When tectonic historical events catch us unaware, uncertainty can begin to feel like an almost contagious malaise. What is the future of artistic imagination in this age of uncertainty?

Unpredict: Imagining Future Ecologies Catalogue available for download now.

Art not only has the power to move and inspire us –it can also generate new insights into urgent contemporary concerns like de-colonisation, climate change, identity and representation. 

Shifting ten artworks from our Collection beyond the museum context, 21 x 10 provides a new platform for the unique perspectives that artists, academics, and the future generation of thinkers have on the world around us.  

Join us throughout the year for a series of physical and digital programs that will ask you to share ideas, challenge historical narratives, and imagine new futures. 

Grainger Museum

2021 begins a new phase in the complex history of the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne.

Robert Dale, Panoramic view of King George’s Sound, part of the colony of Swan River 1834

The 360-degree view presents … the apparently peaceful relations between the uniform-clad soldiers and the Traditional Owners, whose ways of living with their land were being usurped.

Janet Fieldhouse, Armbands 2012

As the artist explains: ‘I see our culture as a contemporary culture, not purely as a traditional culture.’

Tracey Moffatt, Other 2009

Moffatt demonstrates how these images reveal far more about the culture that produces and consumes them than the people and cultures they claim to portray.

Noriko Nakamura, Moon totem 2015

The artist’s poetic rumination on agricultural cycles sits within a broader interest across her practice in the way that humans live within and as a part of nature rather than separately to it.

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Untitled figure 12 2016

… his distinctive characters act as avatars through which to explore gender and eroticism, religion and popular culture, exoticism and outsider aesthetics.

Susan Norrie, aftermath 2016

In the words of the artist: ‘… there are many indicators and forewarnings that should be changing the ways that we think about the world. It’s as if the elemental forces of nature seem to be demanding this seismic shift from humans.’

Julie Rrap, Transpositions II 1988

… she has been consistently committed to exploring the role—and absence of roles—of women in the history of art.