'Reality & Invention' focuses on artist responses to social change experienced throughout Asia since the 1980s, and the emergence of realism as a defining artistic strategy of the period. This was a time when Asian artists rose to international prominence.

Taking in movements as diverse as Japan’s New Wave, Indian figurative-narrative art and Indonesia’s politically charged New Art Movement these arresting and innovative artworks are engaged with political and social structures, religion and spirituality, gender and sexuality and more.

The exhibition features many well-known works from the Gallery’s Collection alongside some rarely seen holdings of major significance.