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SALA Festival Various Artists Various Venues Until Sun 14 August  This
year SALA has made the jump from a week into a festival. Although
the official dates span just over two weeks (Fri 29 July until Sun
14 August), exhibitions began before and will continue well beyond
these dates. The celebration of South Australian Living Artists seems
to be gaining momentum; with the walking art guides, open studios,
venues (both metropolitan and regional), publications and number of
people involved, the amount of exhibitions has significantly increased.
The SALA phenomenon cannot possibly be captured in one review, so
let's call this the mid-SALA review, with many more shows to touch
on later. What better way to start writing about the frenzy that is the SALA Festival than with the carnivalesque atmosphere of 'Archer's Arcadia', showing at Adelaide Central Gallery 2. David Archer's exhibition has captured the festival feelings of excitement and entertainment. He has unravelled his curtains and banners, started his circus-style music and arranged his arcade artworks to transport the visitor beyond the gallery space. To visit 'Archer's Arcadia' is to witness an event: a travelling array of sideshows that have set up camp in Central's gallery. 'Archer's Arcadia' almost transcends time: the works slip back to a low-fi version of arcade entertainment that was once relatively simple and handcrafted, not flashy, digital, speedy and overtly dazzling. Turning the cranks on the exhibits will do such things as tip a beer-swilling man back in his boat, wave an elephant girl's large flat ears or reveal a nightmarish skeleton in what you thought was a lucrative dream. Like the old days, twenty cents regains its potential value and will buy you something once again; here it will reveal your fortune from a skull. Not to be mistaken for purely innocent fun, a darker world is here revealed with the mere turning of a crank. Just as clowns can take on eeriness beyond their happy exterior, the circus or local show has an element of darkness too. Skulls, graveyards, freakish natures and sinister elements abound in Archer's games. He uses suitcases, found and handcrafted materials to carefully create these scenes and their festive-coloured display housings. This entertaining exhibition, where the audience's participation is essential, showcases Archer's tinkering abilities and contrasts such worlds as the old and the new, the handmade and the mass-produced the low tech and high tech. Every year an artist features throughout the SALA Festival, having a publication dedicated to their practice. This year Ken Bolton has written about Michelle Nikou and Greenaway Gallery are exhibiting her work. Nikou's work is tactile, relating to the domestic space and a familiarity with objects around her. She creates affection and attention for such homely things as under appreciated door snakes, toilet rolls or foodstuffs. Nikou plays with these shapes and forms and transfers them into traditionally based materials, most often bronze. Strands of bronze hair gather and cooperate to form legible words, unfortunate curtain rings are forever cursed with the sickly words of 'The Young And The Restless', 'Days Of Our Lives' or 'The Bold And The Beautiful'. How will they ever forget "You've made my life so perfect and complete" stamped into their undersides? On Rundle Mall, the works of Marcin Kobylecki, Ben Quici and Paul Sloan in 'Minimal World' slip comfortably into the serene yet ritzy atmosphere of Hotel Richmond's First Bar. These paintings sit alongside a great display of art already in the hotel's collection and continue a feeling of patterns and luxurious items already created by the space itself. Kobylecki is an exception to this statement, painting in oil on canvas a bucket, open package and a box. These are everyday kind of items, and interestingly it is the paintings themselves that become treasure. Sloan's typically black and white paintings use linear strokes to draw chandeliers, diamonds and ornately decorative landscapes with the occasional disturbing severed head thrown in. Lastly, Quici paints figurative scenes, but his use of line and elaborate patterning makes you feel as if you have discovered real riches. Exhibitions that should make it to a must see-list include 'Concord' at South Australian School of Art Gallery (UniSA City West Campus), 'Unloading' from Julia Moretti and Abbas Mehran at Barr Smith Library (Adelaide University) and work shown in the Carclew Foyer Gallery by Laura Amos, Mark Siebert and Jack Wilde. An honourable mention goes to the exhibition of fascinating shoes made by students of Marleston TAFE at Barlows Shoes on the mall.  |
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