Generation Flex

The APY Gallery’s SALA exhibition features the work of 15 emerging artists from Coober Pedy, Port Augusta, the APY Lands and Adelaide working across a range of media including painting, ceramics, weaving and glass. The Thebarton gallery says that as well as introducing the next generation of First Nations artists, Generation Flex “demonstrates the diversity and unique styles from across South Australia”. Exhibiting artists include Lisa Khan, a finalist in two of SALA’s 2024 awards; Josina Pumani and LeShaye Swan, both finalists in the 2024 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards; and former winner of Country Arts SA’s Breaking Ground award Juanella McKenzie.

A ceramic work by LeShaye Swan.

Suburban Arcadia

Established Clare Valley-based artist Christopher Meadows is presenting a solo exhibition of paintings and sculpture celebrating the “splendour of suburbia” at Norwood’s Art Images Gallery. His paintings include both subjects viewers might expect, and quirky features such as a balloon-dog sprinkler and a pair of sunbathing dolls. “As an artist I have often found inspiration from domestic landscapes… these works aim to convey a somewhat stylised interpretation of domestic splendour that goes beyond our conventional notion of suburban living,” says Meadows, a former winner of the Parklands, West Torrens and Watershed art prizes.

Christopher Meadows, Flaming Oasis, oil on board.

The Other Twin

New photographic works by Deborah Paauwe delving into the realms of female identity and childhood will be on show at GAGPROJECTS throughout SALA. Paauwe – who has exhibited her work in more than 35 solo and 100 group exhibitions nationally and internationally – was one of the first artists ever to exhibit at the gallery, and The Other Twin is made even more poignant by the fact that GAGPROJECTS director Paul Greenaway has announced that the Kent Town space will close at the end of the festival. It is also presenting two other SALA exhibitions featuring work by Danny Fotopoulos (Curved Fluidity) and Kurt Bosecke (Friends and Family of the Mosaics of the Multiverse).

Deborah Paauwe, The Other Twin, 2024, giclée print.

Split by the Spade 

A gallows tree, burial site, scythes and pitchforks… these are the kinds of motifs you can expect to find within 2024 SALA feature artist Julia Robinson’s haunted landscape at Adelaide Central Gallery. Robinson – who recently spoke to InReview about her work – has long been fascinated by themes such as death, decay and renewal, and the textile apparitions she has created for Split by the Spade are inspired by British author Andrew Michael Hurley’s 2019 folk-horror novel Starve Acre. A selection of the artist’s sculptures will also be interwoven throughout the Melrose Wing of the Art Gallery of South Australia in the SALA show Sculptural Storytelling.

An installation view from Julia Robinson: Sculptural storytelling, featuring Legs eleven, at AGSA. Photo: Saul Steed

Martha Leaves

Kasia Töns, a former subject of InReview’s In the Studio series, is best known as a textile artist, with one of her hand-embroidered works seeing her placed as a finalist in the 2021 Ramsay Art Prize. Her 2024 SALA exhibition – showing at the Hahndorf Academy – is her first exhibition of photography and promises to be just as enchanting. “Martha Leaves explores alter egos, friendship, and creativity as a tool for survival through the lens of magic realism,” say the exhibition notes. “Created in collaboration with friends, memories, places, and a rich archive of masked characters.”

Kasia Töns, Petronapillia, 2024, digital print.

Proximity

ILA, the 2024 SALA Festival hub, is hosting a group exhibition in the Light Room Gallery that sets out to explore our sense of proximity as something unfixed: “From the comforting closeness of Charlotte Tatton’s paintings, to the faraway landscape preserved in ceramic by Gus Clutterbuck, these works push and pull at our sense of closeness, revealing how relative this concept can be.” The other exhibiting artists are Monika Morgenstern, whose work is said to offer a contemporary perspective on mysticism, and painter Lesley Redgate, who will also be showing her Fleurieu landscapes in a Coloured Shadows SALA show at her artist’s studio in Willunga.

Gus Clutterbuck, Mirima Lotus (detail), ceramics.

Artists on the Inside

This annual exhibition of artworks created by people in custody across South Australian prisons perhaps exemplifies more than any other the open-access philosophy of SALA. It’s presented at the Kerry Packer Civic Gallery, which says that “like other artists in the festival, men and women from all walks of life who have become involved in the criminal justice system are sharing their thoughts, stories, culture, and creativity”. This year it doesn’t only feature artists “on the inside” but also SA community members with lived experience of the criminal justice system. While the exhibition may challenge viewers’ preconceived ideas about people in prison, is also invites them to leave a comment that can be shared with the artist and to vote for their favourite work for a people’s choice award.

Anonymous, painting from Artists on the Inside.

A Resting State

Everyday domestic settings take centre stage in this group exhibition which features work by five artists exploring the relationship between an individual and their routine environment. Presented at The Mill, A Resting State has been curated by emerging curator and self-taught contemporary realist painter Hamish Fleming, who says: “I’m interested in the impact, in the subject matter to be transformed by the artist into something more than what it is, and seeing how an artist can influence a viewer’s perception of a setting that almost has no connotations attached to it.” Alongside Fleming’s own paintings, the exhibition includes work by George Gilles, Anthea Jones, Robert Viner Jones and Billy Oakley that range from “traditional realism through to dark, vibrant expressionism and crisp representational works”.

Hamish Fleming, Gentle Steep, painting.

The South Australian Living Artists Festival runs throughout the month of August, with exhibitions in a range of venues right across the state. The open studios weekend will take place on August 10 and 11, while walking and bus tours will depart from the SALA hub at ILA in Light Square. See the full program here.