Becoming with

Ursula K. Le Guin has stated that “the only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next”. We stand in our present moment, paralysed. Looking into the mirage of an unimaginable future, swirling with abstract dystopian visions and fleeting utopian hopes. This moment is an existential juncture — an extended journey along the edge of extinction into a time unrecognisable from what we know.

How do we love with the end in sight?

Photographs by David Lindesay

Becoming with explores relations in the face of uncertainty. Artists in this exhibition meddle with the stitches that hold us together, speculating how might we understand connections between bodies, beings, technologies and environments in this time of rapid shifts. Becoming with centres care as the tool to work beyond and with this crisis. Embodying it as a strategy that places us at stake in the world.

Becoming with is one part of AD Space x Tributary Projects interstate gallery swap. Exhibiting two iterative exhibitions across two cities with artists from UNSW Art & Design and Canberra.

Becoming with took place on the land of the Ngunnawal, Ngambri, and Ngunawal peoples. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.

This project is kindly supported by The ANU PARSA Student Extracurricular Enrichment Fund & UNSW Art & Design Student Council.

Features work by Ella Bryne, Joan Shin, Stella Palmer, Jesse Rye, Megan Hanson, Mackenzie Benato, Jack De Lacy, Collaboration between Eleanor Zurowski, Bryan Martin, Max Whelan-Young and Sunny Lei, Two Leaves, Meng-Yu Yan and Ondine Manfrin.

Curated by Anna May Kirk

Tributary Projects, Canberra
4 - 15 September 2019