Marking Time

Others materialise slowly during the course of the exhibition, revealed through the footsteps of visitors passing through the Museum atrium and stairwells.

An international exhibition selected by MCA Senior Curator Rachel Kent, Marking Time will present major works by eleven artists from Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and the United States in the Museum’s spacious new top floor galleries. Some works will be realised during the course of the exhibition, others require viewer participation, and several spill into public spaces beyond the Museum.

From the collision of past and present in Edgar Arceneaux’s ambitious wall-scale drawings, to concepts of ‘deep’ or universal time in Tatsuo Miyajima’s LED installations and Lindy Lee’s weather paintings harnessing fire and water, to Rivane Neuenschwander’s poetic flip-clocks and calendars, time becomes elastic and open ended. Elisa Sighicelli literally rewinds time through the medium of film: exploded fireworks contract to pin-points against the night sky, as ends return to beginnings. Indigenous Australian artist Gulumbu Yunupingu also turns her gaze upwards, depicting celestial formations upon bark panels and hollowed memorial (Larrakitj) poles. The relationship between real time and digital artifice is explored in John Gerrard’s epic, slow moving animations of American mid-western scenes; while Jim Campbell uses computer-programmed light to create flickering, ever-changing scenes inspired by family albums and events. Finally, Tom Nicholson’s vast wall drawing relates geo-political dates throughout history, while Daniel Crooks’ mesmeric videos stretch and reconfigure time into abstract bands of colour.