The Australian Centre of Contemporary Art is currently hosting the exhibit Are you lonely tonight? I’m so lonesome I could cry. The title is taken from the lyrics of an Elvis Presly song. I went to this exhibit with a couple of friends and found it absolutely wonderous. The program explores the raw and often self-destructive nature that comes from loneliness and the human desire for connection in the digital age.
I’m not going to spoil the whole exhibit. Instead, I want to highlight the works that spoke to me and hopefully get you in the door to visit Pao Pao.
Pao Pao is the lone goldfish at the entrance to the Are you lonely tonight? I’m so lonesome I could cry. Don’t worry he’ll go home once the exhibit is over. He’s not a fishy friend to get you in the door but rather he represents the overall tone of the exhibit, loneliness.
Kelly Yu’s mockumentary Endling takes the viewer into the world of the last goldfish and the home for other “Endlings”, these are the final surviving members of their kind. There’s a odd sense of joy from the characters in the film despite the overall melancholy subject matter. I found my emotions conflicting with one another, whether to feel mournful or hopeful, I couldn’t decide, but the feelings didn’t stick with me for long as I was quickly entranced by the other works.
Moving further into the exhibit you see Kayla Mattes work Lonely Planet, a handmade tapestry exploring meme culture that took a year to make. It’s an ingenious collision of traditional craft and internet history. I could’ve stared at it for hours, for the longer I peered into this work more cyberspaces past revealed itself to me. It’s a work that needs to be seen in person to truly be appreciated.
The art work that I adored most, though, was Seth Brown’s Frank. The creation depicts a real frankfurt that is continuously searching through AI-generated pictures for the perfect roll. While my friends and I were discussing this piece over coffee afterwards, one of them summed up the work perfectly: “If you keep searching for the perfect roll you’ll never have your mustard.” That made me chuckle for a good minute.
Then I was completely stunned by Lucy Liu’s creation. Yes, Charlie’s Angels Lucy Liu has work exhibited in this exhibition. She presents three large paintings influenced by Shunga, a genre of Japanese erotic art. I’ll stop myself from saying anything more because part of the pleasure of this exhibition is discovering these works for yourself.
Along with many more creations from other artists including Callum McGrath, Gideon Appah, Kelly Yu, Melissa Nguyen, Natasha Matila-Smith, Nick Mullaly, Patrick Pound, and Polly Borland, alongside the other artists mentioned above.
The best part is that it’s completely free to enter at no cost, no paywall, no hindrance’s. In just a moment it can be just you, the art and one lonely goldfish. All until the 30th of August 2026.
