Gabriel­la Mangano & Sil­vana Mangano
Tomor­row and Tomorrow

‘Tomor­row and Tomor­row’ con­tin­ues the long stand­ing focus of Gabriel­la Mangano and Sil­vana Mangano on drawing in the expand­ed field as a con­cep­tu­al basis to gen­er­ate works of per­for­mance, video and instal­la­tion. Inspired by their 2017 Asialink res­i­den­cy in Yoko­hama and insights from the Japan­ese butoh mas­ter Yoshi­to Ohno, the works includ­ed in the exhi­bi­tion Walk­ing Score and City Score express the artists’ interest in move­ment and ges­ture as trig­gers to prompt polit­i­cal and social action.

‘Tomor­row and Tomor­row’ cap­tures a spe­cif­ic moment in his­to­ry, The Glob­al Women’s March ini­ti­at­ed in Washing­ton D.C. on 21 Jan­u­ary 2017 and was sus­tained around the world as night fol­lowed day, accu­mu­lat­ing six mil­lion par­tic­i­pants across 673 cities. The opti­mistic over­tone of the exhi­bi­tion title belies the crest­fall­en glob­al sen­ti­ment that pre­ced­ed the events of its focus and spurned into action the col­lec­tive foot­steps march­ing for equal­i­ty, tol­er­ance and uni­ver­sal human rights.

In cre­at­ing the 82 sculp­tures rep­re­sent­ed in Walk­ing Score, Gabriel­la Mangano and Sil­vana Mangano, have tak­en the paths fol­lowed by the protest march­es in each city as a ​‘ready made’. Forged from var­i­ous met­als, each object unique­ly embod­ies the dia­logue between move­ment, space, sound and action; com­ing togeth­er as a type of alpha­bet form­ing a new lan­guage to unite the diverse cities.

The video work City Score traces the steps of the Women’s March through Melbourne’s urban land­scape, explor­ing the act of walk­ing as a con­sid­er­a­tion of time, place and move­ment and as a mark­er of the weight of archi­tec­ture in rela­tion to the body. The move­ment is accom­pa­nied by a sound­scape that Mangano and Mangano sug­gest ​“embod­ies a polit­i­cal con­scious­ness, a call­ing of pos­si­bil­i­ties that speaks of the sin­gu­lar body, while the vocal sound scape sug­gests a col­lec­tive.” The audio also includes the sound of Walk­ing Score being played, pro­pelling the motion of walk­ing through­out key points in the city, reveal­ing the act of march­ing as a per­for­ma­tive protest on a pub­lic stage.

As artists, Gabriel­la Mangano and Sil­vana Mangano push beyond the bounds of their own col­lab­o­ra­tion and incor­po­rate an entire net­work of con­nec­tions. In gen­er­at­ing an exhi­bi­tion that speaks pos­i­tive­ly of the future, glob­al bod­ies and spaces are bound togeth­er in com­mon deter­mi­na­tion and synchronicity.

This project was fund­ed by Asialink and the Aus­tralian Coun­cil for the Arts.