Marking Time

Image (2008) copy; Rivane Neuenschwander, Um dia como outro qualquer [A day like any other]. Image Source: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art is now featuring an exhibition of artists from Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and the United States who are exploring time and its passing (29 March 2012 - 3 June 2012). The exhibition, Marking Time, according to the Web site of one of the participating artists, Rivane Neuenschwander, is described as follows:

Explore the ways in which artists visualise time and its passing in 'Marking Time'. Featuring major works by eleven Australian and international artists, you'll see the concept and representation of time - past, present and future - reinterpreted and revealed across such diverse media as drawing, watercolour, sculpture, installation, sound and light.

Discover meaning in unexpected subjects as the past and present collide in Edgar Arcenaux's ambitious large-scale drawings; consider the concept of universal time through Tatsuo Miyajima's video and photography; see how Lindy Lee harnesses the power of fire and water in her weather paintings. In Rivane Neuenschwender's poetic flip-clocks and calendars, witness time become elastic and open-ended; while Elisa Sighicelli literally rewinds time through the medium of film - watch as exploded fireworks contract to pin-points against the night sky, as ends return to beginnings.

Accompany Katie Paterson and Gulumbu Yunupingu as they turn their gazes upwards depicting ancient cosmic phenomena and celestial formations through confetti, moonlight and upon bark panels and hollowed memorial (Larrakitj) poles.

Examine the connections between real time and digital artifice in John Gerrard's epic, slow moving animations of American mid-western scenes and see time pass before your eyes in Jim Campbell's flickering, ever-changing scenes inspired by family albums and events and created using computer-programmed light. Study the relationship of geo-political dates throughout history in Tom Nicholson's vast wall drawing and become transfixed by Daniel Crooks' mesmeric videos as he stretches and reconfigures time into abstract bands of colour.

Some pieces come to life only at night, such as Jim Campbell's monumental installation Scattered Light illuminating the Museum's front lawn, and others develop and change through the course of the exhibition, amplifying the effects of time.

Image (2011) © Edgar Arceneaux, Blind Pig # 5. Image Source: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Image (2008) © KatiePaterson, Light Bulb to Simulate Moonlight. Image Source: Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.