The Important Thing Is That Tomorrow Is Not The Same As Yesterday presents works as an antidote to living within the state of being contemporary. The title draws on the ideas of Lewis Mumford (1895 – 1990), who wrote extensively on man’s interaction with technology. He proposed that the clock: “a piece of machinery whose ‘product’ is seconds and minutes” introduced a new concept – that of being ‘out of date’. This, he posited, paved the way for the modern trend of technology, which emphasizes constant, unrestricted expansion, production, and replacement, forces “obsolescence through frequent arbitrary changes of fashion”, and can be seen today as perpetuating a world where the act of being contemporary is the process of a continual becoming out-of-date. The psychology of which results in the unending need to ‘refresh’ the world/the products around us a one might refresh a webpage.

Chosen through specific resonances and distinctions in terms of their working methodology and use of materials, the exhibiting artists have each produced a new work in response to this reading of the contemporary. Each has a different and special method of employing technology and reacting to their environment that meets, however, in a place which sustains the transient, discarded ephemera of modern living, halting the march of time through modest personal investigations within an increasingly homogenized mass-history. This is the antidote to a contemporary that is a ceaseless becoming, and which is increasingly becoming the vital realm of contemporary art practice.

Biographies:

David Beattie’s work takes the form of installation, video, sound, photography and sculpture with which he investigates the physicality of space, substance and time. David recently completed an MA in Visual Arts Practices at IADT and recent exhibitions include Broadstone XL, Dublin (2007), Seconds: the Imperfect Artwork, Wexford Arts Centre (2006), and Utopias, Éigse06, Carlow (2006). Forthcoming projects include Sculpture at Kells (Kilkenny) and as part of House Projects: Lighthouse (London) and Homemade (Dublin).

Gillian Kane’s temporary mural-like wall drawings, drawn from daily walks along Dublin’s Dodder river, are an attempt to capture shared experiences which occur as a result of social, physical and ecological upheaval and discomfort in an age of rapidly developing change and technological advancements. Since graduating from NCAD, Gillian has been commissioned by the OPW, completed a residency in Temple Bar Gallery & Studios and has exhibited in the RHA, Pallas Heights, Dublin Fringe Festival and at Project as part of the art collective Mongrel Foundation.

Paul McAree works with a variety of media – painting, photography, music and performance – to suggest new contexts, meanings and possibilities, in which ‘a complex and obtuse web of relations, points on the one hand to specific meaning, while other images reinforce the notion that meaning is subjective and coincidental’. Co-founder and curator of Colony gallery in Birmingham, he has exhibited widely in the UK and Ireland, recently for the Tulca Festival, Galway. He is currently based in Dublin as Art Projects Manager for Breaking Ground, Ballymun.