Founded by Niyanta Sharma, an artist and architectural designer with Indian heritage, and Wesley Hauler-Winterford, a nutritionist and cook with Māori heritage. Together, Playte explores the joy of gastronomy
2026
Blakdot Gallery
Grained is a cross-cultural group exhibition curated in partnership with Blak Dot Gallery and Nongkrong Festival. This exhibition stitches together teachings of intergenerational and collective cultural practices, using rice as both nourishment and a vessel of shared histories across the Global South.
It brought together artists from diverse migrant and Indigenous communities who share a cultural connection to rice, Grained explores themes of migration, identity, and belonging. Drawing influence from the Rice Theory of Culture, the exhibition examines rice-based processes - harvesting, storing, planting, and communal sharing – as catalysts for interdependent ways of living.
Through installation, sculpture, spatial intervention, mixed-media works, and public programming, it highlighted how a single ingredient connects people across borders. Grained positions rice as a powerful symbol of sustenance, resilience, and interdependence, opening fresh conversations about cultural experience in contemporary Australia and the wider Global South.
Public Programming: Opening Performance, Kulture Kitchen, The Politics of Rice Talk, Stick Together Workshop. Bungdegan Closing Performance,
Rice Water
The work refers to the severe water crisis in Punjab caused by rice cultivation, where millions of litres of water are consumed annually for rice farming, leading to rapidly depleting groundwater. A video - on loop - depicts the artist washing rice, a rhythmic, ancestral tradition. The artist is seen drinking the rice water, a subtle nod to her own role in this historical narrative, and embodying themes of consumption. Alongside the video is a ‘mud print' of her Nani Ma’s rice farm in Punjab, where for generations her family has survived solely through agriculture. The property is a reminder of when wheat and rice were a personal means of survival and nourishment, yet now may be a leading cause of drought and erasure.
full video can be viewed here
Rice to Meet you
There’s a common saying in Indonesia, “if you haven’t eaten rice, then you haven’t eaten.”
Rice, from the lush green fields (sawah) to the nasi filling plates and bellies, is an iconic part of daily life and landscape in Bali. However, not that long ago rice was not the only “nasi, sega, sego” (Indonesian, Balinese, Javanese). “Rice to meet you” is a multisensory installation of uncooked musings exploring the role of rice past and present in Indonesian culture. Centered on one of Sukawati’s ricefields where traditional crop rotation is still practiced, the work encourages the audience to experience the “sawah” (ricefield) and musing of their own.
Iridescence
Iridescence speaks to the ratio methods of cooking rice. The ‘bed’ of rice approaches the dispensability of comfort, exploring what non-capitalistic abundance might feel like.People are constantly asked to want more and more - being led to believe we deserve it all for the promise of satisfaction. Iridescence is a reminder of the many ways we receive nourishment from the complex grain.
Priscille is Mauritian and with Mauritius close proximity to Madagascar, they heard elders talk of a pearl rice from Madagascar and the deeply rooted history of rice.Pricille’s uncle would almost have a tear in his eye, reminiscing of the rice eaten as children, that glistened in the light like pearls.
In her own imagination and visual language, Priscille was always fascinated by rice’s sacred beauty. Her work is a resting place made from rice, with a devotional space that represents the harmony that can exist in a kitchen through respect and sustainable practices.
Priscille hopes the glistening light helps you recall your own memory within the piece
Lem Nasi Cinta (A Lovely Rice Glue)
Stemming from simple memories of my childhood, this work carries those memories forward by using leftover rice to create glue as a quiet expression of gratitude, a way of giving back to the rice and the universe. Using leftover rice, the glue becomes a simple way to express what we receive every day: food, soil, rain, labour, made through our hands, time, and care.
In this work, everyone is invited to use the rice glue and write a love letter to rice itself, to the earth, to the universe, to farmers, to their mothers, or for themselves. Everyone is encouraged to place their letters on an 'offerings wall' or seal them inside envelopes as gratituted, gently returning their words to the universe. Through these soft, participatory gestures, the work holds space for gratitude, presence, reminding us that even the smallest acts can carry meaning, connection, and love.
Bundegan/Bunnings-an
Two structures stand side by side: one Bundengan, a traditional Javanese shadow puppet theater that has witnessed countless wayang performances in Java, and one “Bunnings-an,” constructed from Australian grocery and hardware store materials.
In Indonesian, the ending ‘-an’ switches a verb into an object, so this is a playful homage to making home in diaspora. The original Bundengan has been around the world - from its original home in Java, to being used by the Irish artist Bianca Gannon, and now finding its home with local musician Ria Soemardjo and Gamelan Dananda.
Bundengan is a hat, a shelter and a musical instrument. It is used by Javanese duck herders as their ducks swim through rice farms as a way to control pests and insects. The duck herder would sit under the Bundengan and sing songs accompanied by the simple strings and ‘thumb piano’ that is tuned to traditional gamelan tunings.
The “Bunnings-an”, meanwhile, asks what happens when traditional forms meet new landscapes. How do we rebuild musical landscapes and spaces with what's available.
This improvised theater becomes a monument to diaspora ingenuity and to the ways displaced communities carry cultural memory and remake it with local materials. This also mirrors stories of other musical instruments remade and reimagined by those who have chosen, or have been forced, to live elsewhere.
Together, these structures speak to continuity and transformation. They ask us to consider what gets preserved, what gets adapted, and how cultural forms remain alive through creative reinvention. Both are theaters of possibility—one seasoned by Indonesian rain and rice fields, one imagined into being in Australian suburbia, both capable of casting shadows that tell stories of belonging.
Rice Paper Ties
Rice Paper Ties is a collaborative tapestry made from sewn rice paper and thread. It explores the material’s brittleness, translucency, and crosshatched texture to form organic, layered imagery. Unfolding as an experimental form, the work reflects Claudia and Jenn’s playful ideas of place, resilience, and diasporic connection.