Opinion
February 12 2010
Heartfelt investment in cultural capital
In
the 50th Anniversary year of the
Adelaide Festival,
UniSA has
become a major partner in its 2010 Visual Arts Program and sponsor of the
Adelaide International 2010: Apart, we are together
exhibition. UniSA is also backing the renowned
Artists’ Week program of talks, forums and
workshops by international and Australian speakers.
It is this kind of partnership – one that brings together arts educators and
a brilliant, challenging program of exhibitions from internationally
renowned practicing artists – that develops the vital links that build
cultural capital. And it is fitting that UniSA, with an arts heritage that
can be traced back to 1861 with the SA School of Design (only the second
public art school in the nation at that time), should take such a lead in
the arts today.
The inaugural Adelaide International is an ambitious, multi-venue exhibition
curated by Victoria Lynn, featuring eleven international artists and
collaborations, located across five Adelaide public galleries, of which the
premier venue is the
Samstag Museum of Art.
Other participating galleries include the
Australian Experimental Art
Foundation, Contemporary Art Centre
of SA,
Flinders University City Gallery and
Jam Factory Contemporary Craft and Design. The exhibition will open to
the public on Friday 26 February 2010 and infuse the city with the visual
arts.
As a university we’re delighted to be hosting this marvellous international
exhibition at the Anne and Gordon Samstag Museum of Art.
For those who’ve watched the amazing progress of the Samstag since it opened
in 2007, it will be obvious that UniSA is making an important long-term
commitment to the visual arts in this state.
This in no small way reflects our vision for the University, a young, modern
institution with an international outlook, to make a leading contribution to
Australian society in the widest possible way.
The foundation of the beautiful (as you will see when you visit) Samstag
Museum at UniSA’s
City West campus gives us the opportunity to continue to make a
contribution to the cultural life of Adelaide during the Festival but also
beyond. It has been a deliberate and wise investment in the arts in South
Australia.
The 2010 exhibition, entitled
Apart, we are together, consolidates the Festival's long history of
engagement with contemporary art from around the world and features works by
Rossella Biscotti (Italy), Tara Donavan (USA), Nina Fischer & Maroen El Sani
(Germany), Julian Hooper (New Zealand), Iman Issa (Egypt), Donghee Koo
(Republic of Korea), Li Mu (Peoples Republic of China), Lucy and Jorge Orta
(United Kingdom/France), Raeda Saadeh (Palestine), Praneet Soi
(India/Netherlands) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand). The exhibition
will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.
For the exhibition curator, Victoria Lynn, the theme of the 2010 Adelaide
Festival – the heart – has provided fertile ground for inspiration.
She says the concept of the heart can take us in many directions - memory,
secrets, longing, and emotional thresholds.
“It is with the heart that we forge an aesthetic of courage and sustenance,”
Lynn says.
“It leads us to consider what it takes to survive - what forms of resistance
and resilience are at work. How do we convey a beating force?
“The artists in this exhibition express an impulse to connect - with a
person, a location, or a state of being. Their gestures come from a place of
compassion, but are not sentimental. Art provides a means to create and
sustain a bond with these ungraspable horizons.”
The 2010 Artists’ Week program convened by Victoria Lynn and Nikos
Papastergiadis, is at its core a four-day symposium titled - Art in the
Global Present, featuring more than 40 distinguished international and
Australian participants.
Established in 1982, the Artists’ Week program has long been a distinguished
calendar event in the Festival’s visual arts program and one that provides a
forum for exploring the challenging cultural ideas for which the visual arts
are so universally renowned.
In its first year at UniSA, the program will be held in the dynamic Hawke
Building, (home to the Samstag Museum) at City West campus on the opening
weekend of the Festival from Friday 26 February to Monday 1 March 2010 and
coinciding with the start of University for the thousands of new students
commencing this year. It will be a bonus for students and staff alike.
The Adelaide International and Artists’ Week are open to the public. From
the University’s perspective we’re delighted to play a role in bringing this
rich and splendid feast of visual arts to Adelaide as part of our
partnership with the Festival of Arts.
This is a productive and exciting relationship between one of Adelaide’s
great cultural institutions, and its newest (and largest) University.
It is a partnership we hope to enhance and develop for the benefit of the
South Australian community well into the future.
One aspiration is that the partnership will contribute significantly to the
growth of high quality visual arts for the community’s enjoyment at Festival
time. Another is that it will inspire many in the community, old and young,
to engage with the visual arts both as creators and patrons of art all year
round.
More information about the Visual Arts program for the 2010 festival is
available at
www.adelaidefestival.com.au
By Erica Green, Director of UniSA’s Samstag Museum of Art
Published in the Independent Weekly newspaper on February 12, 2010