Foyer Gallery Exhibitions

 

Gestures

 

Exhibition dates: 3 October 2018 - 30 November 2018
Where: Carclew Foyer Gallery
Curator: Gabi Lane
Artists: Ruby Allegra, Chelsea Farquhar, Chiranjika Grasby, They/Them Collective
Opening performance by W.M.N

 

Curator’s statement

 

Queer has become a catchall term for sexual and gender minorities who do not conform to what has been called 'heteronormative' labels. History has had a habit of objectifying and sexualising the queer body. In this exhibition, the artists use their bodies to express their identities. By asserting control of how their own bodies are governed, the artists reaffirm consent over the queer body. Then using their bodies, conceal and reveal the facets of their experiences.

In Gestures, queerness represents broadly. The work reflects varied experience and unique personal expression by each artist. Material and performative processes are central and abstraction manifested. Traces of movement reflect experiences of the self and self-representation, codifying the queer experience. The exhibition exists within an expanded field, which resists categorisation and labelling, giving audiences the opportunity to recognise and realise new ideas.

Special Event - Artist talk with Chelsea Farquhar, Live Drawing by Ruby Allegra

 

Discontented Nature

Exhibition dates: 14 June 2018 - 23 July 2018
Where: Carclew Foyer Gallery
Curator: Gabi Lane
Artist: Steph Fuller, Bernadette Klavins, Sarah Sturm and Sorcha Yelland.

Curator’s statement

Solastagia is a term, coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht, that describes the emotional distress caused by environmental damage.   It describes what sensitive people already feel but cannot express in language. The exhibiting artists in Discontented Nature endeavour to distil wider social and environmental concerns and visually articulate them in their work.

It seems, as a society, although infatuated by nature's capacity for spectacle and omnipotence,; we are dismissive of our own impact. The work in Discontented Nature references our existence amidst the Anthropocene, an era of significant human impact and environmental upheaval. Moreover, these representations become a metaphor for the human condition; there is an undeniable symbiotic relationship between human beings and nature. We see ourselves both as part of nature and affected by it.

Discontented Nature is a meditation on how we, as human beings, effect change in the world we live in and how it, in turn, can inform our understanding of ourselves. The body becomes a site in which tensions and harmonies with the natural world are played out.

 

Synergy

Exhibition dates: 11 April 2018 - 31 May 2018
Where: Carclew Foyer Gallery
Curator: Gabi Lane
Artist: Rosina Possingham

Curatorial Statement
This exhibition marks the first solo show for emerging Adelaide artist Rosina Possingham. The series of photographs in this exhibition is shown as a narrative characterised by synergistic connections; between the photographer and her female subject, the woman and nature, and the woman and her own body.

Through complete immersion in the natural world, the woman comes into her identity, emboldened by the restorative power of nature and confident in her body. Through an Australian landscape equal in vigour, Possingham channels female empowerment.

The female figure has long had a place within the historical art canon, bound by its association with sex and submission. SYNERGY reclaims the female form and invites us to examine a woman as a part of nature's beauty. Possingham captures the intimate journey of discovery and transformation, from states of calm to euphoric elation.

 

With and Without Words

Exhibition dates: 1 March 2018 - 10 April 2018
Where: Carclew Foyer Gallery
Curator: Gabi Lane
Artists: Felicity Townsend, Claire Lontis and Anna Revesz

Curatorial Statement

Written words have a clear and finite meaning, each word has a definition and each sentence a string of parts which form a cohesive whole. Images, on the other hand, are potentially infinite in their meaning. When words are located within the realm of art, the reader becomes a viewer and together written word and image find new meaning. 

With and Without Words explores the interaction between text and visual imagery and invites new ways of perceiving meaning. Artists Anna Revesz and Felicity Townsend and writer Claire Lontis use the interplay between text and image to thoughtfully explore the concepts which underpin their work. Throughout the series of works presented, nature emerges as a common vessel for symbolic meaning.

 

Women In Abstraction

Exhibition dates: 1 August - 24 September
Curator: Olivia Kubiak
Artists: Emma Sullivan and Imogen Porteous 

Women In Abstraction, was part of the South Australian Living Artists (SALA) and Feminist Renewal Art Network (FRAN) festivals.

We don’t often hear about great female abstract artists. Abstraction developed during the modern period and, as Griselda Pollock writes in Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity, ‘all those canonised as the initiators of modern art [were] men.’ Emma Sullivan and Imogen Porteous will deconstruct traditional notions of femininity through abstraction, challenging the hierarchy of this seemingly patriarchal style. They aim to invert the female gaze so that she looks inwards rather than outwards.

Women In Abstraction was curated by Carclew's Curator in Residence Olivia Kubiak and featured artworks by Carclew's Artists in Residence Imogen Porteous, Emma Sullivan, utilising Carclew’s Ballroom Gallery.

 

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Exhibition dates: 5 June - 30 July 2017
Curator: Olivia Kubiak
Artists: Emilija Kasumovic, Hanah Williams, Tim Casiero, Sarah Boese and Jack Lowe

Curatorial Statement

I have always had an obsession with Spain’s romantic artist, Francisco Goya and his concern for the fate of humanity. Goya’s internal conflict came as a result of “man’s duty to be rational, and of the irrational elements in nature which ma[de] this task so hard” (Michael Levey, Rococo to Revolution). Unlike artists before him, he did not glorify war. Rather, Goya depicted torture with satire and darkness, commenting on the contradiction of humanity’s inhumane and disgusting treatment of one another - and for what?

As a result, he frequently depicted themes connected with night and darkness. He was fascinated with the irrational nature of dreaming and the fact that, unlike when you are awake, when one dreams, one never knows what is going to happen. This exhibition is titled after one of my favourite pieces by Goya titled, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. “While the artist dreams, deserted by reason, night monsters float frighteningly about him." (Michael Levey, Rococo to Revolution).This etching shows Goya sleeping with his head resting on a table while surrounded by an imagined gathering of giant owl and bat-like creatures. To his side sits a peaceful, wide-eyed lynx, juxtaposing the sleeper’s disturbed state of mind. These haunting creatures emerge from the unconscious.

In this exhibition, the artists will create works depicting what one sees when all reason and rational thought is abandoned. How do our dark thoughts translate into haunting nightmares when we are in insensible states? Artists guide us through how they link conscious and unconscious states of mind and reveal how unbearable monsters are created when one’s imagination is abandoned by all reason. Our psychological awareness can be our biggest enemy. Imagination is the mother of art and the basis of curiosity and wonder.  How are the artists haunted by these nightmares and how do these visions translate into their work?

 

Echoes of Rococo

Exhibition dates: 10 Apr - 28 May 2017
Where: Carclew Foyer Gallery
Curator: Olivia Kubiak
Artists: Christina Peek, Georgina Chadderton, Amanda Ng, Tayla Carlaw

Curatorial Statement

The rococo was an artistic style and movement which started in France in the 18th century. This movement has always fascinated me with its inviting style. It is charismatic, whether it be the elaborate detailing and luxurious gold finishes of its decorative arts or the soft pastels colours used in its images of cherubs, nymphs, and young women picnicking dressed in their pretty gowns.  However, the themes that surround the rococo fascinate me even more. Love, flirtation, pleasure, eroticism, myth, youth and playfulness dominate the genre, which is captivating in itself as there are not many other art movements that purely depict the light-hearted things in life. Leisure and play were the subjects at the forefront of rococo art.

Echoes of Rococo aims to reflect how these ideas, so strongly associated with the rococo period,  are still prevalent in the work of today’s contemporary artists. The artists cheekily and playfully express the associated themes of this movement as they reinterpret the rococo. I want to explore how these themes are characterised in art in 2017. I think that the spontaneity and playfulness of this movement reverberate through contemporary art, and that wistful allegories have an important place in this exhibition which disengages us from reality- even if just for a little while. The rococo implied a life of leisure, which is something most of us desire – after all, who doesn’t enjoy a bit of fun?

The four artists in this exhibition mirror themes of the rococo in very different ways. Georgina’s work is orientated with innocence and youth, and her charming sketches take us all back to our childhoods. The work of Christina is orientated around romance and her works are inspired by love stories. Tayla focuses on beauty and women in the natural world, and Amanda is fascinated with myths and eroticism.

 

Beyond These Walls

Exhibition dates: 23 February - 24 March 2017
Where: Carclew Foyer Gallery
Curator: Olivia Kubiak
Artists: Alaska Young, Cara Pearson, Gabrielle Cirocco, Lucy Timbrell and Viray Thach 

Curatorial Statement:
A place can leave a lasting impression on people; it can be nostalgic, familiar or possess a certain charm. This exhibition explores how these impressions can be preserved and how artists respond to and work with the urban environment. Beyond These Walls aims to portray how the architecture, people, nature and popular image-making have impacted artists and what it is about a certain place that speaks to them. The artists are observers and document cultural experiences and this is demonstrated through the subject matter in their art. They are the critics and fringe dwellers of society and may be considered as ‘outsiders’ examining living culture and society. Some artists situate their work in the urban space by working on the streets and others by creating work in studios which have been influenced by the way culture is manifested in the city and beyond. Art influenced by the urban environment tells individual stories of the artists and Beyond These Walls will give the audience a glimpse into what these stories are about. The artists showcased in Beyond These Walls are actively making statements about contemporary visual culture in the lived environment. What role does the living environment have on our everyday lives? Does it say something about us? Often it reflects societal and cultural priorities and aims to find what is important.

Art can be peaceful or radical, hostile or sympathetic, impressively executed or childish, unique or imitative but all artists who contribute to this type of art have formed some sort of connection with the lived environment and understand how to communicate within it or outside of it. They form a connection with the place and its citizens and their art can be statements of protest, criticism, satire, humour, beauty or rebellion – urban spaces and natural environments can be a cultural hub of ideas and expression. Beyond These Walls will demonstrate these ideas and show the audience artists engage with the urban environment and beyond.

 

High Gloss and Fairy Floss

Exhibition dates: 1 December - 10 February
Where: Carclew Foyer Gallery
Curator: Ingrid Goetz
Artist: Chelsea Nichols

Curatorial Statement:
I am fascinated by the way that we curate our lives online – what we share, and what remains hidden. We are a generation that has grown up with social media and even if we wanted to, we can't escape it. It's worked its way into our personal and professional lives, it's too late to untangle ourselves from it now.

To me Chelsea's works speak to the idea that behind the images of perfection we see on our screens lie people who are many faceted, with darker sides and sharper edges. By examining these fractured faces in their overly ornate frames, the viewer is left to wonder -if we could see past the high gloss and fairy floss we share with each other on social media, what, or who, would we see?
Ingrid Goetz, Curator

We use social media to self-curate an image & construct an identity piece-by-piece, creating a projection of ourselves that fits an ideal. Using candy colours and embellishments, I create the vague shape of a face. My painting style is my own personal brand of torture. I construct an image and then proceed to tear it to pieces in an attempt to create a balance between opposing marks. I force elements into the image, layer upon layer, until an equilibrium is reached between what is revealed and what is obscured.
Chelsea Nicholls, Artist

 

Digital Art

Exhibition dates: 29 September - 25 November
Where: Carclew Foyer Gallery
Curator: Ingrid Goetz 
Artists: Anna Bailes, Alexandra Lekis, Georgina Chadderton, Jack Lowe and Viray Thach

Carclew’s Digital Art exhibition is showcasing work by emerging artists who create their work either wholly or partly in a digital format. Highlighting the versatility of the medium, the exhibition will showcase different styles, subjects and themes. 

Digital Art is curated by Carclew's Curator in Residence Ingrid Goetz and features artworks by Anna Bailes, Alexandra Lekis, Georgina Chadderton, Jack Lowe and Viray Thach. 

 

Dreaming / Awake

Exhibition dates: 22 May - 24 July
Curator: Ingrid Goetz
Artists: Lana Adams, Steph Fuller, Maya Kolega and Alice Blanch

Dreaming / Awake explores the way in which images can inspire in us a dream-like state, can change our mood and convey emotions, simply by capturing a moment in time in a certain way.

Through the lenses of Alice Blanch and Lana Adams we are transported to New Zealand, a country we may never have visited. While viewing these works we imagine ourselves to be in the expansive, majestic and visceral landscape, which can inspire feelings of wonder, perhaps a sense of calm, or even wanderlust. We are in a dream and yet we are awake.

Maya Kolega's work carries us away into a dreamscape that plays with the idea of partially forgotten dreams, capturing the moment of waking, the identity of our dream self instantly forgotten. Steph Fuller's images pull the viewer into a place and time, a feeling and a state of mind, through the way in which she captures her world, as though for the first time, after the death of a loved one.

These images inspire feelings within us, we are enveloped by them, transported to another realm... it's as though we are dreaming and yet we are awake.

 

Strands of Identity

Exhibition dates: 30 March – 22 May 2016
Curator: Ingrid Goetz
Artists: Seirian Kitchener, Aida Azin, Chelsea Nicholls and Jessica Nolan

What shapes our identity? 

How do the spaces that we inhabit, our family history or ethnicity, memories of events (real or imagined), or our appearance contribute to our sense of who we are as unique individuals? How do these and many other influences interact to contribute to our sense of identity?

Strands of Identity illustrates some of the different strands that weave together in the process of forming our identity.

 

Experimental Self Portraiture

Exhibition dates: 19 November 2015 – 31 January 2016
Curator: Lauren Mustillo
Artists: Véra Ada, Elise Bonato, Olivia Kathigitis, Jenna Pippett, Tara Rowhani-Farid

Experimental Self Portaraiture brings together a group of emerging artists who have turned their gaze back on themselves, looking at an expanded field of self-portraiture in contemporary art. The self-portrait operates as affirmation of existence and agency in the world. Functioning as an extension of self, the self-portrait can extend beyond a purely physical documentation, expressing an inner state of being. The self-portrait can also jostle in a state between truth and fiction – revealing and concealing – performing the self. Through the use of self-portraiture, I hope the artists will explore their relationship to their bodies and their own personal worlds; constructing identity and narrative and experimenting with pushing the boundaries of what portraiture is.

 

Meditating States

Exhibition dates: 18 September - 16 November, 2015
Curator: Lauren Mustillo
Featuring: Sarah Thame
This and the other
Sarah Thame’s work operates in a state of in-between-ness. Her delicate black and white prints are simultaneously of this world and other-worldly. Familiar imagery from the natural world immaterialises into abstract forms, evoking a sense of the micro and the macro of the cosmos.

Imagery undulates and spills over itself, free flowing. These abstracted worlds are perceptually disorientating, without any clear indicator of anything fixed or solid, creating a sense of infinite space.

These abstracted forms are visceral and evocative, expressing the emotional and the personal, used to explore external world, mediating and exploring the interconnectedness of our many states of being. 

 

Through My Eyes

Exhibition dates: 18 May until 16 July 2015
Curator: Lauren Mustillo
Featuring: Soroor Soolaaf Masieh

Through my eyes is a collection of figurative and portraiture paintings by Ahwazian artist Soroor Soolaaf Masieh that concentrate on portraying a spectrum of human emotions. To see the world through another’s eyes is to attempt to understand a different point of perspective on a truly human level. By portraying a variety of emotions, Soroor aims to instil the viewer with a sense of commonality that spans across race, ethnicity, age and gender, to highlight similarities rather than differences.

 

South Australia: Heaps Good

Exhibition dates: 9 December 2014 until 27 February 2015
Curator: Caitlin Eyre and Craig Robert Middleton
Featuring: Lana Adams, Alice Blanch, Lucy Brewin, Eric W Brumfield, Natasha Filippi, Mitch Hearn, Madeline Reece and Lucy Timbrell

South Australia boasts long summers, stunning beaches and award-winning wine, events and festivals. The unique landscape and culture is a muse to artists in all creative fields. This group exhibition explores the use of South Australian landscapes, icons and landmarks as subjects for young South Australian artists. The works presented reference different experiences, meanings and ideas of what it is to be South Australian and the aesthetic splendour of our great southern state. South Australia: it’s Heaps Good.

 

La Danse Macabre

From 13 November until 5 December 2014

Curated by Craig Robert Middleton | Featuring Chris Callaghan and Julia Townsend

La Danse Macabre presents the work of two contemporary visual artists working in two opposing mediums who explore the theme of death in very different ways. Death is something that, as humans, we cannot escape. The theme of death has always had an important place in art history and has been interpreted in countless ways to remind us of the inevitability of death and the fragility of life. Julia Townsend and Chris Callaghan present just a slice of how diversely Australian contemporary artists explore the human preoccupation with death.

 

Technicolour Dreaming

From 16 October until 11 November 2014

Curated by Caitlin Eyre | Featuring Amy McNamara

Technicolour Dreaming presents a vibrant and eclectic series of watercolour and mixed media illustrations by emerging local artist Amy McNamara. The artist combines bright colours, ornate patterns and a delicate painting style to produce highly atmospheric and dreamlike depictions of both real and imagined worlds. Vividly coloured and gracefully rendered, this charming series brings light to the enchanting inner world of the artist, deftly blurring the boundaries between the realms of reality and the surreal.

 

Urban Playground

From 14 September until 15 October 2014

Curated by Craig Middleton | Featuring Lucy Brewin

Urban Playground presents a new body of work by emerging artist Lucy Brewin. Approximately 20 works will be exhibited that present a deconstruction of the New York City landscape. Preoccupation with landscape and cityscape imagery is ever present in the history of art and this exhibition embodies how contemporary artists continue to reinterpret land and cityscapes. The works take on the artist’s own reminiscence of the city while creating a sense of nostalgia for viewers. Lucy’s watercolours are thoughtful representations of travels past and a New York state of mind.

 

Lady Face

From 4 July until 5 September 2014

Curated by Caitlin Eyre | Featuring Jennifer Allnut, Meaghan Coles, Kate Kurucz and Katie Long

Lady Face explores the representation of women in contemporary art and culture by showcasing a survey of female portraiture by young female visual artists. Throughout the history of art, paintings of women have largely been commissioned and produced by men for the pleasure of the male gaze. Lady Face counters this tradition by celebrating the insight and skill of female artists in representing the physical, psychological and emotional attributes of their female subjects through the intimacy of portraiture.

 

Unconquered Spirit

From 31 May until 2 July 2014

Curated by Craig Robert Middleton | Featuring Samantha Webb

Unconquered Spirit explores an artistic and personal connection to the land, particularly taking influence from the traditions of trance states, spirit guides and natural connections. The exhibition features illustration, portraiture and wood works that explore the themes of storytelling and the environment. It is the artist’s active connection to the natural work that is paramount to the execution of her work. The exhibition boasts strong associations with and is representative of a nomadic lifestyle; the desire to wander, walk and travel is synonymous with a need to collect, gather and create.

 

Genesis

From 29 April until 28 May 2014

Curated by Caitlin Eyre | Featuring Alex Carletti

Alex Carletti is a young South Australian contemporary visual artist and self-styled yogi whose artistic practice is primarily focused on exploring themes of mysticism, mythology and spirituality.

Genesis offers a visual exploration of the mysticism surrounding the human lifecycle and particularly focuses on the constantly regenerating cycle of life and death. The exhibition features powerful depictions of the womb as a sacred and nurturing space at the beginning of each cycle and mystical representations of death at each conclusion. This narrative of existence emphasises the circular nature of life and death and the spiritual need to return to the womb between each cycle in order to reconnect with the source of life and all creation.

 

Hieros Gamos

This marriage represents the perfect union of masculine and feminine elements and suggests the sacred balance that is gained from honouring the genders equally. Through this body of work, the artist seeks to honour the inherent nature of masculine and feminine elements while imparting the balancing effect produced by perfect duality.

 

Likeness

Through the body of work showcased in Likeness, emerging artist Kate Kurucz explores different facets of portraiture and what it can provoke - envy, desire, empathy and curiosity. Kate uses the luscious materiality of oil paint to depict the identities of those that regularly surround her. For Kate, this process of working is a reaction to our natural instinct of wanting to create personal connections. Not only do we relish in the technical expertise of Kate’s paint work but we also become intrigued about the identity and character of the faces that she portrays. Kate is an emerging artist who graduated with honours from Adelaide Central School of Art in 2012 and is one of three co-founders of Mint Artist Studios.

 

Non-threatening Boys

now you see me

From 4 until 30 September 2013

Curated by Serena Wong | Featuring Margaret Lloyd and Jennifer Allnutt

now you see me is an exploration into the ambiguities found in the relationships between animals and humans. It represents in between spaces, whose fluidity allows us to permeate the definite lines of categorisation that supposedly separate us from animals. When giving human traits to animals we are anthropomorphising, yet we lack a similar language to investigate the way in which we use animals to disassociate ourselves with qualities we do not value or perceive in human nature.  now you see me is a narrative between the fantasy and the real, the animal and the human.

 

The Dance of the Dunce | SALA 2013

From 2 until 31 August

Curated by Jemimah Davis | Featuring Jayson Fox

A narratively driven body of work from Jayson Fox depicting what it means to be a social rogue, a miscreant, an uncouth youth and a street urchin. thepilsburyharlet.com

Habit | SALA 2013

From 3 until 23 August 2013

Curated and featuring work by | Carly Snoswell and Katia Carletti, Artist Studio Residents

An exhibition by Carclew's 2013 artists in residence for South Australian Living Artists Festival 2013

Carly Snoswell and Katia Carletti explore concepts surrounding the home and the objects, images, and rituals that occupy this space.

Street Struck: The Deconstrucktion of the Street

From 10 June until 27 July 2013

Curated by Serena Wong | Featuring Donovan Christie

When we look at the city how much do we actually see? Donovan Christie's snapshots of the city cut and paste the objects of our everyday lives, bringing them into focus with acrylic and canvas. These paintings of the streets remind us of what surrounds us, what we walk past on the way to work, in the alleyway beside our favourite bar, or next door to the best coffee in town. They de-construct the blur of our day to day life, bringing the streets of Adelaide into view.

Microanalysis

From 1 until 20 May 2013

Curated by Jemimah Davis | Featuring Zoe Woods and Sam Trevaskis

Microanalysis showcased works by two South Australian emerging artists Zoe Woods and Sam Trevaskis, investigating the visible regularities of form found in the natural world. Each artist responds to their observations and presents rather contrasting outcomes, both visually and materially.

Through her glass work, Zoe Woods alludes to the fantastic and exotic world of microscopic nature. The distortive and reflective qualities of thick glass explore patterns and forms found in our microscopic world. Her works are an investigation into the ability of the object to elicit the same feeling of wonder that is experienced when looking through a microscope lens.

Sam's work investigates unexpected relationships between nature and the industrialised world through the abstract representation of camouflage. His work explores functions of patterns in nature: to disorient spatially, and to appear at once alluring, confusing and repellent. The juxtaposition of organic forms within a geometric composition alludes to the relationship between the natural world and our constructed one

BACK TO THE FUTURE (the year was 2009)

Sam Evans is Gary Phillips

From 8 March until 15 April 2013

Curated by Serena Wong | Featuring Sam Evans

Andrew Humphreys

From 29 January until 25 February 2013

Curated by Adele Sliuzas | Featuring Andrew Humphreys

Andrew Humphreys is an emerging South Australian painter operating in the borderland between illustration and ‘fine art’― the one a pursuit of technical excellence in traditional visual storytelling, the other an endeavour to preserve in the postmodern gallery setting the modernist conception of style as theme. The negation of that stylistic focus in much of contemporary art goes hand in hand with the pigeonholing of classically-skilled painters into the often undervalued role of the commercial illustrator, and it’s a conscious exploration of this present situation that gives Humphreys’ work its theoretical dimension, as he applies both storybook-esque character design and a nostalgic painterly formalism to a very gallery-oriented goal. But underlying this fusion of aestheticism with more self-reflexive conceptualism is Humphreys’ longest-term project, a graphic novel of epic proportions, for which all of today’s paintings are essentially practice ― the tip of a much bigger, darker, wetter iceberg.

The Carclew Artist Residency

Above is what I typically say to make my long-term direction understandable to others, but it’s all very theoretical compared to my everyday art-making concerns, such as where can I paint, firstly, but also how can that place then double as a meeting point for models I need to photograph, curators I wish to show work to, or other collaborators from the art community. For me, the location of the Carclew loft studio, its nearness to the centre of the Adelaide art scene, is what has really made my residency here worthwhile, because so many connections I’ve made have been aided by that centrality. And of course, besides the benefit of location, the studio space itself is flexible and large, allowing for the creation of small to medium-sized works like those in this exhibition, as well as much larger mural-sized paintings which I’ll be exhibiting at a later date (the ground floor of the studio is especially ideal for big works thanks to its high ceiling). I recommend the residency to any emerging artist, painter especially! Andrew Humphreys.

Kissing Across Oceans

From 11 September until 5 October 2012

Curated by Adele Sliuzas | Featuring Katia Carletti

Kissing Across Oceans presented work by sculptor and painter Katia Carletti. Having just returned from residency in Iceland funded by a Carclew Project and Development Grant, much of the work in this exhibition reflected on time spent in a distant and strange land. Carletti's haunting lanscapes sit somewhere on the edge of belonging, sometimes appearing and then vanishing, sometimes ruptured by black holes.

Iceland was the furthest away from home I had even been by myself and as a result of this removal from all that I know, I often found myself overwhelmed and upset by homesickness or other parts of my brain. At the same time, I was constantly in awe at my surroundings; endless sea, volcanic fields, snow capped mountains, swaying grass, the moon hanging low in the blue sky of midnight. These surroundings became familiar and homely, and as I swallowed them, digested, the craggy peaks and foggy tunnels became my hollow chest and warring head. Katia Carletti.

Self Portraits

From 20 July until 27 August 2012

Curated by Adele Sliuzas | Featuring Kat Botten, Alexander Carletti, Andrew Humphreys and Glenn Kestell

This exhibition brought together a group of artists who have turned their work back on themselves. Through self-portraits Kat, Alex, Andrew and Glenn begin to examine their own personal worlds, construct their identities and challenge the space of their being. As contemporary artists these works are a reflection of the art world much as they are of the artist's personal world. Through paint, photography and print, these artists reconstruct pieces of a fragmented realm, intensely questioning themselves and implicating the viewer. 

“Self Portraiture involves the inward finding of the self, manifest through the externalisation of the features of the face. In a sense, it involves being present on two planes of existence, the plane of being of "self" of "my" awareness, and my physical manifestation. These works are attempts to recontextualise the act of looking at ones reflection, through looking through the eyes and looking inward as statements of being.”  Alexander Carletti

Spectre of a broken body

18 May until 17 July 2012

Curated by Adele Sliuzas | Featuring Claire Marsh

Claire Marsh’s practice explores the body; its force, its thresholds and its relation to the self and other bodies. Through processes of visual and physical mutations, Marsh talks about what she calls “the silent, the creaturely and the horror of the self.” 

To be alone with you

4 April until 15 May 2012

Curated by Adele Sliuzas | Featuring Malia Wearn

To Be Alone With You presented a collection of Malia Wearn's recent work. Her paintings, embroideries and installations extend from a place that is imbued with considerations of the self and its place within the world.

Get Hurt: Posters and Video Art from Adelaide's Music Scene

Featuring Harry Freeman, Dan Heath and Lise van Konkelenberg

28 February until 30 March 2012

Curated by Adele Sliuzas | Featuring Harry Freeman, Dan Heath and Lise van Konkelenberg

GET HURT featured work that sit on the margin of music and art. The exhibition rested on the dynamic between pop culture, visual culture and music culture; a creative intensity that is visual and aural.

In Adelaide, as in most creatively clued-in cultures, there is a symbiosis between the world of art and the world of music. Creative people, trained and untrained, are not restrained by historical definitions of ‘the artist’, there is a movement and hybridity between music and visual. Flow. And each feeds into the other.

The posters featured in GET HURT created a visual identity to support a parallel music community, these posters are independent artefacts of a specific culture.