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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Lifestyle
Nick Buckley

Bed rot, doomscrolling and a single goldfish: the Melbourne art show blowing loneliness open

A bed with a laptop and headphones on it
If I die, please delete my Soundcloud (2019) by Natasha Matila-Smith features in a new exhibition on loneliness at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne. Photograph: Andrew Curtis

A forlorn goldfish called Pao Pao stares from its sparse tank at the entry to Are you lonely tonight? I’m so lonesome I could cry – a new exhibition on loneliness at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Acca) in Melbourne.

“He’s part of my family, he’ll be coming back to the big tank,” says the exhibition’s co-curator, son of a veterinarian and Acca’s artistic director and CEO, Myles Russell-Cook. He owns several fish and has named this one after the hypothetical last goldfish on Earth depicted in Kelly Yu’s short film playing in the next room, Endling.

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