Touring exhibitions comes at a cost – a financial one, but also an environmental one.
This week, the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) has announced a new regional touring initiative, AGSA Screen: Wavelength, which will showcase moving image artworks by Australian and international artists.
It will not only bring cutting-edge making to the regions, illustrating this medium’s dynamism, but also activate the AGSA’s collection.
The initiative has been launched at Port Pirie Regional Art Gallery – located in the small city on the east coast of the Spencer Gulf, some 223 kilometres north of Adelaide.
The Gallery has partnered with Country Arts NSW and corporate sponsor Metal Manufacturers Limited to realise the program.
Minister for Arts Andrea Michaels says, ‘Great collections like AGSA’s are to be shared and enjoyed over generations. The partnership of AGSA and Country Arts SA to tour Wavelength regionally will ensure art lovers all over South Australia can be inspired in their home towns.’
Why video works for touring
AGSA Director Rhana Devenport ONZM says, ‘For over a century the human fascination to explore and understand ourselves and each other through various lenses, has seen time-based media develop into one of the most influential and exciting mediums in visual art in the 21st century.’
The collection works have been curated around the theme of water, which ‘ties back to the importance of water in regional communities, as a crucial resource essential for survival and necessary for agriculture, industry, and daily life,’ explains the Gallery.
‘Regional communities rely on water for their livelihoods, playing a vital role in local economy. Water is often a central feature of the natural landscape and is deeply connected to the cultural and spiritual identity of many First Nations communities,’ the Gallery continues.
Sharing this narrative are time-based media artworks across a span of time, which look at different approaches to the medium.
Read: Ballet on the road: what goes into a regional ballet tour
AGSA Screen Wavelength highlights
Gerry Wedd: WAVE
Gerry Wedd’s WAVE is a a genre-defying work of art that unites digital imagery, ceramics and sound. It is an immersive 180-degree installation experienced on a seven-metre long free-standing screen, accompanied by an evocative soundscape by Gabriella Smart, and takes an epic journey from sea to sky, inspired by a major new ceramic urn created by Wedd.
The artist says, ‘I have lived and surfed on the Fleurieu Peninsula for more than 50 years. For much of my life I have hung around the edge where the water meets the land, and human-made detritus is ever more visible. My concept for WAVE was to subvert the familiar and benign medium of blue and white porcelain to tease out a narrative of climate destruction, plunging viewers into a wondrous world that retains the lustrous look of glaze and the malleable tension of clay.
‘As someone who normally works in 2D and 3D, WAVE opens up new visual and narrative possibilities for my practice.’
WAVE originally premiered as part of the 2022 Adelaide Film Festival, and was directed by Wedd, Smart and filmmaker Mark Patterson with digital production by Jumpgate.
Tim Silver: Untitled (Killing me softly)
In Untitled (Killing me softly) version 3, Australian artist Tim Silver explores notions of transformation and entropy. Viewers watch a sculpted body washed up on a beach, which dissolves in real time with the ebb and flow of the ocean.
Joan Ross: I give you a mountain
The video work I give you a mountain, by Australian artist Joan Ross, references a watercolour painted in 1786 by British natural history painter Sarah Stone. The work articulates the voracious culture of collecting that underpins colonialism and persists to this day in the form of capitalist consumption and environmental chaos.
Ida Sophia: Witness
Witness by 2023 Ramsay Art Prize-winner and Australian artist Ida Sophia was informed by her early childhood experience observing her father’s baptism. Witness was shot in a single take at The Pool of Siloam in Wirmalngrang/Beachport in South Australia and depicts the artist undergoing a repetitive and intense series of submergences that take a single baptism to the level of relentless obsession.
Think Evolution #1: Kiku-ishi (Ammonite)
Think Evolution #1: Kiku-ishi (Ammonite), by Japanese artist Aki Inomata, depicts an octopus’ encounter with a 3D-printed resin replica of an ammonite shell. Through these collaborations Inomata questions the realities and relationships of life on earth, and interspecies connection.
Kumantjayi (Joanne) Napangardi Wheeler: Early Days in Palm Valley
Early Days in Palm Valley by Kumantjayi (Joanne) Napangardi Wheeler is an animation incorporating poignant moments from within her paintings, alongside her voice narrating the story. In this film, she looks at the past and how life would have been prior to colonisation around Ntaria/Hermannsburg, particularly in the time before the Mission. This film premiered as part of Tarnanthi 2021.
Betty Nungarrayi Conway: After Rain
After Rain by Betty Nungarrayi Conway (Pitjantjatjara/Luritja/Yankunytjatjara people, Northern Territory) sees her paintings transform into a vibrant animation. As the creeks fill with water, the artist personally narrates a joyous celebration of her family heading out to their homeland of Tempe Downs station, for a swim and a picnic.
Conway works from Tangentyere Artists based in Mparntwe/Alice Springs. This film premiered as part of Tarnanthi 2020.
AGSA Screen: Wavelength in Port Pirie Regional Art Gallery is screening from 20 April – 31 July. Wavelength will continue to tour to several venues in regional South Australia in 2024.
