Commonwealth Gallery
October 1-8, 2016

'You Can’t Take it With You' explores the friction between our understanding of our bodies and their ultimate disintegration. The exhibition’s title, inspired by the famous 1938 play of the same name, is a nod to the eventual necessity that we must leave all worldly ‘wealth’ behind when we die, including our physical bodies. What is our experience of the corporeal and transcendental, growth and decay, belonging and displacement, life and death? These works reveal our temporary nature juxtaposed against the life of material objects. Developed partly as a response to the practicalities of being an artist, 'You Can’t Take it With You' also subtly addresses how artists make sense of their own work’s physical presence and life cycle. Does knowledge of our own mortality affect how and what we create?