If there is one word to describe curator José Da Silva’s Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, it is light. Many of the works he has brought together for the three-month show are interested in the properties of light: the way it refracts off trees and the sky; the way it can play with a painter’s brush; the way it sneaks into the gallery. But there is also a lightness to Da Silva’s curatorial hand, an inherent ease in many of the works on display, and a gentleness in the way this exhibition finds its breath through the galleries.
“I wanted to make a pretty tender kind of show,” Da Silva says in advance of the opening. “I feel like there is an expectation for art to do certain things. I think it’s really important for art to take a position in this world, but I also thought […] there’s an opportunity to do something here that was maybe a little different.” The resulting show is one that seems to invite introspection, the art making us turn inwards towards ourselves, instead of out towards the politics of today.
Walking into the main entrance of the Art Gallery of South Australia, the white vestibule feels particularly bright as the hot Adelaide sun streams through the skylights. Here we come across the first work of the biennial, George Cooley’s My Painted Country, an interpretation of the Kanku-Breakaways, the now arid red and pink and orange and purple hills in northern South Australia, rich with opals, which was once an inland sea. It is an expansive work, opulent and detailed and, yes, filled with light that overtakes the senses.
This work, says Da Silva, is meant to function as an acknowledgment of country – “an assertion of country” – understanding the way the inland sea shaped South Australia.
As the biennial weaves through the permanent collection, there are lovely moments of connection between the pieces. Later in the exhibition, two other paintings by Cooley sit in dialogue with Nicholas Chevalier’s 1860 painting of an exploration in search of the inland sea. Teelah George’s abstract fibre work evokes the sky, her thread capturing sunlight in the same way as the strokes of John Russell’s brush in his painting from 1891. Religious stained glass iconography sits opposite Jessica Loughlin’s frosted white window. Hossein Valamanesh’s inverted tree frames Seth Birchall’s delicate, large-scale nature paintings.
“All kinds of incredible things happen when you bring things into this collection,” says Da Silva. “You sort of can’t foresee [these connections], and then they happen.”
As we descend into the bowels of the temporary exhibition space which holds most of the biennial, the sunlight recedes, but we again come face-to-face with brilliant explorations of light as Clara Adolphs’ large painted reproductions of found photographs capture dappled afternoons.
There is light in the playfulness of Nik Pantazopoulos’ colourful drawings of doors, the entrance to an Orthodox church looking across the room to the entrance to a gay nightclub; in the brilliant yellows of Christopher Bassi’s self-portrait as he reaches towards a red mangrove in echoes of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam; in the gold foil on Marikit Santiago’s paintings, which blend Filipino iconography with Greek myths and Christian creation stories; bouncing off the glaciers in Jacobus Capone’s video work.
This biennial is a small show of only 24 artists. “I kept it really simple,” says Da Silva, “working directly with all of the artists was integral.” The title, Inner Sanctum, he says, “at one level reflects the idea of a space that we might create for ourselves, or that we might create within a community.” He describes an art gallery as “a modern sanctum”, a “testament to the importance of imagination and the way that we need to create more space for refuge and sanctuary”.
There are works which nod towards a broader politics. Jasmine Togo-Brisby’s white plaster tamtam drums from Vanuatu are laid out to reference slave ships; Ali Cobby Eckerman’s photographs and poetry speak to her experience as part of the Stolen Generations and meeting her mother as an adult. But largely this is not an overtly political collection of works. Instead, Da Silva’s curation here is more about our own empathic imagination, which can help us understand the viewpoints of others.
“Artists can introduce us to new ideas and show us different lived experiences. They have the capacity to develop empathy in us – or for empathy to be created in us – and give us the ability to imagine a better place. And I think that’s a very important thing right now. If we could imagine a more safe, just, cared-for world, we’d probably work towards it.”
The gentle invitation to look at the world anew is captured in a green bench Birchall has placed in front of his paintings. As Da Silva describes it, this is to “encourage people to stop”. It nudges us to look at the other benches and seats dotted around the gallery in a new way. This small exhibition invites us to take time, to sit and savour.
At the end of my time with the biennial, I find myself making my way back to Loughlin’s Solari: a delicate sea landscape created through the incorporation of ground glass in this frosty window, letting in the diffused sunlight from the world beyond, changing over the day with the light outside. Inside and outside all at once. This biennial captures a sense of calm, asking us to slow down, and look for the light.
The 18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Inner Sanctum is on at the Art Gallery of South Australia from 1 March – 2 June 2024
