MS&MR

If you’re planning on joining the throngs of people at the AGNSW this summer to catch Picasso, it’s almost inevitable that at some point you’ll find yourself in need of a bit of respite from the crowd. Thankfully, the gallery has you covered. Just a couple of floors below Pablo fever, nestled snugly at the rear of the vast Kaldor collection, is a small space devoted to a rotating display of contemporary living artists, currently displaying an intriguing work from collaborative duo Ms&Mr. Ms&Mr create video installations, drawings and ‘altered artefacts’ exploring ideas they draw from theoretical physics, neuroscience and science fiction. The current show at AGNSW, XEROX MISSIVE 1977/2011, deals with the latter, creating an eerie and captivating series of videos around infamous science fiction writer Phillip K Dick and his one-time muse and fifth wife Tessa, whom the artists interviewed for the work. Layering this interview over a 1977 interview with Dick, the artists create a distorted and surreal encounter between the two. XEROX MISSIVE 1977/2011 is a fascinating take on the blurring of fact and fiction, memory, perception, and the disorienting experience of being both within and beyond time, in a strange and fanciful temporal-space created by the artists as they push their video works to the limits of possibility.

Until Feb 5, AGNSW, Art Gallery Rd, The Domain, free, 1800 679 278, artgallery.nsw.gov.au