Artists in Residence
SALA Festival partners with various organisations to offer artist-in-residence opportunities to South Australian artists.
Residencies allow artists to access extraordinary spaces and knowledge, and are generally about providing the time and space for a guest artist to develop work and explore new ideas. Resident artists are encouraged to spend time in the host environment – such as hospitals, research centres, theatres – and allow what they observe to influence their artwork. Although each residency is unique, they all generally result in an exhibition or presentation of work during the SALA Festival.
Open for Applications
There aren’t any SALA residency opportunities currently open for applications, but check back later!
Upcoming / In progress
Sauerbier House
As the 2024 City of Onkaparinga SALA Artists in Residence, Laura Wills & Jackie Saunders will occupy a studio at Sauerbier House in August 2024, culminating in an exhibition in September. We look forward to visiting their studio during SALA Festival and finding out what has emerged as their collaborative focus throughout their residency.
Excited by the energy of earlier collaborative works, the Sauerbier House reference group selected to award the opportunity to Laura Wills and Jackie Saunders. In anticipating their studio outcomes, the panel felt their collective practices, powered by support and spontaneity, would contribute to understanding the possibilities embedded in intuitive site-based explorations.
ARTS IN HEALTH AT FMC
The Arts In Health residency at Flinders Medical Centre seeks to place practicing South Australian artists in new environments that they can respond to in their work. The successful artist will be supported by Arts in Health to spend time in Flinders Medical Centre observing the hospital environment and processes. The artist will be encouraged to respond to these observations in their work and create a resulting body of work to be exhibited in the hospital during the 2024 SALA Festival.
The recipient of the 2024 Arts in Health residency at Flinders Medical Centre is Daniel Connell.
Past Artists in Residence
Residency programs are important both as an opportunity for artists to grow their practice, but also to facilitate cultural exchange with different sectors of the local community. The introduction of an artist to an environment that does not ordinarily center the visual arts can have poignant outcomes for the host. In the past, people who have helped to host SALA artists have reported a sense of renewal in having their work reflected back to them through the eyes of an artist, and valuable new ways of thinking about the challenges of their work, amongst a myriad of other benefits of varying tangibility.
Click on the below expandable headings to learn more about each residency.
Tap on the + symbols below to learn more about each residency.
2022
Artist Julia Boros was selected as the 2022 SALA Artist in Residence with Arts in Health at Flinders Medical Centre and was invited to be ‘in residence’ with Arts in Health for up to 3 months, with access to selected allied health, medical, and research areas throughout their time with FMC. This residency culminated in the exhibition ‘Capacity‘, where Julia explored the hospital environment through the materiality of patient experience. For more about this residency, you can visit Julia’s website.
Joel Plevin – Carlton School
Gus Clutterbuck – John Pirie Secondary School
Tony Kearney – Keller Road Primary School
Gemma Rose Brook – Roma Mitchell Secondary School
Find out more about the Credit Union SA Artists in Schools Program here.
2021
Billy Oakley – Le Fevre High School
In 2021, emerging artist Billy Oakley was paired with Le Fevre High School as part of the SALA Artist in Schools Program, presented in partnership with Credit Union SA.
In 2021, Tutti Arts hosted South Australian artist Jake Holmes as the inaugural 2021 SALA Artist in Residence. Holmes is a nationally-recognised printmaker and co-founder of the contemporary artspace Tooth and Nail Studio Gallery (2011-2018). During the residency, Holmes worked alongside the visual artists of Tutti Arts – South Australia’s leading multi-arts organisation for artists living with learning disabilities. The resulting exhibition and artist talk illuminates a dynamic artistic exchange between Holmes and the visual artists currently practicing at Tutti’s Brighton studio.
Established in 1997, Tutti has become a vital part of South Australia’s cultural and artistic life, with artists across all art forms achieving increasing recognition. Tutti’s Visual Arts Studio Program currently supports over 70 self-identified learning-disabled artists over three locations in South Australia and is committed to a residency program which supports emerging artists to engage creatively with other artists and discover diverse networks.
photo by P. Soteriou
2020
SALA Artists in Schools Program, presented in partnership with Credit Union SA:
Avenues College – Thomas Readett
Christies Beach Primary School – Dave Court
Lobethal Primary School – Louise Flaherty
Northern Adelaide Senior College – Jimmy Dodd
The Grove Education Centre – Henry Jock Walker
Stuart High School – Olivia White
Click through for images from the 2020 Artists in Schools Residencies.
Known for her video installations and sculptural work which often intersect, Bycroft is a multi award-winning artist whose work has been exhibited all over the world -most recently at this year’s Venice Biennale and the 2019 Milan Design and Architecture Triennale.
2019
Lee Walter
Fragments
Host: Royal Adelaide Hospital
Guided by her conversations and cherished interaction with patients and families living with dementia during her residency, Lee Walter created a body of work representing the essence of the time she has spent with each individual.
Christopher Williams & Therese Williams
Host: Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre
Williams uses the piano as a metaphor for the fragility, beauty and dignity of the human body.
Cassie Thring
Host: Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre
Cassie Thring engages residents of Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre as both makers and explorers, exhibiting their artworks throughout the Centre.
Donovan Christie
Josef Felber
Host: Glenside Health Site
Artists Donovan Christie and Josef Felber produce a body of work responding to time spent at the Glenside Acute Psychiatric Unit.
Laura Wills
John Blines
Through drawing, investigations and site-specific participatory works, Wills explored the properties of ten medicinal trees; uncovering their uses, manufacture and how they relate to and heal the body. Blines’ Placebo explored the potential of knowing that a treatment has an organic, plant-based origin in making it more acceptable, tolerable and efficacious.
Naomi Hunter
Naomi focused on understanding the brain and research into Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Disease. Her glass sculptures and video works explore the interplay between scientific or medicalised knowledge and the role of the lived experience of ‘being a body’.
Amos Gebhardt
Host: Adelaide Studios
Gebhardt discusses their moving image practice with a finished work to be displayed at the Samstag Museum during SALA 2020.
Margaret Worth
As One
Host: Government House
The Government House Residency provided Worth with space and time to construct self-directed research culminating in a new sculpture which was displayed in the Government House Grounds during SALA 2019.
2018
Both artists were given the opportunity to respond to the working life of the Adelaide Festival Centre.
Tom Borgas
Borgas created sculptural and performative works responding to the documentation and presentation of the performing arts.
Elise Bonato
Bonato created a site-specific video installation responding to the iconic architectural forms of the Adelaide Festival Centre.
Bridget Currie
Currie created drawings and sculptural objects which make visible the powerful but often unseen experience of pain.
Laura Wills & Anna Dowling
Hosted by The Wardliparingga Aboriginal Research Unit, the Heartlines exhibition featured an Indigenous-themed community drawing project. The collaborative drawing evolved across a giant canvas on the floor of the SAHMRI foyer throughout August.
Thomas Readett
Aston Boyd AKA Bay the Artist
Host: Glenside Health Site
Both artists interacted with patients and staff, researching the possibilities of communicating using artistic practices. The resulting artworks were exhibited in Raj House.
Lorry Wedding-Marchioro
Wedding-Marchioro produced a series of kinetic sculptural installations which were displayed in several of the small courtyards in the RAH.
Jane Skeer
Skeer responded to the site, installing found material sculptures in the meditative garden spaces of the RAH. [more]
2017
Jane Skeer
Host: Dream BIG Children’s Festival
Interventions – responding to observations of people, objects, and materiality, Skeer seeks to prove that the unwanted is in fact useful, and asks us to rethink our relationship with it. Respecting the life and qualities of the material, her aim is to work collaboratively with material agency to activate it in some way.
Henry Stentiford & Jade Harland
Host: Glenside Rural & Remote Inpatient Unit
This residency encourages engagement with the staff, consumers and environment of the Glenside campus Mental Health facilities, and ongoing collaboration with the University of South Australia’s Mental Health Research team. It brings together academics, health care workers, artists and everyone in between to seek a better understanding of the process of recovery and the contribution of art.
Jamahl Pollard
Host: Berri Hospital Mental Health Inpatient Unit
Jamahl has lived with vision loss since birth, and said he could relate to some of the feelings experienced by the people he was mentoring. His art sends a message to people to focus on the abilities people have, rather than their disabilities.
Richard Parker
Host: Country Health SA Mental Health Service – Whyalla
Parker created an ambitious, collaborative multimedia project, featuring the production of a short film using a mixture of traditional animation, stop motion and puppetry techniques. The theme of the work was failure, exploring how feelings of failure not only inform our mental health, but also create barriers to innovation and creativity.
Steph Fuller
Host: Arts in Health at FMC & the Department of Medical Imaging
Internal Botany – Fuller proposed to poeticise diagnostic imagery, and spent time in various medical imaging modalities, such as X-ray, Ultrasound, Angiography, Nuclear Medicine, CT and MRI. She then used plants, flowers and garden matter to recreate the shapes and forms seen in her time at the hospital as a series of photographic prints.
Sonali Patel
Host: Heart Health theme
A Heart has a Thousand Names – metaphorical explorations of love, transience and transformation. Musings on matters of the heart reflect the interplay of nature’s patterns mirrored within us.
2016
Fran Callen
Jam – Central Market moments fed onsite live-art and collaborative tabletop drawing. Culminating in an installation of mixed media drawing incorporating ‘market appropriate’ media.
James Dodd
A Chat with Fred – in response to the works of Fred Williams that form part of the Festival Centre’s Works of Art Collection, James created a series of new works including a large scale mural and an exhibition. #achatwithfred
Jessie Lumb
And then some become strong in the broken places – this project saw works created in the public spaces including foyers, corridors, cafes, gardens – places where art could integrate into people’s lives at unexpected moments.
Joy Levins
Hosted by the Nutrition and Metabolism department. Joy explored imaging of the cell and created large scale ‘floating’ glass pieces (both sculptural and wall mounted pieces) so that the observer may imagine and realise the beauty in the minute.
Niki Sperou
Hosted by the department of Infection and Immunity. Niki surveyed the microbes that inhabit our bodies, their movements and variability. Through her residency Niki communicated contemporary narratives associated with microbial identification and tracking. [more]
2015
Angela Valamanesh
Host: the Mind Brain Department.
Exploring the most recent medical imaging techniques. The initial outcome was a series of small paintings exhibited in the SAHMRI foyer.
Aurelia Carbone
Q*bert’s Ball – an outdoor art installation incorporating the simple illusion technique known as anamorphosis.
Laura Wills
Dear Golden Delicious – a participatory installation and gratitude project.
Ruth Gregor
Cycle of Life sculpture residency. Stone carving on site – the work is being acquired by Centennial Park to begin a sculptural trail in the Park.
John Blines
Book Art Project with cancer patients and/or family. Exploring ‘what does cancer feel like’ and ‘what does cancer look like’. Exhibition and book outcome in December 2015.
2014
Bridgette Minuzzo and Sonya Unwin
The Space Within
Unwin’s large-scale paintings featured staff at the forefront of medical research that could be life-changing. They included Professor Julio Licinio and Professor Ma-Li Wong, a husband and wife team working on depression. “I spoke informally to people about their area of research and then thought about how I would translate that visually,” Unwin said.
Minuzzo made video, jewellery and photographic works that highlight the building and the “pattern, light, shade and complexities of medical research”. Recordings of the heart, breath and Minuzzo singing elements of the periodic table accompany a video manipulating architectural features. Equilateral triangles — “a very important unit of the building” — are the building blocks of her jewellery. “There’s pictures of the building on the jewellery, so people can wear a piece of SAHMRI,” Minuzzo said. [source]
Steven Cybulka
Chosen as Adelaide Festival Centre’s inaugural artist-in-residence was emerging sculpture/installation artist Steven Cybulka. A recent graduate of Adelaide College of the Arts and builder by trade, Cybulka spent five months as artist-in-residence at Adelaide Festival Centre, translating his building skills into art in response to the people, spaces and architecture.
The end result of the residency was Cybulka’s exhibition Creating Spaces, a permanent installation of uniquely site responsive compositions in the Space Theatre foyer at Adelaide Festival Centre. The installation, made up of wooden geometric shapes, responds to the energy, atmosphere and physical structure of the building – one of Adelaide’s architectural landmarks.
The exhibition was designed to build upon the already existing vibrant visual arts program currently in place at Adelaide Festival Centre by creating engagement, interaction and a revitalisation of its spaces of presentation.
