View the exhibitions from 2011 at the SASA Gallery
Vague Possibilties
22 February – 25 March
The curatorial premise of Vague Possibilities drew on the French curator and critic Nicholas Bourriaud’s ideas of relational aesthetics and surrealist notions of chance and play. Five artists - Ray Harris, Matt Huppatz, James Marshall, Monte Masi and Amy Spiers – were invited to respond to a curatorial brief that included developing artwork for staging in the gallery that created surprising encounters and unexpected possibilities.
Image: Matt Huppatz, Nothing I Say (Is Written in Stone), 2010. Pink Angaston marble, 300mm x 450mm x 60mm
Soft Rebellion
5 April – 6 May
Featuring Stuart Bailey, Carla Cescon, James Dodd and Paul Sloan, Soft Rebellion explored the idea that fighting in modest ways, with actions that might seem incidental or nominal, is invaluable to the cultural and social ecology as a whole. It highlighted the importance of simple, small acts of resistance and their power to provide individuals with important vicarious release and the potential to amplify minority viewpoints.
Image: Stuart Bailey & Carla Cescon, untitled (detail), 2011
Crazy Fingers
Artists: Amy Baker, Annika Evans, Bridid Noone, Amy Patterson & Mary-Jean Richardson
Crazy Fingers featured a group South Australian artists who had spent a decade gathering and collaborating.
Five artists - Amy Baker, Annika Evans, Brigid Noone, Amy Patterson and Mary-Jean Richardson - explored ambiguous emotional dialogues across artforms undertaking a study or the laborious twin processes of thought and making.
Image: Mary-Jean Richardson, Lost Girl 4 (detail), 2011
Margin to Centre: Visionary Art
5 July – 5 August
Artists: Vittorio Ban (SA), Howard Finster (US), Iris Frame (SA), Anne Marie Grgich (US), Albert Louden (UK), Anthony Mannix (NSW), R.A. Miller (US) Frank Phelan (SA), Jungle Phillips (SA), Jose dos Santos (ESP), Gerard Sendrey (FR), Mary T. Smith (US), James Son Ford Thomas (US), James T. Thomas (US).
Margin to Centre: Visionary Art contextualised local and national artists within an international framework of the 'visionary’. It featured works from Australian, British, American, French and Spanish artists, many of whom had never exhibited in Australia before. The exhibition’s focus was on predominantly self-taught and canonically ‘outsider’ artists. The exhibition was curated by Paul Hoban, former Head of Painting Studio at UnISA, and Professor Colin Rhodes, former Head of Sydney College of the Arts, USYD.
Watch the video. Image: Work by Gerard Sendrey
everyday the possible
16 August - 16 September
everyday the possible, featuring Sonia Donnellan, Anna Hughes and Sonja Porcaro, investigated how affect can be realised through visual art practice as a poetic expression of uncertainty. Collecting together a group of responses to t5 A5 Auguesthe condition of uncertainty, each artist presented work formed from a consciousness of the ever-shifting ground on which every life hops from foot to foot.
Image: Anna Hughes, I was once a volcano, 2011. Mixed media.
To the islands: The Archictecture of Isolation
27 September - 21 October
Artists: Urs Bette, Jacqueline Bowring, Margit Bruenner, Michael Chapman, Jennifer Harvey, Russell Lowe, Michael Ostwald & Sean Pickersgill.
This exhibition explored the latent architectural qualities in the idea of the ‘island’. The participating artist and architects were asked to examine the text of Lucian of Samosata’s True Stories and the surreal islands described in the voyage. The artists brought the thematics of these texts into contemporary experience, exploring the idea that islands may represent both symptoms and solutions to the experience of isolation.
Image: Sean Pickersgill, Machineman, 2011.
Bethink
2 November - 25 November
Bethink featured the work of four artists, Susan Bruce, Gary Campbell, Michael Gabbedy and Keith Giles, and recalled, reflected upon and considered each of their family stories, experiences of childhood and their significant others. The exhibition was presented as part of the Feast Festival’s 2011 Visual Arts Program.
Image: clothing swap over! Vernacular photograph, n.d., hand coloured by Keith Giles.
