Future spaces in contemporary Australian art: The law of proximity, overexposure and the city

This paper addresses Paul Virilio's notions of the 'overexposed city' and 'the law of proximity' in relation to contemporary Australian art practice in order to investigate the current cultural imagining of the 'future spaces' of the city. In one sense updating the cliche that a painting offers a window on the world, this paper substitutes recent art works by contemporary Australian artists for Virilio's 'door without a city'. In attempting to discern the status of urban architecture in relation to the exponential development of technology, Virilio identifies 'a transmutation of representation' that he discusses in terms of film: 'Here, more than anywhere, advanced technologies have converged to create a synthetic space-time.' The art works selected in this paper serve to chart this filmic 'transmutation' from a geographical to a temporal representation of space as motion, where 'the living and the living dead merge to the point of delirium'. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.