Adelaide Biennial promises national vision

Curator Sebastian Goldspink has planned an exhibition that crosses generations and state borders.

Sebastian Goldspink is curator of the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. Picture: Adam Yip

After what will be almost two years of pandemic-induced state lockdowns, the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art next March promises to be a genuinely national, cross-border exhibition.

Curator Sebastian Goldspink says his exhibition, titled Free/State, will be a “biennial for the times”, in which 25 selected artists represent every state and territory. It will explore intergenerational “conversations” between leading senior artists including Tracey Moffatt, Hossein and Angela Valamanesh and Julie Rrap, and mid-career and emerging artists.

“Each of these artists is emblematic of the many divergent facets of contemporary Australian art,” Goldspink says. “Diversity is embraced and celebrated in Free/State and the exhibition is reflective of a nation still in the throes of grappling with its past and defining its future.”

With a promise of “new and unexpected visions of transformative personal and public moments”, the selected artworks will include photography, painting, sculpture, installation and moving image.

Detail from Dennis Golding’s Cast In Cast Out, 2020.

While the artworks are still under wraps, they include photographic works by Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay artist Dennis Golding.

The other selected artists are Abdul-Rahman Abdullah (Western Australia), Serena Bonson (Northern Territory), Mitch Cairns (NSW), Dean Cross (NSW), Shaun Gladwell (Victoria), Loren Kronemyer (Tasmania), Laith McGregor (NSW), Kate Mitchell (Queensland), Stanislava Pinchuk (Victoria), Tom Polo (NSW), JD Reforma (NSW), Reko Rennie (Victoria), Kate Scardifield (NSW), Darren Sylvester (Victoria), Jelena Telecki (NSW), Rhoda Tjitayi (South Australia), James Tylor and Rebecca Selleck (ACT), Sera Waters (SA) and Min Wong (NSW).

First held in 1990, the Biennial will open next March at the Art Gallery of South Australia and will coincide with the Adelaide Festival.

AGSA director Rhana Devenport says: “The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art is more important now than ever as we collectively embrace a new-found appreciation for creators and acknowledge how hard these times have been for those in the arts. Where the experience of humanity is amplified, artists are the ones who are constantly responding to the world and the human condition, transforming that experience into art in the public realm.”

Goldspink, a Sydney-based independent curator, says his intention is to present the work of senior artists who were “prescient and ahead of their time” alongside younger artists who began working in the digital age.

“Free/State will be a biennial for the times: wild, frenetic and unbound. Humorous and filled with pathos, contradictory and unified, a celebration of artists exploring urgent ideas through a personal lens,” he says.