Dennis Golding at the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art

Sydney-based artist reimagines the city’s distinctive lace ironwork for installation in Adelaide.

Dennis Golding with detail from his art installation Casting Shadows [Chandelier] 2022, at the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art. Picture: Saul Steed

Dennis Golding grew up as part of an extended Aboriginal family that lived across five houses in The Block in Sydney.

The narrow two-storey houses all had ornamental iron lacework designs on their fences and balconies.

Golding has drawn inspiration from that lacework for an installation for the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, unveiled on Thursday at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

His installation, called Casting shadows [Chandelier], draws on his childhood memories of his family, the cultural identity of The Block, the orange street lights, and the regular police patrols.

By using decorative iron lace panels, he said he wanted to reclaim an architectural feature associated with colonial-era Sydney.

“This new exhibition is looking at ways to decolonise the object – that they don’t become this barrier between land and people, but they are dismantled in very different forms, and become my own object,” he said.

The Adelaide Biennial, with the title Free/State, features work by 25 artists who curator Sebastian Goldspink described as the “fearless, the provocateurs, vanguards and outsiders”.

They include well-known figures such as Shaun Gladwell, Tracey Moffatt and Julie Rrap, and artists who came after, including Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Min Wong and Golding. The exhibition includes the last collaboration between husband and wife Hossein and Angela Valamanesh, organised before Hossein’s death in January.