Bleeding Out
Leo Bagus Purnomo
30 Jul–23 Aug 2025
What is batik? It’s a question I keep asking — about what resists and what seeps through, not just wax and dye, but memory and belonging. A slow unfurling of gestures older than my name, passed through hands I’ve never touched. They come from a place my body remembers even as my mouth no longer holds the words. Sometimes, bleeding out isn’t always red; it’s the slow drift of daylight turning to dusk, the echo of a memory into the present, or laughter rippling through a room. Maybe selfhood isn’t a body or a place, but a wind carrying a thousand different whispers.
These works draw on traditional Indonesian batik methods alongside screenprinting and painterly gestures. But they’re not about trying to return to a supposed origin or reclaiming a lost cultural identity. Instead, this body of work is a meditation on identity and inheritance as a perpetual process of becoming. The dye stains my skin for days, and my clothes forever. I wonder if, by definition or extension, I’ve become batik.
Read the full exhibtion text available below.
What is batik? It’s a question I keep asking, about what resists and what seeps through. Not just wax and dye, but memory and belonging. These works draw on traditional Indonesian batik methods alongside screen-printing and painterly gestures — a meditation on identity, inheritance, and becoming.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Leo Bagus Purnomo is an artist and researcher, born in Central Java, Indonesia, who lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Working across diverse mediums – including installation, performance, and lukisan – his research and practice explore identity through the lenses of mysticism, critical theory, and conceptual art. By engaging with diverse fields of thought, he maps a constellation of ideas, bridging epistemic divisions to expand art’s capacity to foster deeper dialogues about selfhood and identity.