The exhibition’s title – borrowed from Walter Benjamin’s description of the angel of history as a depicted in a Paul Klee painting – has a resonance far beyond the work selected for this lively group show. For this exhibition marks the re-openign of Arnolfini after a two year closure for redevelopment. Although this is a rigorous selection of work with plenty of depth, the show has a justly celebratory air. There’s the exuberance of Jyll Bradley’s panoramic arrangement of cut flowers curving across the ground floor, filling it with scent and colour, but also the confident inclusion of a Turner (Norham Castle, Sunrise c.1845) to give some historical perspective on the notion of progress. A room of Martin Boyce’s work shows the artist recasting design classics into haunting fragments that seem to whisper mortality, while Lee Mingwei’s Letter Writing Project is housed in two eerilty tomb like spaces in the main gallery. These subtle references to the human cost of progress murmur in much of the work. Another highlight is Chen Chieu-jen’s film, Factory: a reminder that what we think of progress now will soon slither into obsolescence. A silent film, it shows women toiling in a Taiwanese factory abandoned as cheaper markets opened in other countries. What was once the future now looks tired and irrelevant. It’s a sobering thought.