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.
