Sentul Biennale: To Our Friends

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6 - 21 December 2025

A+ Works of Art, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The Sentul Biennale is guided by a single question: what do biennales still have to offer us today?

The biennale as we know it finds itself overburdened and overdetermined by the structures by which it is propped up: diplomatic ties, corporate and state funding, unspoken art world networks and hierarchies, not to mention the impossible standard of internationally sanctioned “taste”. Amidst the institutional binds it has created for itself, we have forgotten the pleasure of the biennale as a site of unexpected encounters between artists, viewers, and contexts.

Audaciously calling itself a biennale, the Sentul Biennale gently pokes fun of the biennale as an institution and its own ambitions in the face of spatial, financial, and structural limitations—while being earnestly committed to the idea that biennales still have something to offer. In response to recent attempts to examine the foundational roles of friendship, kinship, and community in contemporary art, Sentul Biennale: To Our Friends turns its attention to the moment of introduction between friends as a point of consideration. 

2 November 2025 - 5 April 2026

ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The ILHAM Art Show is a triannual exhibition platform for established and emerging artists alike, to experiment and make new work. Those selected to participate in the ILHAM Art Show will be awarded an art production grant to be put towards the making of their new work. The ILHAM Art Show serves as a platform to support and promote contemporary art in Malaysia and stimulate lively public discussion and critical debate. 

In this group exhibition, Gomes will be presenting a new series of artwork, consisting of embroidered aluminium pieces and paper-mache sculptures as a love-letter to illegal no-parking structures, commonly found on the streets of KL. He writes:

" A Study of Makeshift Markers is a series made with the intent of paying homage to the improvised assemblages used by members of the public to “chope” space. These makeshift markers, while not legally recognized; are widely accepted when it comes to marking out boundaries in public or quasi public spaces, especially for parking spots. Often made from discarded objects such as broken traffic cones, paint buckets, and tyres, waste is turned into urban intervention with a renewed purpose. Each marker is unique yet formulaic: consisting of a weighted base with a mast-like protrusion for vertical visibility. Occasionally, one is fortunate enough to stumble across rare variations with a more personal touch, such as a child’s pinwheel toy, leftover detergent bottles or a strange configuration of scrap pipes, giving some insight into each author’s aesthetic sensibilities. 

The markers are sourced and documented from areas the artist frequents, from evening walks and daily commutes. They are sketched onto aluminium sheets which are then painstakingly hand-drilled and embroidered into, along with the coordinates of each marker’s last recorded location. This act of permanently drilling holes into the metal juxtaposes against the more fragile embroidery threads, emphasizing the transient yet semi-permanent nature of these structures and memorializing their roles as temporary landmarks. The aluminium sheets used in the series are sourced from defective pieces and offcuts from suppliers near the artist’s studio, keeping the spirit of reuse and repurpose in mind, aluminium also being one of the most widely recycled materials in the world. 

This series also consists of free-standing paper-mache sculptures, in which the artist attempts his own take on a makeshift marker, casting forms of regular objects from his own daily routine in recycled exhibition catalogues, adding his own modest contribution to this collection of everyday oddities."

8 - 12 October 2005

Hin Bus Depot, Penang, Malaysia

1000 Tiny Artworks will be exhibited in Penang for the very first time outside Kuala Lumpur. This much-anticipated third edition, presented at Hin Bus Depot, continues the spirit of accessibility and inclusivity that has defined the project since its inception in 2021, bringing art closer to the community while supporting both emerging and established artists.

Featuring a fresh lineup of 100 artists, each contributing 10 original works measuring 10cm × 10cm, the exhibition showcases an impressive total of 1,000 tiny artworks, despite their modest size, these works embody the imagination, skill, and individuality of their makers.

Since its first edition, 1000 Tiny Artworks has championed experimentation, gathering artists across practices and perspectives to create works that are modest in scale yet rich in character and vision. This Penang edition builds upon that legacy, presenting a platform that recognises new and established voices.

Join us as we celebrate this collaboration and discover a thousand stories told through the smallest of canvases.

26 - 28 September 2025

Marine Messe Fukuoka Hall B

Fukuoka City, Fukuoka, Japan

A+ Works of Art is excited to announce our participation in Art Fair Asia Fukuoka (AFAF) 2025. This year marks Art Fair Asia Fukuoka (AFAF) tenth year running, with support from Fukuoka City via the Fukuoka Art Next initiative and Culture Vision Japan Inc. 

We will be showing three artists, including five works by Joshua Kane Gomes. 

‘For all the precious things I’ve lost’ is a series of sculptures that touch on involuntary recall and the erosion of memory. This series borrows its premise from Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time, in which the grown-up narrator is flooded by a cascade of childhood memories after taking a bite of a madeleine dipped in tea.

The experience of memories triggered by sensory cues, known as the Proust Phenomenon, is paired with Gomes’ own recurring visual symbolism such as the sinking black liquid: a reference to the temporal in-between space of limbo, in which he reimagines as a dark ocean, a plane that is visually obscure yet teeming with motion and sound; as well as felted dust bunnies: alluding to lost connections and the attrition of memory within the passage of time.

 A+ WORKS of ART is pleased to present, ’Lost time and the motions of the in-between’, a solo exhibition by Joshua Kane Gomes, curated by Alain Zedrick Camiling. 

“What happens when a motion is repeated, isolated, and/or amplified? When a sound, whether heard or merely sensed—a drip, a creak, a pulse—lingers longer than it should, what kind of resonance does it leave behind?

Lost time and the motions of the in-between is built around lingering: around moments that don’t quite end, around the tension between movement and stillness, and around presence and absence. It convenes kinetic sculptural configurations of hands, linocut prints, sonic fragments, and a video loop that attune us to the muffled choreography and scenography of the mundane.”

June 2024 - June 2025

ILHAM Gallery Mobile Museum

In conjunction with the 10th anniversary of ILHAM Gallery, we are embarking on an ambitious and unique outreach project – a mobile gallery housed in a 40-foot climate-controlled shipping container which will travel throughout Malaysia by truck to reach a wide variety of audiences.

The project entitled SKOLA GAMBAR ILHAM is an extension of ILHAM Gallery’s commitment to make Malaysian art accessible to everyone, particularly to those who would not normally enjoy access. ILHAM Gallery will kick off Phase 1 of SKOLA GAMBAR ILHAM in July & August 2025 when the mobile gallery truck will travel to communities at low cost flats around the Klang Valley.

The specially curated exhibition onboard the mobile gallery truck is entitled Ceritalah and features artworks by 12 contemporary Malaysian artists - Anisa Abdullah, Ho Mei Kei, Ismail Hashim, Joshua Kane Gomes, Kide Badarudin, Nadirah Zakariya, Padil Osman, Pangrok Sulap, RafieeGhani, Sharon Chin, Vincent Leong, and Yau Bee Ling.  The exhibition offers an accessible selection of contemporary art with a wide range of techniques from painting, printmaking, collage and batik, to photography, sculpture, and video. The exhibition explores the way artists create narratives about contemporary life in Malaysia, whether documenting our daily life in the city and kampung, or reflecting on our relationships with our environment, our families, and each other. 

The exhibition will be accompanied by educational material and texts which will give viewers, particularly students, some background into the artworks as well as help to stimulate discussion and learning through reflective experience.  There will also be workshops and other programmes organized at each site visit.