encouraging her to take up space for South Sea identity and supporting her artistic practice. After many years in Aotearoa, she returned to Meanjin/Brisbane in 2022 to continue creating these spaces in Australia.
While Jasmine has since presented several solo exhibitions and participated in many significant group shows; she is particularly proud to have been a part of group exhibitions that took South Sea identity to the global stage: the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2024–25); the Bangkok Art Biennale, Museum Siam, Thailand (2024); the Busan Biennale, Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, South Korea (2024); sis: Pacific Art 1980–2023, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2023–24); AdelaideBiennial of Australian Art: Inner Sanctum, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2024); Wansolmoana, The Australian Museum, Sydney (2023–), and Declaration: A Pacific Feminist Agenda, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2022).
