Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art
John Nixon is a controversial artist whose work knowingly builds upon early 20th century avant-garde art. In this exhibition, Nixon uses the large space of the Art Museum as an architectural framework for the display of his "mini-paintings". A dynamic visual interplay is created between the works and the gallery space as a consequence of the mini-paintings' exceptional individual characteristics. The manner of their display – in a 'star-like' asymmetrical constellation – determines the experience and sensations of the viewer.
A wide range of materials are used to construct the mini-paintings and regardless of the material, the works are deemed paintings. The colour relationships between individual works are also important. Bright enamel colours react against each other and the white gallery walls.
In EPW: Mini-Paintings, Nixon continues his celebrated investigation of non-objective and minimal possibilities through a colourful galaxy of works, suggestive of a range of associations and meanings.
A project of the Telstra Adelaide Festival 1996 at the University of South Australia Art Museum. An essay by Christopher Dean in the Festival's visual arts catalogue accompanies this exhibition.
Anne Graham is a Sydney-based installation and performance artist commissioned by the Art Museum to produce an original, site-specific work at the Adelaide Railway Station during the Telstra Adelaide Festival 96.
Over the past few years Graham has created a number of "situations" which utilise the everyday activities and functions of a public site, along with consideration of the site's physical and historical attributes.
Working within the architectural confines of the Adelaide Railway station, Off the Rails breaks up the space and alters the experience of the people who pass through it. Commuters and viewers become active participants – films are shown, food is served – a strange dichotomy occurs between "inside and outside", between "public and private".
A University of South Australia Art Museum commission in association with the Telstra Adelaide Festival 1996 and supported by TransAdelaide. An essay by Benjamin Genocchio in the Festival's visual arts catalogue accompanies this exhibition.
Stephen Bush, Kate Daw, Anton Hart, Brett Jones/Sarah Stubbs, Merilyn Fairskye, Andrew Seward/Richard Holt, Kieran Kinney and Rabindra Naidoo
After Image is an exhibition of paintings which explore contemporary issues in photography.
New imaging technologies, digital image manipulation and the global expansion of electronic media, are currently changing the traditional definition and meaning of photography. As a consequence, the role of photography in society, the perception of photographs and their status as objective documents, are being reconsidered.
Much recent painting influenced by photography provides the means by which to pose these questions. Just as photo-realist painting in the 1960s highlighted the veracity of photography, painting in the 1990s also reflects the current status of photographic representation. Indeed, this exhibition aims to chart the more recent influences of photography on painting beyond its obvious 'realism'.
A touring exhibition of the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne. Curated by Andrew Seward and Richard Holt. Catalogue essays by Andrew Seward, Richard Holt and Mark Pennings
Sandra Bridie, Stephen Bush, Barbara Campbell, Greg Creek, Lana H. Foil, Peter Hill, Robert Nelson and Kate Reeves
How Say You? is an exhibition designed to confront the issue of authenticity. Eight artists from Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart have each produced work that makes a mystery of its authorship and thereby challenges the conventions of artistic production.
Sandra Bridie, Barbara Campbell, Lana H. Foil and Kate Reeves use deliberate deception to create another persona; Greg Creek and Robert Nelson present stylised copies of copies which play with the notion of allegory and forgery; Peter Hill makes the grisly claim that crime must be considered art and Stephen Bush refuses to provide the key to interpret his arcane paintings.
Visitors are encouraged to subject these works to scrutiny and give their ruling. Can an artist make work from the gaps in another’s? Can an artist deliberately withhold the meaning of his or her work? Is art a spectacle of moral damnation? Does identity inhibit artistic creativity? Is crime an art? Is forgery a valid art practice? Is authentication a repression of artistic freedom?
A touring exhibition by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. The exhibition is accompanied by a substantial catalogue with texts by curator Kevin Murray and others.
Triumph: A collaborative project by Steven Wigg and Richard Grayson has been commissioned by the Art Museum, and is the first occasion that these two well known Adelaide artists have worked together.
Although Grayson and Wigg share a background in collaborative and performance art, their work has recently been characterised by independent, multi-media installations and, in the case of Grayson, painting.
As a pointer to the intentions and meanings of Triumph, the artists have selected a quote from Bloom's Agon: towards a theory of revisionism (New York and Oxford, O.U.P., 1982):
But in the European Enlightenment, this literary idea was strangely transformed into a vision of the terror that could be perceived both in nature and in art, a terror uneasily allied with pleasurable sensations of augmented power, and even of narcissistic freedom, freedom in the shape of that wildness Freud dubbed "the omnipotence of thought", the greatest of all narcissistic illusions.
A commission by the University of South Australia Art Museum. Catalogue essays by Stanislaus Fung and Linda Marie Walker.
Greg Fullerton, Amanda Poland, Julia McGuire, Helen Stacey, Danielle O’Brien, Ronda Wheatland, Greg Geraghty, Namfon Chitamara and Elizabeth Abbott, Paul Dryga and Jonathon Dady
An exhibition of South Australian School of Art Master of Visual Arts recent graduates and graduating candidates.
