Adelaide’s green belt in art

The finalists in the 2020 Adelaide Park Lands Art Prize will finally go on display in the Adelaide Festival Centre’s QBE galleries on Saturday (March 20).

Prize organisers, the Adelaide Park Lands Preservation Association (APPA), selected 77 finalists from a record pool of 360 entries last year, but COVID-19 meant the event had to be postponed.

First prize is $20,000, with winners of the major prizes to be announced this Friday.

Prize judges are Tracey Lock, curator of Australian paintings and sculpture at the Art Gallery of SA, Guildhouse CEO Emma Fey and artist Christopher Orchard.

Visitors to the exhibition, located in the foyer of the Festival Theatre, can vote for their favourite in the people’s choice prize.

City cultural funding to bring back shorts at the flicks

Theatrical storytelling in the city’s public spaces and a program of locally-produced short films are among the projects funded in the City of Adelaide’s cultural strategic partnerships program.

The $250,000 program, announced this month, will support 13 new projects with a range of artists and cultural organisations.

Among them is a city-based project for Slingsby’s “Flying Squad” (see below), which will bring performances to all sorts of city places and spaces, and a return of the pre-feature “short” to the cinema.

Under the latter project, the Adelaide Film Festival will work with the council and Palace Nova to present short films and community wellbeing messages before films at the cinema this year.

Other interesting projects include an Adelaide Symphony Orchestra concert and performance of Milli Jack and the Dancing Cat – based on the Stephen Michael King picture book of the same name. The show, in a “relaxed concert” setting, is designed for people experiencing neuro-diversity and anyone else who would appreciate the innovation.

Aboriginal-led Balya Productions has been funded to deliver an international First Nations music exchange with New Zealand.

Find the full list of projects here.

World premiere for Chamber Singers’

Fine music continues post-Festival with the Adelaide Chamber Singers presenting the world premiere of Sally Whitwell’s new piece, “Written in the Stars”, on Saturday (March 20).

Whitwell, a pianist, conductor and composer, says the work, written for the chamber singers in the wake of Australia’s disastrous 2019-20 bushfire season, is about “society’s propensity to go through cycles of behaviour, never learning from the mistakes of the past”.

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The program, titled Lights in the Distance, will also include works by Morten Lauridsen, Arvo Pärt, Johannes Brahms, Ivo Antonigni, Eric Whitacre and a folksong arranged by Adelaide’s Christie Anderson.

The performance is at Elder Hall, after being rescheduled from November last year.

Tickets are available here.

Slingsby’s open call-out to artists

Slingsby has issued an open call-out for South Australian artists to audition for its new project – “The Flying Squad”.

The concept is to establish an ensemble of five multi-disciplined professional artists on two-year contracts to present new works in South Australia.

Slingsby says the squad will create works suitable for a COVID world and tour throughout South Australia, including local communities and schools.

The project is funded through federal and state arts fundings.