In July 2023, The Mill presented Make|Shift, an immersive and experimental exhibition of projection art as part of Illuminate Adelaide. The exhibition features digital image and projection based work by South Australian multidisciplinary artists; Ray Harris, Sarah Neville, Liam Somerville, Inneke Taal and Tanya Voges, artistic documentation by Larrakia man James Alberts with Margie Medlin as Artistic & Curatorial Facilitator.
Working across dance, performance, visual arts, installation and experimental media the exhibition explores digital and virtual spaces. Make|Shift aims to create a space for the artists to experiment with ways of making and shifting time, place and space. Make|Shift artists are supported by artistic mentorship from illuminart’s Cindi Drennan, and Tim Gruchy.
This Virtual Gallery includes James Albert’s Mini Documentary interviews with the artists, exhibition photography and video documentation as well as social photography from the opening night.
Make|Shift invited artists to explore their approach to formal notions of screen-media in an art gallery context. We invited each other to provoke the boundaries and traditions of photography, the moving image, sculpture, performance, and interaction within screen technologies. In workshops and practice-led discussions, across the gallery, we explored the interstices and intermeshing of these forms.
As a group we mapped the gallery space as series of sites and surfaces. Projecting along the right angles, adjacent walls, corridors and crevasse of the galleries the moving images to create encounters that dominate the built environment, like geographers, our survey explores the shifting terrains of space, memory, story, and image. The exhibition asks how can cinematic ephemera interact with/in the gallery.
⏤ Margie Medlin
Image: Inneke Taal (L) and Margie Medlin (R) developing work for Make|Shift. Photo: James Alberts
The works in this exhibition were developed through a four-week professional development lab titled Projection Techniques & Technologies. Facilitated by Margie Medlin, the intensive combined rapid skills development in emerging technologies to support the exploration of interdisciplinary, site-specific and audience-focused new work. The artists experienced four, high-level professional development masterclasses at The Mill and received mentorship from multimedia specialists Tim Gruchy and Illuminart. The lab’s aspirations would not have been possible without the Mill’s organisational capacity, and dedication to each artist through the commissioning of an exhibition outcome. The overarching aim of PTT is to nurture each artist’s unique approach to arts practice.
Image: Tanya Voges developing work for Make|Shift. Photo: James Alberts
Social photos: Daniel Marks
Illuminate Adelaide are the presenting partner for Make|Shift.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
Make|Shift and Cinematic Experiments: Projection Techniques and Technologies are presented with support from City of Adelaide.