Samstag is currently closed for the festive season.
Our galleries will reopen on Friday 28 February 2025 with our Adelaide Festival exhibition, Direct, Directed, Directly.

SEASON'S GREETINGS!

As 2024 comes to a close, we would like to express our warmest gratitude to everyone that has contributed to Samstag this year. Participating artists, writers, visitors, colleagues, friends, program partners and industry collaborators―we could not have done any of it without you.

In partnership with the Adelaide Festival, our first exhibitions of the year brought together leading South Australian ceramicist Bruce Nuske with exhibition design by friend and regular collaborator of the artist, the renowned furniture designer, Khai Liew. A singular achievement, it was sorrowful not to share the exhibition with Liew, who sadly passed away before its unveiling. Paired with two moving image works and a breathtaking installation of tessellated sand by Dana Awartani (Saudi Arabia/Palestine), the Parnati season reflected on tradition, culture and the generative field of decorative arts.

Our Kudlila season featured a strong sense of place. Foregrounding the art of the Flinders Ranges, Mulka Yata/The Knowledge of Place showcased the carving practice of Kristian Coulthard, Ted Coulthard, Clem Coulthard and Winnie Ryan (Adnyamathanha) and included works by Sasha Grbich, Antony Hamilton, Kyoko Hashimoto and Guy Keulemans, and John R Walker. Complementing the gentle sonic experience of that exhibition was a choir experience in a moving image work by Indonesia’s premiere contemporary artist, FX Harsono.

Fresh from his success at the Venice Biennale of Art, where he took out the Golden Lion, Samstag Scholar Archie Moore (Bigambul/Kamilaroi) was the subject of a feature exhibition for our Wirltuti exhibitions which opened in October.  A co-commission with the Adelaide Film Festival, Dwelling (Adelaide Issue) ambitiously involved recreating Archie’s childhood home to scale. Upstairs, the recipients of the Adelaide Film Festival’s EXPAND Lab: Susan Norrie (NSW), Matthew Thorne (SA) and Emmaline Zanelli (SA) presented a trio of moving image works on the critically unexamined subject of mining in South Australia.

Finally, it was with great pleasure that we announced artists Henry Jock Walker (SA), Helen Grogan (VIC), and Hannah Gartside (VIC) as the recipients of the prestigious Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship for 2025. We wish them all the best for what will no doubt be a transformative experience.

It was the first year in many that nothing went terribly wrong―no pandemic, no flood―touch wood our good fortune continues into the coming year.

Season’s greetings art lovers. We look forward to welcoming you back in February 2025 for our gallery wide Adelaide Festival exhibition Direct, Directed, Directly. For now, let’s exhale and turn to celebrations.