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2000 Exhibitions and public programs
Ilya/Emila Kabakov Man-Angel (How to make yourself better?) 1998 installation detail from the London exhibition, The Palace of Projects, Photograph by Dirk Powels 3 March - 26 March 2000 Monument To A Lost Civilization
Monument To A Lost Civilization is a project tracing the desire of an individual to construct 'a life of one's own': it depicts the tension between the real and the ideal, and the struggle of developing one's humanity within the confines of a strictly authoritarian society which forces us to submit and betray our true nature.
Monument documents 38 installation projects created by the artists over the span of many years. These installations describe different aspects of life in the former Soviet Union, and are recreated in this exhibition - in a captivating setting - as small models. Monument also constitutes a proposal for a future project by the Kabakovs, a gigantic 'total installation', which the artists compare to the construction of a small city.
Ilya Kabakov is recognised as one of the most important European artists to have emerged in the late 20th century. Since 1989 he and his wife Emilia have worked collaboratively, with their installation projects achieving international acclaim. Monument To A Lost Civilization is the first major project by the Kabakovs to be seen in Australia.
This exhibition was originally presented by Frontiere, 16 April - 27 June 1999 at Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa, Palermo, Italy.
25 Songs on 25 Lines of Words on Art Statement for Seven Voices and Dance 1999 installation view, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney The Palace of Projects, Photograph by Christopher Snee
6 April - 6 May 2000 25 Songs on 25 Lines of Words on Art Statement
for Seven Voices and Dance 1999
25 Songs is a multimedia installation by artist Joe Felber, working collaboratively with dancer-choreographer Lucy Guerin and composer Elliott Gyger, in a response to Ad Reinhardt's seminal 1958 writings on modernism, art and abstraction.
Suspended light pendulums and long polished stainless steel tubes, pipe Gyger's musical composition for seven voices into the gallery - a visual and aural environment in which the viewer can move about. Traversing the space is the image of the dancer, Lucy Guerin, responding to the sounds, images and lightscapes. Felber's graphics complete the installation, drawing the audience back to Reinhardt's texts, which lie at the centre of this work.
18 May - 10 June 2000
2000 Masters Exhibition: South Australian School Of Art
An exhibition of work by students and graduates from the South Australian School of Art, Masters of Visual Arts coursework program. The Masters exhibitions provide an opportunity to consider the diversity of works and ideas being developed in the School's postgraduate studio program.
22 June - 22 July 2000
What John Berger Saw
What John Berger Saw What John Berger Saw is an exhibition about artists who have been influenced by the work of John Berger. The exhibition also features a collaborative work by Berger and UK artist John Christie. As painter, critic, essayist, novelist, poet, dramaturgist, screenwriter and filmmaker, Berger has provided a dazzling and profound example of how to think and represent the times we are living through. With his ground-breaking book and BBC television series Ways of Seeing, particularly, he transformed the way we understand the relationship between art and politics, or more precisely, the connections between past masters in painting, the social context of production and contemporary visual culture.
3 August - 19 September 2000
Gallery 1 - Place And Identity: Contemporary South Australian Ceramists At The Millennial Edge
At the edge of this new millennium it seems appropriate to ask if contemporary South Australian ceramics practice is sensitive to, or expressive of regional cultural character and social identity, or whether it is simply emulating twentieth century global culture?
Place and Identity presents new work by nine leading South Australian ceramists who were invited to consider the question of globalism versus regionalism. Do the works reveal any dialogue, or perhaps just an acknowledgment of our past traditions unique landscapes or multicultural identity? Or are international issues and stylistic trends the dominant influence? Indeed, is there an identifiable South Australian vernacular in contemporary ceramics?
Gallery 2 - Clay Heritage: Lyons And Chamberlain Collections A separate, concurrent exhibition, Clay Heritage, highlights two very important research collections - the Dr R J Lyons Collection of South Australian Ceramics and the Chamberlain Collection of Ceramics - recently gifted to the University of South Australia Art Collection. The collections include ceramic works from the period of settlement in South Australia through to the 1980's, a cohesiveness which permits the tracing of traditional ceramic skills and design over a period of 150 years, and revealing much about the economic and cultural aspects of South Australian life.
The New Republics: Contemporary Art From Australia, Canada And South Africa The New Republics explores the historical relationship fostered by Great Britain with the great landmass states of Australia, Canada and South Africa. These three countries share a common legacy of British colonization and immigration, and a similar context of destiny, tied to the settlement of a "frontier." Currently, each country is grappling with ideas of national identity, political autonomy, and a sometimes bitter struggle for racial equity and reconciliation. This project has been funded by the Canadian High Commission, London Arts Board, the Australia Council, the Arts Council of South Africa, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne.
Remove... Consider the big picture: the cultural and sociological context of rapid globalisation and the proliferation of instant information and imagery technology. The photograph, once having the power of truth, has been subverted by digital technology, a postmodern contemporaneity which has deemed painting and aestheticism redundant. Consider the generations of art-career graduates funneled into 'nurtured' arenas of diminished opportunities, and the recent Australia Council reports, informing us that art/culture only half matters to Australian society anyway. These questions are considered and refined from a particularly South Australian perspective. |
Anna Hughes 
Paul Hobin 
Milton Moon 
Koster's Premier Pottery c. 1925-1930 
Fiona Hall 
Derek Kreckler