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.