The first major exhibition of artworks by executed 'Bali nine' member Myuran Sukumaran will be shown next year, comprising more than 100 works.
The exhibition forms part of the Sydney Festival and has been co-curated by Sukumaran's friend and mentor Ben Quilty, a former Archibald prize winner.
"He made the works on Kerobokan prison in Nusa Kembongan on death row,” Quilty said.
“He was such a brave young man just fighting so hard to become a better person and constantly asking for forgiveness from his family and his friends and who made this body of work against the odds."
Sukumaran and fellow Sydneysider Andrew Chan were arrested in 2005 for attempting to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia.
The pair became respected leaders in the prison, but their pleas for clemency were rejected by the Indonesian government.
Festival Director Wesley Enoch said some of the canvases bear the signatures of other prisoners who were executed on the same day as the Australian pair.
"I went and stood in that studio and was so moved to touch this canvas,” Enoch said.
“On the back of some of the canvases are signatures of those people who were all executed on the same day. And you just get really quite shaken up by it because you realise that in this country we did away with capital punishment... but that in other places it still happens."
Quilty said some of the paintings became quite dark in Sukumaran’s final days when he was locked away in solitary confinement.
“The night before the execution he stayed up all night and he painted from the minute the sun went down all the way through the next day until they took him away," Quilty said.
Australian Myuran Sukumaran in his prison art studio. (AAP) Source: AAP
“When you know that the painting is (from) the second last day of Myuran being alive, they're incredibly powerful."
Enoch said the paintings are a tribute to the healing power of art.
"I think that art has the power to rehabilitate and to redeem people," he said.
"And also it can change your soul. If you have an outlet, if you have a way of expressing yourself, you can heal yourself as well."
