Local artists share their vision for South Australia for 2026
TO help celebrate Advertiser.com.au’s 10th birthday, we asked five local artists to imagine South Australia in the next 10 years, in 2026. Here are the results.
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IT’S nice to look back but it’s important to look forward.
We asked six talented local artists from this year’s South Australian Living Artists Festival (SALA), to share their artistic vision for our state ten years from now, in 2026.
The result is a series of provocative and thoughtful works that contemplate where this state is, could or should be heading and what it means to call South Australia home.
Share your thoughts on these artworks, and your vision for SA in 2026, in the comments forum below.
“Our Future in Good Hands”, Marion Burns
Details: Pigmented Ink on Xuan Paper, 480cm x 330cm unframed; 800cm x 530cm framed.
Marion says: When I look around at young women in Adelaide today, I am impressed and gladdened by what I see: Strong-minded, articulate, aware and compassionate people. I am privileged to pass on the baton, to trust in their skills and value to address the concerns of our day, to be able to challenge patriarchal cultures, to fight for equality across the sexes, ethnicities and sexualities. We all have so many women who have passed the baton on to us, women of many past times and places. In 2026 I imagine much of this will be cherished and evident in action.
“Reciprocal Relationship”, Sue Michael
Details: Digitally rephotographed projection from pinhole 35mm slide transparency, 2014, variable dimensions.
Sue says: I have a roll of slide film I took on long 26-second exposures, while riding in a car traveling at 110km/h, in South Australia’s Mid North. It was a way to try and understand the ‘genius loci’, or the atmospheric feel of location. I pushed the roll through an antique toy slide projector and I have scratched a good number of frames. Some may see this as a Hollywood-like decimation of the city, but I see it as the rebuilding of our mindset to include the genius loci.
My atmospheric, imperfectly photographed landscape, devoid of the life-world, provides an opportunity for us to reobserve the natural world, and its integrated role, in our daily lives.
It is an imagined geography of Adelaide without any settlement, but this, even so, is incorrect as the gums, pines and heavily scented blankets of wildflowers, smelt in Holdfast Bay by the first settlers, is missing. Yet again, it is not a realistic depiction of the past in this case. I just ask that people re-look at their home surroundings to include this acceptance of the genius loci and by 2026, Adelaide will be an International Centre of Excellence for Common Sense. Adelaide has a landscape that exerts its presence, and it is no good trying to pretend we are another place.
Sue’s SALA exhibitions: La Vita, Until August 31, Jubilee Hall at Centennial Park, 760 Goodwood Road, Pasadena, Aug 9- Sep 4, Prospect Gallery, 1 Thomas St, corner Main North Road, Nailsworth, August 4-September 25, Burra Regional Art Gallery, 5-6 Market St, 1 Lancelot Ln, Burra.
“Light pendants”, Carol Argent
Details: Glass, sterling silver, plant and mineral extracts
Carol says: Over the last 10 years, Adelaide has begun a journey to become a city focused on science, health and medicine. With the new SAHMRI (South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute), the new Royal Adelaide Hospital and groundbreaking scientific and medical research being conducted at Flinders and Adelaide Universities, I see that the Adelaide of the future will be a city of healing. These wearable artworks reflect on this healing journey. Filled with plant and mineral extracts, and adorned with butterflies, flowers and spirals, these silver and glass pendants act as “colour therapy” for the wearer — a reflection on the healing properties of art as well as science. Some vials have dual colours, separated by a combination of oil and water, reflecting the true colours of this earth and our human connection to it. Colour therapy uses these fundamental ideas to help people heal themselves in a subliminal, psychological healing process.
“Metamorphosis of Place”, Thom Buchanan
Details: Blue pencil, acrylic paint and charcoal on wall, 5m x 14m
Thom says: I created this work on a gallery wall using the internal pipes and wires as a jumping-off point for inspiration, which I mapped out using an electronic stud finder. I think it is so recognisable as an Adelaide city street, and yet it isn’t any one street in particular, but an imaginary hybrid of several, viewed as though you’re crossing over King William Street. It’s reflective of the 1960s, 1970s architecture you find in Adelaide, but the fractal, jigsaw structure gives it a futuristic feel that asks the viewer to be conscious of built environments as constructed spaces in time, and to push toward their own vision. How do we create a future for Adelaide that understands its history and takes responsibility for the past and for future generations? What new custodial relationships will be needed for a changing climate? Any future vision should attempt to communicate with, and through, the thousands of years of history that precede it, from indigenous understandings and uses of place through to contemporary migrant experiences. There are tensions between natural and built environments, between moving forward and being still, between the living and the dead. In its strong attention to the vanishing point, always an invitation to enter the work, I believe “Metamorphosis of Place” addresses just such tensions.
Thom’s SALA exhibition is on until September 16, Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm. Fisher Jeffries, Level 1, 19 Gouger St, Adelaide.
“Adelaide Ecopolis”, Jane Carlisle
Jane says: My painting is representative of my hopes and dreams for my home city of Adelaide, a wondrous place of natural beauty and one of the most liveable cities in the world. My vision is that by 2026, the city and surrounding suburbs will together be an “Ecopolis” as described by Dr. Paul Dowton, an architect, writer and urban evolutionary. To me, this means that every home will be a power generator with solar panels that harness the energy of the sun and every rooftop will be a garden growing fruits and vegetables and flowers. Instead of making the state a nuclear waste dump, let’s make it a green and sustainable place full of life and energy as depicted by the goddess figure in my painting.
Jane’s SALA exhibition: Cats and their Queens. Until August 28, Thu-Sun, 11am-4pm, Cats in the Loft, Level 1, 168 St Vincent Street Port Adelaide. A whimsical exploration celebrating the divine.
“The Flood”, Alaska Young
Details: 40 x 59cm, watercolour and ink on paper
Alaska says: On the day the heat valves all burst at the same time,
On the day the milk trucks stopped coming and the grinders stopped grinding,
On the day the trees refused to be pulped into takeaway cups,
On the day all the little sugar packets blocked the drains,
On the day the biscottis broke our teeth,
Was the day we realised there was such a thing as too much coffee.
If one fateful day in 2026,
When the streets were flooded with coffee
And we looked at the aftermath of what we had created,
A range of takeaway coffee shops...red and white….we simultaneously wondered, if there was more to life.
I have created a dystopian coffee-opolis interpretation of Adelaide in 2026 reflecting the ever multiplying chains of coffee sources in our streets.
The size of our city means that monopolies in business and ideology are a very real presence in our small home. In my coffee apocalypse, we are forced to face the repercussions of our love of a takeaway latte, drinking ourselves into an excited and agitated state, while the eccentricity and individuality of what Adelaide could become, drowns.
Alaska’s SALA exhibition: Arte Internationale SALA Exhibition at Glenunga International High School. Opening Friday August 19, 5pm-7pm Also painting Live at SALA in the Square, Victoria Square: Wednesday, August 17 10am-4pm Tuesday, August 23 10am 4pm.
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