How are we to imagine the future at a time that feels like the end? In this exhibition colonial and capitalist ruins become both condition and material for revisionist histories and imagined alternative futures.

I think future, I think past includes the Australian premiere of international artists Peggy Ahwesh and Sophia Al-Maria, alongside leading Australian artists Daniel Boyd, Jemima Wyman and Jessie French.

Across sculpture and moving image, the artworks use a wide variety of materials that range from emerging to near obsolete technologies, such as new algae polymers, computer generated imagery, CRT televisions, high-definition video, and found digital source material. Together, they offer different lenses for imaging past and future conflicts, reflecting our planetary degradation and assembling optimistic plans for earthly survival.

The exhibition takes its title from a comment by artist Peggy Ahwesh, in conversation with Andrea Lissoni, reflecting on the cyclical nature of her films in 2021 for Mouse Magazine. Thinking through the past and the future simultaneously is a central concern of the exhibition. Imaging the effects of present day colonial and petro-capitalist economies, the artworks in the exhibition reckon with our culpability in the near future.

Known for his distinctive use of dots across painting, video and installation, Daniel Boyd presents Quiver (2020). Displayed as a single-screen projection without sound, the film cycles through iterative patterns that evoke both the flickering lights of distant cosmos and the microscopic molecules that are the building blocks of all life. Underscoring the smallness of our human scale and the opposing gravity of our planetary impact, Quiver meditates on the past, present and future, and our position therein.

In imaging a world without petrochemicals, Jessie French has created new materials and infrastructures that lead us towards this speculative possibility. French uses her algae-based bioplastics and polymers to craft objects, material experiences and futures. For this exhibition, films are cast over the glass doors of the La Trobe Art Institute courtyards, filtering light and matter, whilst others hang in provisional passageways across the galleries. Made from an algae polymer that is both sustainable and renewable, after the exhibition they will be returned to French’s studio, cooked back to liquid and reconstituted into new forms.

Sophia Al-Maria’s two-part video work, The Future was Desert I and II (2016) is a direct address to petro-capitalist economies and a reminder of their eventual collapse. In her delirious, dream-like videos, Al-Maria surveys post-human time in the Gulf Region. Together with artist Fatima Al Qadiri, Al-Maria coined the concept of ‘gulf futurism’ which speculates that the present-day images of the Gulf region — infinite skyscrapers, air-conditioned luxury villas, motorisation — represents an accelerated dystopic future for our rapidly warming planet.

Jemima Wyman maintains a longstanding interest in the visual histories of resistance and collective actions of global demonstration. For this exhibition, Wyman presents large scale collages that draw their imagery from her personal archive of global protest images, compiled since 2008. These sweeping depictions of universal unrest document moments of uprising already past, with an eye towards our future.

The imaging of war is also of interest to Peggy Ahwesh, who’s video installations depict conflicts of a very recent past, including the 2014 Israel-Gaza war and the Syrian refugee crisis as seen in 2017. The imagery for these films is drawn from a Taiwanese software database of 3D animated news reports. While there are flashes of recognition, the effect is at once distancing and familiar. As Ahwesh states, “my intention is to force the source material to point back to itself and lay bare the gap between that sketchy cartoon world and reality.”