How Yesterday Remembers Tomorrow

By Carrie Miller

How Yesterday Remembers Tomorrow sounds counter-intuitive, but it captures something of the conceptual concerns of one of Australia’s most interesting contemporary artist duos. For Ms & Mr, time-based media is not just a vehicle for their ideas but enables them to critically intervene in our phenomenological experience of time in video works that question its implication in ideas of reality.

In addition to the work by this collaborative duo, photographs, videos, installations and drawings by Sean Cordeiro & Claire Healy, Todd McMIllan, Tony Schwensen, Sam Smith and Lauren Brincat are all included in a new exhibition of artists who have previously won the annual Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship for emerging artists. It’s an impressive list, though there’ve been a number of impressive winners of this prize which is considered a rough-and-ready index of where Australian contemporary art is headed.

How Yesterday Remembers Tomorrow is also the title of this touring exhibition and references its curatorial premise: to present the artists’ earlier works alongside more recent ones in order to give regional audiences a deeper insight into contemporary art practice through a reassessment of the past.

Despite the heavy-hitters in this show, it’s likely to fall prey to the hit-and-miss nature of curating contemporary art within the constraints of smaller regional institutions. But this show isn’t for precious art-world insiders; its aim is to present important work to new audiences.

Until November 18

Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Manly

www.manly.nsw.gov.au/attractions/art-gallery-museum