Uramat Mugas (Uramat Story Songs) 2021 is a collaborative project inspired by the dynamic ceremonial practices of the Uramat families who live in and around the township of Gaulim in East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. The project centres around and seeks to honour this community’s gift in 2018 of more than 70 ceremonial objects to QAGOMA through their interlocutor, the late Gideon Kakabin, and Uramat leader Lazarus Eposia. Exhibiting spectacular sculptural qualities, some of these objects — the iconic Qawat (kavat) and madaska masks — may be known to audiences familiar with museum collections and displays of what is often termed Baining ‘art’. For APT, the Uramat families with whom the Gallery is working have sought to expand beyond existing museum display models to explore and create new contexts to engage audiences with the breadth of their lived culture.

Led by Lazarus Eposia, the group has worked with local videographers and artists Keith Armstrong and David Bridie, as well as staff from QAGOMA and the Queensland University of Technology to develop an immersive installation in which these spiritual entities return virtually to ples (place) via the recorded sounds of Uramat songs, the mesmerising beats of their bamboo orchestra and the sights and sounds of village life. Within the exhibition space, audiences are invited to move through a sequence of events and ceremonies, directed by the speed and the intensity of drumming and singing. Along the way, there are opportunities to engage with groups of the Uramat’s extensive pantheon of spirit figures, the masks that herald their presence and their associated stories.

_{Uramat Mugas (Uramat Story Songs) is a Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Project developed for display in 'The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art' with the support of the Indigenous Uramat Identity Group of East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. The project was achieved with the assistance of Queensland University of Technology Creative Industries and supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Cultural Diplomacy Grants Program.}