A Together In Art Pocket Exhibition curated by Isobel Parker Philip

We often talk about the city as if it were an organism; a living, breathing thing made of cells and systems that move together as one.

Perhaps that’s why scenes of empty streets seem so shocking. Vital signs all but extinguished, the city is no longer sentient.

I know that, in this moment, the health of the city depends upon its desertion. And yet, those vacant streets – those empty arteries – make me feel so ill at ease.

Isobel Parker Philip is senior curator of contemporary Australian art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales