Celebrating creativity on a grand scale

WITH more than 4000 artists in 543 venues, the annual South Australian Living Artists festival was launched at the AGSA's  refurbished Elder Wing.

110812 sue kneebone

WITH more than 4000 artists in 543 venues, the annual South Australian Living Artists festival was launched at the Art Gallery of South Australia's impressively refurbished Elder Wing.

Iranian-born artist Hossein Valamanesh is the subject of the handsome 2011 Wakefield Press SALA publication. Valamanesh's 1994 lotus-leaf shirt - with wall-poem by classical Persian poet Rumi - provides an evocative introduction to a selection of works by contemporary SA artists, integrated into the AGSA's colonial art collection by curator Lisa Slade.

Viewed in this historical context, works such as Fiona Hall's Occupied Territory (1995) and Sue Kneebone's standout Angelfire (2008) - a series of guns fashioned from bleached animal bones, ceramic and cloth - acquire additional resonance.

Solo exhibitions by several well-known female artists include new sculptural works at the Contemporary Art Centre of SA by Louise Haselton, who reclaims and represents everyday materials in unexpected combinations; Julia Robinson's uncannily configured goat sculptures at Greenaway Art Gallery; and Ann Newmarch's four-decade survey at Art Images Gallery, including screenprints, paintings, photography, sculpture and assemblages.

In a pre-digital age, the screenprinted poster - such as Newmarch's iconic Women Hold Up Half the Sky (1978) or Vietnam Madonna (1975) - offered artists a cogent vehicle for socio-political commentary in the politicised climate of the late 1960s and 70s.

At Adelaide Central Gallery Helen Fuller presents a series of vessels and abstract works on paper inspired by ancient indigenous markings on the limestone walls of the Koonalda Cave, an important archeological site on the Nullarbor Plain.

Fuller's ceramics are inventive and appealing: variously painted in pastel, gingham-like grids, and an earthier, more restrained palette, some of her delicate, handbuilt and unglazed vessels feature shapely handles that loop precariously into space.

For artist and critic Stephanie Radok, whose Sublingual Museum is showing at Flinders University Art Museum, objects and stories trigger emotional journeys. Radok intersperses a 30-year survey of her prints, drawings, paintings and sculpture with an eclectic selection of works from the Flinders University collections, from Goya and Durer to Martin Sharp and 20th-century Inuit works on paper.

Format, an alliance of writers, artists, musicians and technicians based around the Format Zine Shop, is part of a thriving culture of young and emerging artists in Adelaide. Its diverse works are displayed at the JamFactory.