Alas-alasan

Alas-alasan is an exhibition presenting new textiles by Javanese-born, Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Leo Bagus Purnomo. These artworks feature traditional batik motifs of animals and plants, where alas (the forest) represents a liminal place between the earth and gunung (the mountain) — symbolic of heaven.

Leo’s work draws on traditional Indonesian batik — a wax-resist dyeing technique — alongside screenprinting and painterly gestures, asking what resists and what seeps through: not just wax and dye, but also memory and belonging. Alas-alasan is a Javanese batik motif that symbolises life and fertility through its depiction of forest and wildlife. In local traditions, the forest also represents a sacred realm where spirits dwell and mythological heroes journey. This sense of harmony and deep connection with the world and its beings, both visible and invisible, lies at the heart of Javanese culture. Through these works, Leo reflects on what it means to be an Indonesian diaspora artist living on stolen land.

In recent decades, anthropology has undergone an ‘ontological turn,’ in which contemporary scholars argue that the discipline’s task is not merely to identify social relations, but to understand how those relations are conceptualised on their own terms. This shift moves focus from a single, objective world to how different cultures interpret and inhabit different realities. It advocates taking non-Western understandings of reality seriously — including non-human agency — rather than reducing them to mere cultural perspectives. Rather than assuming kinship or community as universal structures, this approach examines how different cultures imagine these categories, which may include non-human, non-sentient, and immaterial beings.

For Leo, these works become more than a material exploration of cultural identity and tradition — they also function as a lens for considering what harmony and a deeper connection to the world and its beings might mean in the here and now.