What’s on in Adelaide
InReview

If you thought all Adelaide’s festivals were clustered around Mad March, then it’s time to wake up to spring festival fever. This weekend’s events include the festivals of ideas, film, fashion and unpopular culture (cheekily known by the acronym FUC), plus a tantalising line-up of other exhibitions, shows and events.
Adelaide Festival of Ideas
The city is overflowing with good ideas this week as thinkers, tinkerers, movers and shakers gather to ponder and debate everything from poisonous politics, cancer and the universe, to food wastage, feminism, vasectomies and the sex life of bonobos. Malaysian Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim will speak at a free session at Elder Hall on Saturday morning (registrations essential) and on Saturday night the Battle of the Ideas at the Town Hall will see teams debate the topic “The Internet is Evil”. The Festival of Ideas runs until October 20.
Adelaide Film Festival
The final weekend of the 2013 Adelaide Film Festival offers a smorgasbord of options, from documentaries about 1960s fashion icon Twiggy, Adelaide suffragette Muriel Matters and Florida “vasectomist” Doug Stein, to the gothic animated adventure The Apostle, new Australian feature Tracks, and the “visual roller-coaster” Micro Monsters 3D. The Festival Club at Little Miss Miami and Little Miss Mexico also continues until October 20.
Adelaide Fashion Festival
The city is flaunting its couture credentials from October 18-26, with weekend events including Vintage is the New Black Op Shop Stylist Tours, a high-tea fashion show at Westfield Tea Tree Plaza, a boutique fashion showcase at the Adelaide Central Market and the Norwood Place Parades. The full program is on the Fashion Festival website.

detail: Hindoo Mythology of India: Gallery of the Gods, late 19th century, Kolkatta, West Bengal, India, watercolour, silver metallic pigment and ink on paper, 63 folio bound volume, 49.0 x 43.5 x 7.0 cm (each folio); Myren-Grafton Collection
Realms of Wonder
Opening today, Realms of Wonder: Jain, Hindu and Islamic Art of India is the Art Gallery of SA’s first exhibition dedicated exclusively to the art of India. It features more than 200 works spanning 1300 years, including paintings, sculptures, decorative arts objects and textiles. Visitors enter the exhibition through a Rajasthani mansion’s 4m-high gateway intricately carved from teak. Running until January 27, Realms of Wonder will be accompanied by a program of talks, tours and hands-on art activities.
Festival of Unpopular Culture
With an image of the late Kiwi prime minister Robert Muldoon gracing its bright pink cover, the FUC describes itself as an “offbeat, heretical, half-serious, proudly elitist, unashamedly populist” event. Organised by the Format Collective with discussions and other events across various venues until Sunday, it aims “to blur the lines between high-art and pop culture, science and science-fiction, theory and practice”. Check out the full program online.
Port Festival
Visual arts, music, circus performances, workshops, helicopter flights, roller-derby stunts and boat tours are among the activities bringing Port Adelaide alive for its biennial Port Festival on October 19-20. The SA Maritime Museum, SA Aviation Museum and National Railway Museum are all offering free entry, and you can also browse the more than 60 stalls at the popular Artists’ Market. Other highlights include a guided tour of the historic Torrens Island Quarantine Station, and a night-time light display of architectural projects by Illuminart called Future Portal.
African art
Textiles, jewellery, basket weaving and prints by Namibian artists are on display in a new exhibition at the Nexus Gallery (corner North Terrace and Morphett Street). Curator Victor Krawczyk says the collection provides “an amazing introduction to African art”, with some of the artists working with traditional techniques that have not changed for thousands of years. Namibian textile artist and fashion designer Maria Caley will hold a workshop at the gallery tomorrow (October 19) demonstrating textile painting and embroidery techniques (bookings required).
La Forza del Destino
The State Opera of SA has just one more performance to run of Verdi’s majestic La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny). With a narrative full of high drama and vengeance, sumptuous sets and superb singing (according to InDaily’s review), the final show is at the Festival Theatre tomorrow night (October 19).
Sons & Mothers
Described as a “love letter to mothers”, this No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability production is back for a season at the Space Theatre, from October 17-26. First performed during last year’s Fringe, it sees six men undertake an emotional journey sharing the stories of their relationships with their mothers, from childhood to adulthood. A documentary of the same name, which charts the making of the theatre show, is currently screening as part of the Adelaide Film Festival.
The Web
Social media, cyber bullying, fear, murder and intrigue – these are the ingredients of Kate Mulvany’s The Web, which opens at the Bakehouse Theatre tomorrow (October 19). Set in a rural Australian town, the plays sees a headstrong and confident student taking a shy classmate under his wing to help him with an assignment, triggering a chain of events that ends in a vicious attack. The Web runs until November 2.
Vere (Faith)
Created by John Doyle (better known by some as Rampaging Roy Slaven), this new play stars Paul Blackwell stars as Vere, a respected physics professor on the verge of retirement whose world is shattered by a shocking diagnosis. Co-produced by Sydney Theatre Company and the State Theatre Company of SA, Vere runs until November 2 (see InDaily’s review).
Cavalia
With live music, colourful costumes and backdrops, impressive acrobats/dancers/riders and more horses than a racecourse, this lavish production from Canada is under the Big White Top on West Beach Road for a six-week season (see InDaily’s review).
On screen
See InDaily’s reviews of the latest films screening in Adelaide:
About Time
Mystery Road
2 Guns
Diana
Metallica: Through the Never
Gravity
Rush
Disney’s Planes
Tim Winton’s The Turning
Riddick
Blue Jasmine
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