Visual Art
PHOTO GALLERY: Photographic artist Alex Frayne is well known for his images capturing Adelaide noir and the myriad moods of South Australian landscapes, but his latest adventure has seen him embracing the ‘crazy energy’ of Los Angeles.
Books & Poetry
A fresh and comprehensive new narrative reveals how the Adelaide art scene post-World War II was an incubator of progressive ideas and talent, despite often being dismissed or disparaged in the wider mainstream history of Australian art.
The Art Gallery of South Australia has unveiled a major new acquisition and launched its exhibition line-up for 2024 – including a Radical Textiles display featuring items ranging from William Morris tapestries to Kylie Minogue’s gold hotpants.
Bold ceramic forms, whimsical wall-mounted gremlins and large, confident paintings sit side by side in an exhibition of work by SA artists Zaachariaha Fielding and Alfred Lowe, reviewed here by Troy-Anthony Baylis and showing as part of Tarnanthi.
Finding a studio space can be a daunting task for emerging creatives fresh out of art school, but – as emerging artist Teresa Busuttil has discovered – the experience and stability a studio offers can be a career game-changer.
Artist Chris Yee, whose digital animation Perspective Pathways was chosen to illustrate the cover of the 2023 OzAsia Festival program, says he is motivated to tell stories around Australian-Asian identity through his colourful and dynamic creations.
Acclaimed performance artist Stelarc and local visual artist Bridget Currie are among the experienced mentors helping SA emerging creatives to flourish in their chosen field through Helpmann Academy’s Elevate Mentorship Program.
Colonialism, pop culture and family legacy are all part of the story shared through the first major survey exhibition of work by Vincent Namatjira, an artist who enjoys placing powerful people outside their comfort zone.
Festivals
Tarnanthi artistic director Nici Cumpston highlights some of the diverse contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art on show at the Art Gallery of SA during the 2023 festival – from delightful animations and unique sculptural works, to paintings inspired by a love of rock music.
Visual Art
A traumatic incident that saw him badly burned as a child set Shane Cook on a lifelong journey to learn more about his Indigenous heritage. His story is writ large through both the tattoos that cover his body and in his unique artwork.
Decorative? Nostalgic? Blatantly commercial? All of the above, says former Adelaide artist David Bromley who shrugs off his critics in an Adelaide Film Festival documentary exploring his life and art.
The annual mindshare Exhibition opens our eyes to the experiences of mental health challenges.
The Art Gallery of South Australia’s new acquisition – Brodie Neill’s @Chair – celebrates of one of the most iconic symbols of our time, but the work’s creation was a long quest for the artist.
SA arts and culture news in brief: An epic anthology on progressive art in Adelaide is set to be launched, State Theatre’s adaptation of a local author’s bestselling novel sells out, line-ups for Good Music Month and Feast Festival are released, and bookings open for the Adelaide Festival Centre’s school holiday program.
Visual Art
The 2023 biennial Community Housing Art Awards show diversity, depth and talent among tenants in South Australian community and social housing.
Visual Art
In his latest solo exhibition, Finite Bounty, Dan Withey continues his preoccupation with human existence as he tries to make sense of the world.
More than 1500 First Nations artists from across Australia will feature in this year’s Tarnanthi Festival, which includes a major exhibition of work by the multi-award-winning Vincent Namatjira and will see the annual Tarnanthi Art Fair return as an in-person event at Adelaide Entertainment Centre.
The first major exhibition of Peter Waples-Crowe’s work in South Australia is an explosion of colour and form that centres the artist’s Indigenous queer identity and culture.
SA arts & culture news in brief: Art Gallery extends its opening hours for the final days of box-office hit Frida & Diego, a new fellowship program aims to nurture local authors, entries open for 2024 Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, and award-winning visual artworks now on show in two exhibitions.
Significant new insights into the life and work of 18th-century watercolourist Sarah Stone can be gleaned through a recently discovered album of 40 botanical studies now on display in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s Elder Wing.
Visual Art
Artist and poets will lead an exploration of places of refuge and sanctuary in the 18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art next year, with work spilling onto the city streets and leaving a legacy of public art.
Design
PHOTO GALLERY: In the 50 years since it began life in an old factory in St Peters, JamFactory has helped forge hundreds of creative careers and put Adelaide at the heart of Australia’s contemporary craft and design scene. Now, as it reflects on the past and looks to the future, it has one pressing need: more space.
Adelaide’s break with the past and embrace of the new is revealed in a Carrick Hill exhibition which celebrates risk-taking, innovation and play leading up to and during the heyday of mid-century modernism.
Honesty and trust is crucial to the relationship between mother-and-daughter artists Anna Gore and Mary-Jean Richardson, whose 2023 SALA exhibition is testimony to the power of creative collaboration and the enduring art of painting.
Celebrated photographer Trent Parke’s new retrospective exhibition is like a time capsule, offering a unique and fascinating look at everyday life through his lens.
When his social media accounts were hacked in 2022, light painting photographer Denis Smith reassessed his online life. The creative results feature in his SALA show Duality, which also offers visitors a chance to try the technique themselves.
Four South Australian artists have experimented with illusion, fire and other elements of nature, culture, science and technology in a cross-disciplinary project that responds to the uncertainty of the world in which we live.
Transporting visitors into the world of Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera with a vibrant display of more than 150 works, the Art Gallery of SA’s new exhibition illuminates why Kahlo is an artist of such enduring allure.
SA arts and culture news in brief: A life-changing scholarship opportunity, surprising images capture the art of science, Adelaide Fringe warehouse auction, art prize winner maps Unley, celebrations at The Mill, and an introduction to paper sculpture.
An exhibition of 12 large Arthur Boyd tapestries depicting the life of Saint Francis gives Adelaide art lovers a rare opportunity to experience the depth, vibrancy and scale of these incredible works.
Visual Art
A showcase of superbly curated new works by the 27 Australian artists shortlisted for this year’s Ramsay Art Prize confirms that the heart of the nation’s contemporary art scene – as relevant and dynamic as ever – continues its powerful beat.
Visual Art
For Craig Glasson, the studio is a ‘laboratory of ideas’. At times he needs silence to bring those ideas to fruition through his painstaking, design-inspired practice – but he also loves listening to techno music.
Crafting modernism offers an intriguing insight into the lifelong creative journey of South Australian potter Milton Moon, who was fuelled by a vision that married Zen philosophy with a determination to express a distinctly Australian sense of place.
Almost nothing is as fragile as a single sheet of paper, but a Pakistan-born paper sculptor who now calls Adelaide home is using this delicate material to carve narratives of moral and psychological truths.
The latest development in Adelaide’s ever-evolving gallery landscape sees GAGPROJECTS director Paul Greenaway relaunching his Kent Town exhibition space with a standout solo show of new work by Chinese-Australian artist Guan Wei.
SA arts and culture news in brief: Finalists announced for the 2023 Ramsay Art Prize, how this year’s History Festival seeks to evoke a sense of wonder, applications open for $20,000 Porter Street Commission, and what’s in store at the Cabaret Fringe.
Created in the shadow of the Vietnam War and at the height of the Funk art movement, Adelaide-based artist Olive Bishop’s Wash and War will be in the spotlight at the Art Gallery of South Australia on ANZAC Day.
Festivals
Illuminate Adelaide will return this winter with a new night-time digital art trail through the Botanic Garden, a pavilion full of mind-bending interactive experiences in Victoria Square, free city-wide works by artists including celebrity chef Poh Ling Yeow, and a music line-up featuring Yothu Yindi.
InReview
John Olsen, one of Australia’s most acclaimed artists who was known for his distinctive depictions of landscapes and nature, has died at age 95.
The 2023 Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition offers a fascinating glimpse of the art stars of the future, featuring works ranging from an installation of tactile ceramic chairs, to jewellery pieces that draw on personal experience of chronic illness.
Art, nature and history converge in South Australian artist Catherine Truman’s fascinating exhibition of discovery and encounter at Carrick Hill.
The north-eastern concourse at Adelaide Railway Station is the unusual ‘gallery’ space for a pair of immersive screen-based works – one of which draws inspiration from an unrecognised principality on a platform in the middle of the North Sea.
The Art Gallery of SA’s headline exhibition for the Adelaide Festival’s visual arts program provides a thrilling new perspective on the American pop artist superstar whose cultural omnipresence has inspired countless exhibitions, documentaries, and even a cartoon cameo in The Simpsons.
Visual Art
Promoting the relationship between art, health and wellbeing is at the centre of a South Australian art prize which has just been launched for the second time and offers a total of $50,000 in prize money.
Visual Art
From her studio space in Stepney, painter-turned-animator Kate Kurucz is piecing together a personal story of migration, loneliness, and more than a hint of movie magic.
With a friendship spanning two decades, Carly Tarkari Dodd and Dominic Guerrera’s collaborative residency in the Adelaide CBD pays tribute to First Nations protest and “raw” conversations.
One of South Australia’s newest silo art displays has been shortlisted for the 2022 Australian Street Art Awards.
A solo exhibition at The Mill is giving voice to lesser heard stories.
Women artists have often come up with creative ways of combining family and work. Curator and artist Sarah Northcott found new directions in her kitchen studio – and inspiration in a TV documentary she watched one sleepless early morning.
Visual Art
Twenty-seven graduating artists delve into subjects ranging from the Australian landscape and urban environments to lost histories and an imagined dystopian future in the Adelaide Central School of Art’s 2022 Graduate Exhibition.
Visual Art
In her Norwood studio space, sculptor Bernadette Klavins digs deep into her family history – and humankind’s relationship with the earth.
PHOTO GALLERY: Adelaide photographer Tony Lewis’s 40-year career has brought him up close to stars like Grace Jones, Michael Hutchence and Annie Lennox, as well as giving him a front-of-stage view of some of our biggest festival shows. Now he’s showing his favourite images larger-than-life on the screens at The Lab.
Five exciting contemporary artists are presenting a diverse and intriguing collection of work in Adelaide Contemporary Experimental’s Studios: 2022 exhibition, with one artist even attempting to wrestle a world record from Hollywood royalty.
Passion and politics are at the heart of a major Australian-exclusive exhibition of works by influential Mexican modernists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera that will be presented as part of the Art Gallery of SA’s 2023 program.
The Art Gallery of South Australia has been transformed into a multi-sensory enclave with the ambitious presentation of Gamepieces, an exhibition that brings pioneering Indian artist Nalini Malani’s incredible 50-year multi-media practice to light.
A strange and colourful world has taken over the Santos Museum of Economic Botany through Chris De Rosa’s Seaweeding Exhibition, a tribute to pioneering women in science and a climate-change warning.
