From June to September the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) exhibited the fourth Macfarlane Commission Future Remains. Curated by Shelley McSpedden, the exhibition drew together seven artists who '...reclaim, restage and reframe specific material, cultural or ideological inheritances in an effort not only to better understand the past and present but to generate new possibilities for the future.' To extend Future Remain's thematic focus on 'inheritance', Art + Australia invited five artists completing their honours at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, to respond to the exhibition.

The following texts by Xana Jensson, Michael Kennedy, Zachary Beven, Grace Chandler and Lily Gentile capture the many relationships formed with Future Remains through writing, exchange and discussions.

As I walked into the familiar, immense main gallery space of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) I couldn’t help but notice how different it felt. There was a cosy, intimate atmosphere created by the colour that curator Shelley McSpedden had chosen to adorn the walls for Future Remains: The 2024 McFarlane Commission. The colour is called Imperator; derived from the word imperare meaning ‘to rule or to command’, yet it was the artworks that commanded attention, not the walls, and they did so with quiet assertiveness. The large scale works of Nicholas Smith, Kim Ah Sam, Teelah George, and Salote Tawale could have been vying for attention, but instead they seem nestled in amongst each other with enough room to breathe and assuredly hold their own space.

Though Nicholas Smith’s installation, a gentle hesitation between (2024) was the first I encountered in the gallery, there was something about Teelah George’s Perpetual Horizon (2024) hanging in the distance that caught my eye from the outset. From afar it looked like two painted canvases ornamented with metal hoops and large ribbons, evoking an image of aerial rings from a production of Cirque du Soleil. Moving closer, in awe of the sheer size of the work, I realised they weren’t in fact canvases, but instead weathered PVC coated curtains used on the side of trucks—also known as taughtliners—and the ribbons were, fittingly, ratchet straps. The faded curtains, replete with graffiti, dirt, oil stains and labels, brandished the marks and traces of their former life. Now in retirement, they seem to be looking back to their heyday, wanting to share their journeys. The thousands of kilometres they travelled and sights they bore witness to poised to spill forth to anyone willing to listen.

Whispers of winds howling past at breakneck speeds.
The stinging heat radiating from the sun and asphalt in the height of summer.
Of dust storms and winter gales.
Of vast, open plain vistas on long, lonely highways.
And the stars dancing brightly in the night sky, glinting and shimmering like the interloper hoops now attached to ratchet straps.

These straps, so accustomed to being pulled and tensed to breaking point, now hang relaxed and freely at the curtains’ side, only weighed down by the adornment of bronze. The precious metal that holds such an esteemed place in a Western art history canon looks completely at home dangling at the end of the worn and battered ratchet straps. An unlikely material union that seems to be the perfect odd couple, as George pairs their temporal and historical idiosyncrasies through marks that hint at their past lives.

The slightly off circular shapes hold the impression of the artist’s hand as they were formed. Squished and rolled by palms and fingers, each press leaving an imprint of the action in the malleable material, later translated into the warm but rigid bronze rings. This haptic evocation marries the invisible hands of the artist’s with those of the truck driver’s, each with muscles tensing, twisting and flexing as they bend these materials to their will. Movements that echoed back to my initial impression of the aerialist gripping the ring tightly, imprinting it with their own hands and fingers while gracefully swinging and spinning through the air. Hoops attached to the taut, straining ratchet strap ribbons, all under the faded blue PVC coated curtains of a big top tent as they journey towards a perpetual horizon.

Like jewellery you’d lend
                        to a friend

////////;;pattern palm,,palm—----glass cabinet ornaments;,
considering my,,(,,self,,;;;;{{portrait}}

I often think of Lautoka and Suva 
Flying there for weddings or 
funerals,,
,mostly.
With each trip came trinkets,,,,,,patterned fabric,,,,,,,,,,,,,,magnets, you know 
Everything palm tree                                                  (hidden objects)

Mum misses where she grew up

Found///////Assorted,,,,,,Assembled;;;;;; 
Adorned,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
‘’’’’’Lautoka markets

My nani bought me a t-shirt of Ninja Turtles and Batman
I was thinking about this bootleg crossover leading up to my grad show in 2018

So fresh, so market
hits of summer;;;;;*;;;;;

We used to eat these red ice blocks that my nani’s neighbour made
                                                                                 "the ice block lady” 
I remember the rough road (we walked barefoot) to get there 
They weren’t Calippo’s
but they were really good:::::raspberry and condensed milk

/// Adidas ///
Sport,,fun,cti,on;;;;;fash’’’’on,,,,,

Formations,, ,, ,,repeated{{{{{

I never saw adidas as punk,,, 
until I saw you use 3 stripes///

I brought a yellow floral shirt home the last time I visited,
pretty much the same design as a fabric piece from your show,,,,,,,,,,,,, 
‘I remember you’    —-I almost forgot about it

|||corrugated| iron,,,,waves,,,,

My uncle lived in a separate shack up from the family home 
concrete slab, to dirt, to wooden board
,,,,,steps leading up to a corrugated iron out-house 
an old print shack

silk screen frames stacked against the walls|||||| 
Printmaking was in our family

///PopXSuprematismXLautoka///

Mum has test prints on pieces of fabric
images scattered
 
Mickey Mouse next to a black rectangle 
Text—---reading,
“Mickey Mouse says… it’s nice 
IN LAUTOKA”
,,,,,,,,,,, I think she would like ‘You/Me/Us’

====={home}{comfort} plush
|transitional object|========BA(umf)TMAN x Ninja Turtles

When I outgrew my Batman x Ninja Turtles t-shirt
my mum made it into a cushion/////////a single bead for a constellation
(DI)st(Y)le

Ripples in the sea
flowing, evenly
                 ,corrugated
,,pierced by light,,,,,,,,*****guiding memories

Tradition| and |commodity
--p’’’
‘’–0p—03m—41nt1n9--

A song sang by the sea
A poem in Mum’s bathroom
A_dornments    ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,on a fabric scroll, it moved to different rooms over the years
/words of the ocean/
/of longing,            of farewell,/
                     of home;;

Everyone in the family gathered in the lounge room {{fan rotating}}
They all wanted to watch Mr. Bean, not just that movie with the Whistler's Mother painting
The earlier tv series too. Your Early Video Works are sooo good

,found and,,,, 
shhhhwossshhh//chhhh////schhhhhwuuuuuw////chhhhh 
|||mixed;;;;;

Adorned in sound///////monument—--al-l is/
Have you ever been to Yah Yah’s? It was our go-to back in the day
,,,,,that Whitney Houston song used to come on all the time.

Community
///sharing///    Wall of /sound,s/and

Like jewellery you’d lend to a friend
                    for an occasion’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’
Moments embedded in objects.    ;;;;;slowly fragmented
like
         waves
       caressing               and letting go

,,,,,*,,,,,

All
is
well
in
my
world

It’s something I’ve always struggled with, a personal contradiction. How can I call myself an artist but spend no more than twenty seconds in front of any given artwork? There must be an explanation for my fickleness. Perhaps it’s an attention deficit issue or maybe it stems from childhood when my mum would drag me to galleries, insisting I appreciate art. I didn’t want to go to galleries, and she didn’t want me to be an artist. It’s funny how things turned out.

The average person spends 28.63 seconds in front of an artwork.¹ This figure is from a 2017 study but I’ve reached a similar conclusion, counting people and how long or little they spend looking at art. I started this game to boost my self-esteem but I’m often left feeling bitter and resentful. I envy those who solemnly nod at a work as if it’s whispering to them. Worse are those who appear to have a profound experience with art, often marked by a gasp or a tear. I fear I’m incapable of having such an experience and struggle to believe those who claim they have. I know many people who claimed Hilma af Klint changed their lives, for example, but to me they seem unchanged.

I was asked to write about Future Remains the Macfarlane Commission at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), so I wandered through the exhibition, trying to force some sort of revelation. It’s true that I spent more than 28.63 seconds with each work but I was convinced the gallery staff were watching me, and I didn’t want them to think I was a total philistine. 

I came back to ACCA for a tour led by senior curator Shelley McSpedden. Shelley told us that the first dark chamber was not painted black but a lush purple: the colour of the cosmos, or a jewellery box. She spoke about divine fingering and queer constrictions, hand-stitched quilts taking thousands of hours, Blu Tack constellations, glam rock, reggae, and a splash of Adidas. She discussed waves as a space of the diasporic community, deep fakes, dead paintings, and tyrannical carpets. By the end of the tour, I was drunk on art, in awe of each work and their role in the exhibition. But I also left the tour wondering: how was I supposed to know everything we had been told just by looking?

I returned to ACCA, interested in the disconnect between my prior fickle and brief experiences of art, and claims that are made on an artwork’s behalf. I sat with Andy Butler's work Living truthfully in invented circumstances (2024), hoping the darkness would inspire something smart to say about the in-between space left by this disconnect. Instead, my mind drifted to inheritance, the legacies each piece touches on, and the gifts and burdens I’ve inherited myself. I thought about how legacies shape our identity, whether they empower or constrain us and how I might be contributing to a legacy of my own. Finally, I wondered if these thoughts stemmed from Shelley’s talk or naturally arose from spending time with the work, from being open to art that is so generous to its audience. I sat with Butler’s work from start to finish, for exactly 27 minutes. And perhaps that time spent was the closest I’ve come to a profound experience with art.

I’m ashamed to say that I hadn’t seen Future Remains: The 2024 Macfarlane Commissions before entering, pen in hand, knowing that I was to write.

Context seems important. I am Anglo-Celtic. I live in Brunswick. I am currently reading Monkey Grip and dipping into The Art of Laziness. This is important, because as I get off the train, that’s the world my brain is in. It shapes the way I see everything, something I cease to have control over after making the choice to read what I’m reading. I lay awake from 2.40-6am this morning. I am tired, but calm and relaxed—content in being.

It feels overly self-centered starting this way, but writing as myself, it seems important to be clear on who this self currently is. I am biased by my choices and the choices that have been made for me. Everyone is.

I won’t submit any of the above, I’m sure. I will edit it out as unnecessary. Flabby. But for now, it is like showing the ‘working out’ in maths. It is necessary to where I will go. It will remain a thread, even after it has been cut. Like the knotted threads that preface experience, culture, place, an artwork, the following notes are about unknotting, ‘working out’.

Andy Butler. Canberra. Cuts to sky, Lake Burley Griffin, hills framed by government house, the National Library, the hard lines of architecture. Playing, being, confronting, in institutional spaces. The idea that something new is possible, that creating, collaboration and movement can shape and change what is.

Library archive (literal). The library/archive of the body (metaphor). The mind. Play. Situating. History playing out on multiple planes. ‘Hope and optimism a river in a time of upheaval.’ Henry Otley Beyer Collection at the National Library of Australia. 'Please don’t die of modesty!’… ‘After all, we’re in America.’ American colonial period (early twentieth century). Hollywood films on Asia and/or set in Southeast Asia. The absurdity of these narratives. All narratives? Narrative as creation. The absurd, tight weave of reality. Necessarily and inescapably constructed.

Complexity/structure, impossible to unravel. Creatively confronted by Butler.

Collection of Hollywood films set in or about Asia. Collection held by the National Library. National Library in Canberra. Encountered by Andy Butler, Filipino-Australian. The weaving of these things, these bizarre loose threads/loose facts speaks/reveals truth. Hope in a reweaving.

The radical act of copying. The self taking in hand the threads of the past.

——

Andy Butler’s work Living truthfully in invented circumstances (2024) re-presents ‘what is’. Butler reveals by taking something to its logical conclusion. The ‘what is’ of Henry Otley Beyer’s archive is messy, problematic: the bind that is this time and place (?).

When I get stuck, writing about a specific artwork helps. It’s something I can do. But this is all about a specific artwork, so why am I stuck? How do I unstick myself when talking about an artwork that sticks me. 

——

I’m sitting in front of the three screens of Living Truthfully again. This time not coming from a Helen-Garner-thesis-gummed-whimsical-commute-head, but a head already pre-consumed with Butler’s work.

Andy Butler to the archive: ‘I will take my rightful place on the stage and I will be myself. The thing I need most and want most is to be myself. I will work on it. I will raise my voice. I will be heard.’

Bodies. Breath. Vocalising. ‘Cut!’ The absurdity of it all. But the absurd is what pre-exists. ‘And cut!’

The books, the institutions, the archives. So racist. But revealing. They show how we got to where we are? Threads, that even when destroyed, their impact remains? To lay out the threads, see them in a hand. Not in a vacuum. In Australia, in Canberra, in the National Library. In Andy Butler’s hand. Held out, still in hand, at ACCA. 

How to articulate what Butler has articulated so well without words?

‘We were so young, maybe we were cruel, but you can’t use that to justify murder.’

This artwork appears as absurd as the Henry Otley Beyer Collection, in the National Library, in Canberra, in Australia. An absurdity that mirrors the films’ constructed reality that also reflects the attitudes of the time that they were made. Simultaneous truths, both rendering the other fallible, shaping the other. But through an act. The voice. The awkwardness. The...

Andy Butler reveals a knot. A tight bind. Absurdity. In writing about it, I feel as if I’m trying to undo the knot. Tease it apart. But the beauty, the hope. The holding out. ‘I will respond how I feel. Awkwardly, vulgarly, but respond.’ How to respond to this response?

But also fun. Funny. Hopeful. I feel like this has been lost here in my writing. How to talk about something that the work already does so perfectly? Any discussion/musing feels like a spiralling away from the real contained within the work.

Andy, I love this work.

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan was flooded when I walked through due to a storm the night before. The floor was muddy and the building smelt like wet dog and cigarettes. The Prada employees looked visibly distressed. The sophisticated mosaic floor and high glass ceilings of Galleria Vittorio aid the shopping experience, encourages you to drop a few G’s on something. Mosaic floors or harlequin (checkered) patterns fill most grandiose buildings. Churches, cathedrals, palaces. Connected to Roman Renaissance architecture, floor patterns began to filter down into public spaces as a way to signify status and luxury. There’s significant research on the floor and its impact on our body, just like ceilings and wall colours. The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) often incorporates an aggressive mix of all three in their exhibition design that you can never really get used to.

I’m thankful my parents discouraged my sisters and I from picking moody colours when we repainted our bedrooms. I had already discovered Lana Del Rey and hated sharing a room with my sister, so I was already a bit temperamental. It was noted that the colour in ACCA’s gallery one was a dark purple, not black. If you spend too much time in dark spaces you might feel depressed. Darker colours shrink a space. The walls feel closer. High ceilings are lush. They encourage ideas of freedom, more opportunity, feelings of hope, and supposedly more creativity. Which is why the dark purple paint on eight metre high walls in ACCA’s largest gallery is so funny. Intimately hopeful.

Joan Meyers-Levy in Context Effects from Bodily Sensations: Examining Bodily Sensations Induced by Flooring and the Moderating Role of Product Viewing Distance says we feel a lot more comfortable on carpeted floor; it’s like a cozy, good vibe. But we sort of become judgemental assholes on carpet. You’re likely to be more skeptical of a product if you’re viewing it up close on carpet, even if the carpet makes you feel homey.¹ But, at a distance, a product can regain some sense of authenticity. While Meyers-Levy’s observations about carpet are made in the context of marketing and consumer habits, its role in exhibition design does make me wonder if there’s no audience at galleries, just customers.

Corporate is so in. Office siren chic and job security. Almost like a return of normcore, but as an aesthetic not a protest. There is grey carpet, Leg over leg (2024), covering the entire space of Alexandra Peters’ work, exhibited in Future Remains: The 2024 Macfarlane Commissions. I’ve been dreaming of a nine to five. A sit-stand desk. A cup of tea, even though I don’t drink it. It’s interesting to think about Meyers-Levy’s idea of authenticity and distance when thinking about carpet in Peters' installation. Peters’ objects are almost all vinyl, a material that wishes it was anything but. As you walk towards the bright room with intensely white walls, Peters’ pipes appear real. As you walk towards the bright room with intensely white walls, Peters’ wall works appear like paintings. But then you get there, and it’s like what Meyers-Levy suggested. As you step onto the carpet there is a sense of fabrication, something made-up, assembled, or placed together to cleverly trick us. Peters’ large scale abstract paintings are screen prints. The vinyl pipes lead nowhere.

There must have been some sort of mass hysteria that caused us all to start putting carpet everywhere. As a kid, this was as good as it could get. Carpeted floors in some way communicated class or some sense of above and below, like mosaic or harlequin tiles. But maybe this feeling arose because most of my friends lived in townhouses, or freshly renovated houses with brand new carpet. Peters' body of work Breakneck (2024) is corporate and reads commercial and impersonal, which would be a read if Peters’ wasn’t thinking about value structures and hierarchies in the making and presentation of artwork. The Western painting lineage is now very corporate in a way. There was a certain emphasis on material and the hand-made, and a sneer at the easily reproduced. But like checkered floor tiles, paintings seem to have lost the intense luxury they once had. Tiles can now be easily printed and stuck on. If someone had marble tiled floors in their house, I’d probably be super nonchalant about it.

ACCA probably has a similar effect as Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. The high ceilings and polished floors speak of grandeur and are all encompassing. Quite romantic really. Peters’ utilitarian grey carpet and vinyl saturation of both the wall works and pipes offer a familiar relief from the spectacle of the larger space. An office, a townhouse, school portables, libraries, waiting rooms. A common area for those of us who haven’t been to Milan, even if it is unusual to long for carpeted floors.