The Adelaide Railway Station takes on a gallery role this March as it hosts two immersive screen-based exhibitions - Haven, by James Newitt, and Night for Day by Emily Wardill - in its North Eastern Concourse as part of the 2023 Adelaide Festival.
Presented by UniSA's Anne and Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, HAVEN and Night for Day are conceived and created by peer Portugal-based artists whose works are influenced by cross-cultural perspectives afforded by living between two countries.
HAVEN and Night for Day will launch on Saturday 4 March, between 4-6 pm, with members of the public invited to attend.
Director of the Samstag Museum of Art, UniSA's Erica Green says the exhibitions present a bold and creative response to contemporary visual arts.
"Samstag aims to stimulate, challenge and engage its audiences with a program of diverse and innovative exhibitions, publications and public activities," Green says.
"HAVEN and Night for Day present an evocative range of immersive screen-based works to challenge perspectives on culture and reality.
"James Newitt Emily Wardill are both international moving image artists in their own right, and we're delighted to share their contemporary exhibitions in the 2023 Adelaide Festival."
While Wardill works between Portugal and Sweden, Newitt is closer to home, based between Portugal and Australia. A 2012 Samstag Scholar, Newitt is now in Adelaide to attend the exhibition opening.
"I've been developing Haven for over three years during which time it's changed and evolved and from the beginning, have been working with the Samstag Museum to imagine this exhibition," Newitt says.
"I'm absolutely delighted to show the work at the Adelaide Railway Station and to be exhibiting in parallel with Emily Wardill.
"I was a UniSA Samstag Scholar in 2012/13 and found my way to Lisbon to participate in the Maumaus Independent Study Program, I couldn't imagine at the time that I would still have a strong connection to Portugal 10 years later. This exhibition feels like a very special way to acknowledge that opportunity 10 years later and it's a privilege to work with the Samstag Museum of Art to realise it."
HAVEN and Night for Day will run daily throughout the Adelaide Festival (3-19 March) from 10am- 5pm.
Notes for editors:
- HAVENis informed by the real-life utopian ventures of speculative investors, pirate entrepreneurs, and people affected by a changing climate - those searching for new structures or living forms. An expansive project incorporating moving image, objects, installation, sound, text and documentary material, this deeply researched and richly poetic exhibition explores island utopias and conflicted situations of detachment and autonomy.
- Night for Day constructs a psychologically complex work around a feigned mother-son relationship to explore utopian visions and the way in which ideologies find expression in people's lives, and to probe the complexity of perception, imagination and communication.
- Wardill is an artist working between Lisbon, Portugal, and Malmö, Sweden. Her moving image works have been exhibited at the National Gallery of Denmark, ICA London, the Hayward Gallery in London, and the Sydney Biennale. She is a Professor at the Malmö Art Academy and a visiting tutor at Maumaus, Lisbon. Night for Day premiered at Secession, Vienna, and was a co-production with Kohta in Helsinki and Stenar Projects, Lisbon.
- Newitt's videos and installations have been exhibited nationally and internationally at Lumiar Cité in Lisbon, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart, and Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. He was a 2012 Samstag Scholar, undertaking study at Maumaus, Portugal.
