In Night for Day, internationally renowned moving image artist Emily Wardill constructs a psychologically complex work around a feigned mother-son relationship to explore utopian visions and the way in which ideologies find expression in people’s lives, and to probe the complexity of perception, imagination and communication.

Wardill’s source material is a series of lengthy interviews with a Portuguese revolutionary resistance fighter and two young astrophysicists and tech entrepreneurs.

Wardill is an artist working between Lisbon, Portugal, and Malmö, Sweden. Her moving image works have been exhibited at the National Gallery of Denmark, ICA London, the Hayward Gallery in London, and the Sydney Biennale. She is a Professor at the Malmö Art Academy and a visiting tutor at Maumaus, Lisbon. Night for Day premiered at Secession, Vienna, and was a co-production with Kohta in Helsinki and Stenar Projects, Lisbon.

Wardill has been invited by the endorsement of Newitt. Samstag is pleased to present her work as the first in a new initiative to understand contemporary practice in context and extend local access to a breadth of international work through the simple method of asking artists to recommend influential peers.

Due to unexpected repairs taking place at Samstag Museum of Art, this exhibition was presented at the North Eastern Concourse at the Adelaide Railway Station for the duration of the 2023 Adelaide Festival. 

Catalogue essay by Christina Li.