Visual Arts 2006 -
A Year in Review

Being a 'Festival-on' year, 2006 got off to a great start. The Adelaide Fringe and Festival visual art programmes were eclectic, dynamic and as usual, created a real art buzz in our already arts-rich city. Energy was again renewed during August with Adelaide's ever-growing SALA Festival taking place. This saw audiences strolling around the city and its outskirts overdosing on local art.

The SALA festival, though a fantastic ongoing contribution to the arts in South Australia, always proves a highly dynamic mix of artists and styles. Boasted as an 'all inclusive' festival, SALA was imbued with part-time hobby artists right through to full-time professionals. It can sometimes become troublesome navigating through exhibitions of varying degrees of success, however, this year's SALA Festival brought some gems to the surface.

Finally, the recent annual Feast Festival brought art practitioners of Adelaide's gay and lesbian communities into a host of participating venues around the city.

Between the festivals, our household galleries continued to inspire through their exhibition programmes. The Art Gallery of South Australia's '21st Century Modern: 2006 Adelaide Biennial Of Australian Art' was beautifully contrasted with its later staged Margaret Preston and Gladys Reynell exhibitions. The Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia's Contemporary Visual Art Projects again raised the bar in Adelaide; Guan Wei's Unfamiliar Land was of particular note. Greenaway Art Gallery and the Experimental Art Foundation each had diverse and appealing shows that assisted the above-mentioned galleries in keeping Adelaide's reputation as a serious player in Australian contemporary art.

Aside from these major art centres, Adelaide's community art presence has again been strongly felt through the good work that has been done out at Axis Gallery - Parks Arts & Function Complex, Gallery M - Marion Cultural Centre and Pepper Street Studios, to promote local talent.

Likewise, Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre has represented artists from minority groups and multicultural communities. Sasha Ruth Woolley's 'Lime Light', Nexus' contribution to the Feast Festival, was a recent favourite of this often overlooked arts hub.

It was also particularly good to be able toaccess Indigenous art throughout the majority of the year in galleries other than Tandanya, namely at Artspace - Adelaide Festival Centre, Flinders University Art Museum, and commercial venues such as Big Star Art Gallery, AP Bond Art Dealer and Art Images Gallery.

It was difficult to overlook South Australia's strong emphasis on New Media Arts, despite the recent dissipation of the New Media Arts Board. Kicking off the year was the annual experimental music program 'Project 3'. As part of the Adelaide Festival of Arts, the program incorporated projections, sound sculptures and street cinema together with new music performances.

Of particular interest was the contribution by Canadian composer/artist, Robin Minard, whose installation of hundreds of tiny speakers and cables created visual and sonic clusters that climbed the Artspace gallery walls like a field of poppies.

This was followed by the finale of ANAT's 'Surface Tension' - a project running over several months to bring moving image to the streets via a guerrilla-style projection van.

Not long after, the SALA Moving Image Festival was underway at Higher Ground, showcasing innovative work by both emerging and practiced New Media artists. 'Zones Of Contact: 2006 Biennale Of Sydney' graced the walls of the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia to bring us moving image works that explored the issues of hybridity, segregation, private life and the architecture of a community.

Keeping with the New Media theme, it has also been an exciting year for strong emerging artists. Tracy Cornish's '[photo:fugue]', held at the SASA Gallery in July, was a promising exhibition of unconventional photographic works, often transformed into moving image projections and soundscapes.

The graduating student exhibitions held by VizArts O'Halloran Hill, Adelaide Centre of the Arts, and the South Australian School of Art, were also enjoyable viewing. For established artists, Eric Alga and Ede Horton's joint exhibition 'Stories, Memories & Vistas' is a wonderful journey through memory, space and object, and local culture.

With things quieting down now over the festive and holiday season, we have a little time to recuperate before the Adelaide Fringe becomes annual and will no doubt get the arts ball rolling in March 2007. If you are taking some R&R, why not check out Adam Dutkiewicz's 'Something Old/Something New: 50th Birthday Survey Exhibition' at the Royal South Australian Society of Arts (until 24 December 06), 'Anangu Backyard' at Artspace (until 4 Feb 07) or AGSA's 'Rodin: Genius Of Form' (until 18 February 07).

Lauren Sutter and Nerina Dunt





Sasha Ruth Woolley

Top: 'Natasha' 2005

136cm x 110cm Lambda Print

Image courtesy Lime Light curator Di Barrett



Guan Wei

Left: 'Unfamiliar Land' 2006

24 panels, acrylic on canvas 267 x677cm

Image courtesy the artist and Sherman Galleries, Sydney



Ede Horton

Above: Pink 3-4 2006

7cm x 10cm cast glass, sandblasted and flocked

Image courtesy the artist