Once Upon a Time Art + Science Exhibition 2026
July 13th — 17th, 2026
Dunedin Community Gallery, 26 Princes Street, Ōtepoti Dunedin
Time waits for no one. It is fleeting. It drags. It accumulates. Time is change or is it? While we all have a concept of what time is, it is impossible to define.
Across twenty-nine contributions in this exhibition, scientists and artists have worked in dialogue to explore notions of time.
All life evolved through rhythms shaped by lunisolar cycles of light and dark governed by the sun, moon and stars. Although we organise our lives through clocks and calendars, time itself remains elusive. We feel it first through the rhythms of our bodies, through memory, change and the gradual accumulation of experience.
Some cultures understand time as a sequence of past, present and future, while others experience it as a continuous stream in which all moments remain connected.
This exhibition brings together artists and scientists exploring the many ways time is sensed, measured and recorded — in emotion and memory, in air, earth and living tissue, in cores, carbon dating, dendrology, light and space-time. Together, these works consider how we live within time, and how time lives within us.
As Carlo Rovelli asks: “Do we exist in time, or does time exist in us?”
See the exhibition facebook page for full listing of events: https://www.facebook.com/events/898791649620297
See the exhibition facebook page for full listing of events: https://www.facebook.com/events/898791649620297