Current [GRAFTd] Exhibitions

The [GRAFTd] exhibition program brings to Sauerbier House works by South Australian contemporary artists Emiko Artemis and Brianna Speight.

Through photography and video both artists utilise the human form to explore the biology of identity through real, imagined and mythical circumstance.

Lounge Gallery and Washhouse  |  33 November - 8 December

TENDER  |  Brianna Speight

Tender balances precariously between two sites of knowledge. Between a place of experience and a speculative future. Looking closely to the personal female and feminine body, photography and video included in this exhibition embodies a process of doing and undoing to deal with politics of gender and sexuality.

Grounded in Judith Butler’s notion that a subject is formed through repeated stylised acts^[1], Tender expands on previous reflections of femininity, everyday sexisms and aspects of reproduction (Soft Assemblies, 2017), and continues to explore becoming aware of unwanted things forming. In skin and stone (2018) ideas of awareness and agency are explored with emphasis placed on generational knowledge and inheritance, placing metaphor in the experience of gallstones forming.

Tender presents a material shift while maintaining ambiguous and uncanny visual language to acknowledge the unfamiliarity and complexity felt when invisible aspects of self are rendered visible. Small stone objects suspended in nylon stocking material feature heavily amidst scenes of softly, backlit fabrics, with female body forms revealed throughout. These carefully composed, staged environments offer self-reflective opportunities for acts and image making to navigate and consider awareness, agency and malleability. The photographs and video included in this exhibition are positioned in a sensitive location; unravelling what has already been done, feeling what was, and paying close attention now.

Image credit: Brianna Speight, Soft Assemblies, 2017, digital photograph, 40 x 60 cm.  Image courtesy artist.

[1] Butler, J, Gender Trouble Tenth Anniversary Edition, 1999, 2nd edn, Taylor and Francis, Hoboken. pp. 43.

Hallway Gallery  |  3 November - 8 December

Enter the Crystal Palace  |  Emiko Artemis

Enter the Crystal Palace is a photographic exploration into the intersection of landscape, mysticism and spirituality, as experienced in today’s technology imbued world. This series of works invites the viewer to wonder at the possibilities of the natural world as a place to lose oneself in an otherness; where the landscape becomes a stage for reconnecting with archaic esotericism, the mysticism of space and allows the transcendent embrace of solitude to turn everyday reality into something magical.

The Crystal palace also refers to the landmark Great Exhibition of the 1850’s which sought to showcase what was seen as modernism’s achievements but today can be interpreted as an attempt to authenticate and validate practices which enshrined empirical thinking.

Our conception of space is substantiated by our understandings of space time which locates space and time within geometric points and a linear understanding of time. Time moves forward within mappable space. However, is it possible to look at the world around us in a different way, where time is not a forward moving arrow and space is fluctuating and billowing in and out of unfixed points. In such a place dualistic concepts would have no hold, matter would be always changing and perhaps the magical may enter.

When we experience landscape today, we bring with us the legacies of the past. Can we make a future where myth and magic can reside?

Image credit: Emiko Artemis, a Chance Encounter, 2018, digital photograph. Image courtesy artist.  

Other upcoming events

Residency Program 2018-19

January – March : Henry Jock Walker and friends

April – June: Laura Wills,  Rebecca McEwen 

July – September:  Alice Blanch,  Neville Cichon

October – December:  Andrew Smith, Tristan Louth-Robins

January – March: Gail Hocking, Rachel Anne Buch

 April – June:  Kristy Darlston, Louise Flaherty

Exhibitions remain for one month after each residency concludes.

[GRAFTd] Exhibitions 2018

February: Timothy Casiero | 3 February – 3 March 2018

May: Simone Kennedy, Ewa Skoczynska. | 4 May – 2 June 2018

August: Matthew Fortrose  | 4 August- 8 September

November: Emiko Artemis, Brianna Speight | 3 November - 8 December 2018