Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser, Piña, Why is the Sky Blue?, 2021, video installation with open sound, virtual reality headsets, pillows, 3-D printing on woven piña fabric. Courtesy of the artists & ChertLüdde, Berlin, Germany.
Teho Ropeyarn, Wintinganhu (sister-in-law), 2023, vinyl-cut prints on board, sound. Installation view, The National 4: Australian Art Now 2023, Carriageworks, Sydney. Courtesy of the artist and Onespace Gallery, Brisbane. Photo: Zan Wimberley
Atong Atem, Banksia, 2021, single-channel, colour video, open sound and vinyl. Commissioned by RISING and Illuminate Adelaide in partnership with The Neilson Foundation. Courtesy of MARS and the artist.
Latent Community, NEROMANNA, 2017, single-channel, colour video, open sound. Courtesy of Latent Community, Athens, Greece.
Shivanjani Lal, Aise Aise Hai (How we remember), 2023, 87 cast sugarcane stalks, plaster, cement, turmeric, calcium hydroxide and brass. Courtesy of the artist, Gadigal, NSW.
Portrait of Cora-Allan. Image courtesy of the artist.
Napolean Oui, Walbirr-walbirr (Butterfly), 2012, etching and aquatint on paper, edition 1/12. Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2012. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Kick Arts, Cairns.
Napolean Oui, Mimu (Water lily), 2012, etching and aquatint on paper, edition 1/12. Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2012. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and Kick Arts, Cairns.
The group exhibition How we remember tomorrow centres the relationship between culture, tradition and the ocean: it illuminates how intergenerational storytelling, tied to oceanic themes, might counter and subvert settler-colonial narratives and legacies.
As assistant curator Isabella Baker explains, “The curatorial team engaged with artists whose practice connects with an understanding of the watery spaces of our planet as ancestral archives and sources of knowledge, which carry stories and cultural practices.”
Among the 13 artists and collaborations are Lisa Reihana, Brook Garru Andrew, Atong Atem, and Sonja Carmichael and Elisa Jane Carmichael. Mediums range from sculpture, installation and photography to video work, virtual reality (VR) and performance. The show’s title is taken from a 2023 sculptural piece by Shivanjani Lal that is, Baker says, “a monument to the cultural memory of indentured labourers throughout the Great Ocean [Pacific Ocean]”.
Baker also highlights Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser’s multimedia installation Piña, Why Is the Sky Blue?, 2021, which features video, VR and 3D printing on woven piña fabrics. Also notable is the video work Neromanna, 2017, from the duo Latent Community, about a village in Greece that was displaced due to the construction of a dam in 1969. Yet the majority of exhibiting works focus on the Pacific, showing how “oceanic spaces are inextricable to the survival of all species”.
Taken together, the artworks are a collective prompt to “consider the sea as memory, the sea as history, and that the sea bears and channels time and space in every direction”, says Baker. “We hope that visitors engage deeply with artists’ vital practices of storytelling, submerging the colonial archive, and giving rise to futures that are sustained by Indigenous technologies, knowledge, kinship, constellations and planet-centred governance structures.”
How we remember tomorrow
UQ Art Museum
On now—15 June
The paintings of Betty Kuntiwa Pumani form a part of a larger, living archive on Antaṟa, her mother’s Country. More than maps, they speak to ancestral songlines, place and ceremony.
A presentation of works by Robert Mapplethorpe curated by the British editor Edward Enninful, Enninful x Mapplethorpe, at the 2025 Ballarat International Foto Biennale, finds resonance in opposites while turning binary thinking on its head.
Auckland-born and raised artist Lisa Reihana is ever the optimist, creating two new works signifying social cohesion to hang outside two Australian arts venues—Ngununggula, and Sydney Contemporary at Carriageworks —just as dark divisions seek to undermine the value of migration and Indigenous sovereignty.
Spring1883, Melbourne’s interactive and immersive fair returns, celebrating the collision of contemporary art installed amongst 18th century decor of The Hotel Windsor.
Evie Adasal’s show Light and Space unveils a series of works that look at the intersection of design, light and space at The Garden Gallery in Sydney.
In Cézanne to Giacometti: Highlights from Museum Berggruen / Neue Nationalgalerie currently showing at the National Gallery of Australia, viewers are invited to share a journey through the history of modern art from across the globe.
