Have you heard this one? Three artists walk into a bar: a Hawaiian, a Tasmanian and a Malaysian ... sorry, there's really no punch line, because race/culture jokes don't work without the support of widely embraced stereotypes, the kind that are either instantly distributed via global media or the result of generations of cultural proximity.

I am pleased to report that "Island to Island: A Collaboration Between Three International Universities," an internationally traveling group show now at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa Art Gallery, does not create or reinforce any stereotypes.

The project's stated goal is to "explore the differences and similarities of creative production generated from three distant and very distinct island cultures," bringing together faculty work from the University of Tasmania (the project initiators), Universiti Sains Malaysia, and the University of Hawai'i. Such a multifaceted view is timely as the post-colonial world continues to unfold and transform.

"Island to Island" is neither public-relations machine nor propaganda vehicle. It is, instead, a safe blend of formalism and accessible metaphors carried on currents of indirect dialogue. Let it begin with a summoning.

Malaysian artist Goh Chu Hiang's digital print "Phoenix" is based on the pure mathematical relationships of the fractal — where each part of the shape is made up of exact, but smaller, copies of itself. Three-dimensionally rendered in finely branching, ever-shrinking feather structures of orange, yellow and crimson, it unfolds against a black background. True to the mythical creature, "Phoenix" is both product and resource. Is this an artifact from some unexploited archipelago in cyberspace, where Malaysia, Tasmania and Hawai'i exist as part of the same fractal structure?

Perhaps Stephen Hudson, of the University of Tasmania, has visualized those islands. In his "Ocean Jewels," three crystalline ceramic sculptures rise from the display surface on starburst-shaped quicksilver slopes. Are they castles, citadels or volcanoes? Each tiered, faceted metallic form sits on a plateau of marbled turquoise glaze, its patterns emulating different depths of water. One can think of each "Ocean Jewel" as one of the three participating islands.

Three, it turns out, is the show's magic number. Though any given painting, photograph, illustration or sculpture is autonomous, their mingling triggers a dialogue of shared vocabulary that lurks beneath the formality. The Malaysian catalog essay affirms as much.

Zakaria Ali, an associate professor of art history at Universiti Sains, writes, "We may trace the origins of our style from point A or B. We may strive to do it a little differently, with a local touch, a personal hue. A sharp-eyed Tasmanian exclaims: 'I've seen that before, somewhere.' " Ali fully expects a similar remark from a Malaysian.

Tasmanian Sachico Mardon's "Dimensions Variable" exemplifies this long-distance exchange of the familiar. She uses the pre-fabricated elegance of a mysterious mechanical part's cardboard shipping mold to protect a hand-crafted clay form and a length of plastic pipe. These featureless forms' whiteness elevates them to abstraction, and cradling them in one of the thousands of disposable protective modules puts them on a strange and equal footing. By leveling the relationship between the mass-produced and the hand-made, Mardon reminds us that in this latest cycle of globalization, things we value are not always the product of our own hand, and that, nevertheless, protecting them is sometimes a matter of improvisation.

Extending this call-and-response between objects and their inferred points of origin or destination, Malaysian artist Tengku Azhari Tengku Azizan's "No. 25" provides an abstracted map of the routes people and things take throughout the Pacific. Its green thread, embroidered according to some missing map or invisible set of relationships, glows against a darker fabric textured like animal hide. Are these migration routes, a rogue fishing net or a sonar operator's advanced display? This is where the Hawai'i artists join the discussion in earnest. Peter Chamberlain's network of ears, hair triggers and aural flesh listens for trans-Pacific sonar pings, while Mary Babcock and Shigeru Miyamoto evoke the webs that sift the ocean currents — sometimes indiscriminately, as is the case with Miyamoto's reference to dolphins as victims of tuna fishing, and sometimes as a homecoming in terms of Babcock's literal weaving of the maps of her past into an ocean surface woven from fishing line.

In Yida Wang's "Abnormality 2-6N/11Y," a triptych of album-cover-size sandwiches of organic texture, complexity and color resembles aerial maps and biological samples under microscope slides. Biological networks. Avian flu? Some new strain of cultural illness?

Things in this ocean triangle come and go at all scales, with an evolving set of benefits and consequences: a point driven home with conclusive effectiveness by Debra Drexler's "Currents," which addresses Hawai'i, Tasmania and Malaysia in terms of their shared history with "exploration" and "discovery." In three paintings of colonial-era ships, shorelines and seascapes, she narratizes British wanderlust with an open, rough style that outlines and shades struggles and conflicts, and colors the dawns and dusks of indigenous and newly-minted Pacific cultures. Atop these scenes she adds brush-rendered interpretations of scientific visualizations, such as the hole in the ozone layer, linking two globe-spanning waves of cause-and-effect at the turns of two centuries.

Exploring "Island to Island" is like tapping into simultaneous trans-Pacific conversations, or pulling sample images out of the data cloud that envelops the planet. Actual collaboration was more logistical than artistic.

The results can be summed up by Tasmanian sculptor Zsolt Faludi's "Island" series. It features three exquisitely wrought white eggs of cracked ceramic, each sealed in a steel-capped glass jar. Does this make us quarantined specimens, carefully preserved time capsules or some new kind of seed? For the Hawaiian, the Tasmanian and the Malaysian, it's no joke.

David A.M. Goldberg is a cultural critic and writer. He is a lecturer in art, art history and American studies at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.