Artists consider the mythical and controlling forces that organise time, space and galaxies.

Proximate Cosmologies draws from the Art Gallery’s rich collection to consider the universe as undefinable, where different ways of thinking reveal porous boundaries between the spiritual and material worlds.

Artists have long imagined the universe as dynamic, indeterminate, and continually unfolding through the interplay of human and non-human forces. In Daniel Boyd’s A Darker Shade of Dark #1–4, a flicker of light in darkness is not simply light – it is dark matter or an overlapping universe pressing against ours. Or take Shan Turner-Carroll’s Edge of the garden series, where otherworldly travellers journey through perceived nothingness, promoting magic and change.

Indigenous understandings are at the centre of Proximate Cosmologies, highlighting the interconnection between mysticism and origin stories. The exhibition includes collection favourites – such as Michael Riley’s seminal 2000 photographic series cloud and Adrián Villar Rojas’ The End of Imagination IV, a complex layered composite form of salvaged and organic materials – and new acquisitions, such as Susan Te Kahurangi King’s drawings that consider imaginary forces, the unseen, and the spaces between worlds.