Future Visions

Future Visions by Caroline Kennedy McCracken

Australia’s complex past means its ideas of nationhood are often understood in terms of potential futures. Intersections of hopeful frontiers, grief-laden histories and vast opportunities happen as part of the scenery in this large, isolated continent, home to so many different groups and communities.

Future Visions is an exhibition collection of small, potentially ephemeral works, made by a range of Australian emerging and mid-career practitioners.

The trace of Australianess, as an idea of breadth and promise, is legible in all of the collection, from the mutable surfaces of hand-made paper works by Rushdi Anwar and the painterly interventions into craft by Helen Martin to the dizzy spectacle of dancing colour found in the paintings of Anna White.

These artists have worked across a range of mediums and strategies, yet they have as a commonality an openness in their work and a commitment to their own vision. This, and the diversity of their practices is a proposition of sorts – about potential, and about the formation and freedom of individual languages.

This is somehow a very Australian thing, where the idea of ‘becoming’ is always on the horizon.

These themes are to be found as lines of song, movement and hope in this exhibition of Australian artists,
Future Visions.Caroline Kennedy-McCracken 2012

 

 

 

For the Australia Festival/Festivale d’Australie