The Children are Now

In September Mai Nguyễn-Long embarks on her next art residency project, representing Australia in a star-studded line up of international artists in The Children Are Now at Talbot Rice Gallery, Scotland. Curated by James Clegg, The Children Are Now examines the potency of imagination, apartheid education, militaristic games and generational trauma. Mai Nguyễn-Long will make and exhibit new ceramic works via ceramic studio access at the University of Edinburgh, and will show alongside Francis Alÿs, Monster Chetwynd, Ane Hjort Guttu, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Bob and Roberta Smith and Adéla Součková.

The Children are Now is a group exhibition that aims to represent the relationship of children to the key challenges we face today. Through artworks that capture the potency of children’s playful imaginations, it makes reference to apartheid education, militaristic games and generational trauma, asking how history is made to repeat itself in the face of those who are capable of reimagining everything. In the context of Childism, a movement to expose and redress the prejudices in how children are understood, and in collaboration with Children’s Humans Rights Defender from the Children’s Parliament, it will empower the voices of children. Shifting the emphasis of the phrase “the Children are the Future” from being a description of the fact that children will become the next generation, it acknowledges that young people are here and now the most powerful world-builders among us.