Whenever time and technology are brought together there’s often a dystopian vision behind the marriage. Yet it’s more telling to think of technology as a neutral space of speculation: a way of imagining potential futures, enlightening as well as alarming. Future Eaters at Monash University Museum of Art considers not only what it means to make sculpture in our current digital age, but how sculpture connects to technology and the future.
Featuring both Australian and international artists, Future Eaters presents a range of sculptural works that evoke our current digital landscapes and virtual realities.
Evoking the idea that new periods of history and technology are entwined with innovations and changes in artistic practice, the show features many sculptures only made possible because of technological advances. Exploring the rise of global citizens, as well as cybernetic bodies, the exhibition features new commissions by Benjamin Armstrong, Damiano Bertoli, Marley Dawson, Lewis Fidock and Joshua Petherick, and Mira Gojak. Not to mention the work of Hany Armanious, Nina Cannell, Aleksandra Domanović, Alex Dordoy, Yngve Holen, Alex Israel, Magali Reus, Anna Uddenberg, Guan Xiao and Anicka Yi.
Yet Future Eaters doesn’t simply present sculpture as an object of contemporary art. Instead the exhibition has been designed to conjure an archaeological site, where sculptures are transformed from works in a gallery to relics from the past. “We most often think of the museum as a space of preservation and exhibition of the past, or platform for new work, and our audience to it as our contemporaries,” explains Day. “I wanted to play with the timescale of the museum and push the gallery space into the future, to imagine the viewer of a future era speculating on these sculptural artefacts just as an archaeologist of our own period might speculate on the residue of earlier times.”
By conflating multiple time periods, audiences are prompted to inhabit the position of a future viewer, looking at our present moment as already passed. Both humourous and complicated, Future Eaters isn’t merely an investigation into contemporary sculpture and technology, but how we conceive time, history and progress.
Future Eaters
Monash University Museum of Art
22 July – 23 September
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
Melbourne-born figurative artist and ceramicist Rob McHaffie takes a global view of human idiosyncrasy. His biggest exhibition to date, now showing at Bendigo Art Gallery, covers over a decade of his painting practice.
Bringing together 70 artists from 30 countries, the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art fosters connections across cultures and borders, and translates cultural knowledge for the present day.
Whether beloved pets or superstitious omens, animals have always existed in art. The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia’s latest exhibition is paying tribute to two of the most beloved animal figures: cats and dogs.
