Virtual Gallery: Alyssa Powell-Ascura, Halo-halo

For June-August 2024 The Mill presents Halo-halo, a new exhibition by Alyssa Powell-Ascura developed through the Delima Residency in Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia, and at The Mill.

Halo-halo has been developed as part of The Mill’s Visual Arts Studio Residency program presented in cooperation with the Mahmood Martin Foundation.

This Virtual Gallery includes exhibition photography and social photography from the opening night and will include the live stream of Alyssa’s artist talk.

Photo: Daniel Marks

Some of the works showcased in “Halo-Halo” draw inspiration from living indigenous practices, for example, the act of kamayan seen in the video work Kain Tayo, employ the method of eating food with your hands, where communal feasting becomes a metaphor for shared experiences and collective consideration.

Central to my artistic vision is the conscious incorporation of repurposed or found items. Everyday items common in Filipino households, such as the ubiquitous kumot or blanket, serve as anchors, becoming symbols of resilience and adaptation; ultimately interrogating the assignment of value of these otherwise ordinary items when shown in a gallery setting.

During the Malaysian part of my Delima Residency, I engaged directly with community members, witnessed rural rituals, and embarked on a personal journey. This immersive experience deepened my connection to my Filipino lineage, shaping the spiritual dimension of my artistic practice.

Halo-halo is more than an exhibition — it is a celebration of the fifth largest migrant community in Australia whose ties to Indigenous Australia transcend pre-colonial times. It is an extension of myself, my unapologetic love letter to my Filipino ancestry and Australian upbringing.

Halo-halo (loose translation mix-mix or mixed) is the name of a popular Filipino shaved ice dessert made by layering a concoction of various ingredients. Each layer of different traditional toppings can be eaten one by one, or usually mixed, eventually combining into a sweetened dessert.

As an emerging multi-hyphenate artist, my first major solo exhibition at The Mill shows my investigation of cultures and the intersections I find myself in as an Asian Australian; a halo-halo of identities, the overarching theme of the exhibition.

Through the lens of food, family and culture, the audience is welcomed to a seat at the table, weaving together threads of tradition, memory, and contemporary discourse into a rich tapestry of multi-sensory experiences. Much like halo-halo, the exhibition showcases diverse works that are experimental in nature that you can consume on its own — and then all together, creating a mouthful of complementing ideas.

Photo: Morgan Sette

Photo: Daniel Marks

Install photos: Daniel Marks

Alyssa Powell-Ascura is the recipient of the Delima Residency, presented in co-operation with the Mahmood Martin Foundation.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

Virtual Gallery: Chris Siu, Riot on an Empty Street

For our first exhibition of 2024 The Mill presented Riot on an Empty Street, a new exhibition of photographs by Chris Siu derived from his ongoing project Then We Keep Living. This exhibition has been developed as part of The Mill’s Visual Arts Studio Residency program presented in cooperation with the Mahmood Martin Foundation.

This Virtual Gallery includes exhibition photography and social photography from the opening night and the live stream of Chris’ artist talk.

Photo: Daniel Marks

My residency at The Mill has been dedicated to developing the long-term photography project titled Then We Keep Living. The project navigates my relationship with Hong Kong through a two-volume narrative presented in medium format analogue photography. This exploration takes place against the backdrop of the 2019 mass civil unrest in Hong Kong, followed by my life in diaspora here in Australia.

The two respective volumes delve into representations of dispossession and defiance amidst the city’s ongoing socio-political transformation, contrasting with poignant reflections on diasporic experience and its isolating facets associated with cultural displacement, marginalisation, and disconnection. The project stands as a testament to the nuanced interplay of political dilemmas, self-discovery, and the frequently overlooked, profound repercussions of civil unrest.

Photo: Daniel Marks

Social photos: Daniel Marks

Chris Siu was the recipient of The Mill’s Mahmood Martin Foundation Sponsored Studio for the January-June residency in 2023.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

This project is supported by City of Adelaide.

Virtual Gallery: Yasemin Sabuncu, Alchemical

For SALA 2023, The Mill is excited to present Alchemical, a solo exhibition by multimedia artist Yasemin Sabuncu. This exhibition reclaims the artist's space and power as a creative who has had their career and life affected by late-stage diagnosis of endometriosis and ADHD. The works explore how to find safety, rest, home, and love in a body that is often labelled wrong or is causing pain and disability.

Yasemin Sabuncu is the recipient of the Mahmood Martin Foundation Sponsored Studio for the January-June residency in 2023.

This Virtual Gallery includes exhibition photography and social photography from the opening night and the live stream of Yasemin’s artist talk.

Photo: Daniel Marks

This exhibition explores the transformative power of chronic illness and how it can alchemise you into something unexpected, new, and uncharted. I wanted to show the shadow and light of the process of evolution I experienced trying to find healing, meaning, and answers to why I was feeling so out of sorts and being so sick I couldn’t work.

Through tens of thousands of dollars in medical costs, being bed bound, unable to work, countless hours of appointments, surgeries, invasive tests, waiting up to a year for certain appointments, and evaluations I finally found some answers. It took almost two decades for me to find this diagnosis. I was not alone with the length of diagnosis, Endometriosis which effects 1 in 9 people who were assigned female at birth, takes on average 10 years to diagnose which is not good enough.

Photo: Daniel Marks

The whole process had nearly broken me many times and I had to rely on my inner strength to survive and persevere with the uncertainty and my degrading health. Despite my best efforts I had slipped through the cracks of the medical system, and been living with undiagnosed endometriosis, adenomyosis, chronic fatigue syndrome/ME, and ADHD. It was a relief in some ways to find out what was ‘wrong’ with me, but then I had to let go of who I used to be and create a new life within the limitations of my conditions.

Luckily now with understanding of my body and finding suitable treatments and surgery I have been forever altered and beginning a new life initiated by the alchemical process of living with my conditions. The liminal space I endured birthed into something beautiful, at times terrifying, and ultimately life changing. It made me look deeper into my spirituality, consciousness, and deep investigation of life and the universe. This process is represented through the spectrum of colours, shapes, textures, biological and geological imagery, and various mediums to reflect on some of my experiences through this process.

Social photos: Daniel Marks

Yasemin Sabuncu was the recipient of The Mill’s Mahmood Martin Foundation Sponsored Studio for the January-June residency in 2023.

Virtual Gallery: Expand Make|Shift Exhibition

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.

Virtual Gallery: Sonya Mellor, Deep Listening

Sonya Mellor's Deep Listening was a multi-disciplinary exhibition that utilised various mediums such as sculpture, installation, movement, sound, and performance art to create a unique and immersive experience for the audience.

The focus of the exhibition was on the concept of deep listening, which refers to the practice of listening with full attention and without judgment. Through her artwork, Mellor invited audiences to engage with the exhibition space in a new way and experience the world around them with a heightened sense of awareness and mindfulness.

This Virtual Gallery includes photographic documentation of the exhibition and Sonya’s performances, as well as an audio recording of the Midsummer Meditation event.

Images: Finn Mellor

Photo: Finn Mellor

My practice is about finding a unique visual, sound and movement language for ‘deep listening’. I am inspired by nature and what the community/public has to offer, contribute and share. This exhibition will translate community poems into movement, language and sound works. Creating a practice of embodiment, the exhibition is about finding my own way of ‘deep listening’. It navigates my connection to the Earth and Nature, here in South Australia, from a non Indigenous persons perspective, whilst holding a deep appreciation and respect for Indigenous connection to the land, sea and sky.

Photo: Finn Mellor

Life is about movement, moving forwards, under, around and through. By utilizing the action of ‘deep listening’, we can access these movements more readily, with a sense of grace, calm, peace and a sprinkle of humour. In these times of busy, busy, rush, rush...by ’listening deeply’ and weaving gossamer threads of nature, connection and community.

All photos: Finn Mellor

Virtual Gallery: Tarsha Cameron and Tailor Oriana-Julie Winston, One

In May-July 2022, The Mill continued our focus on Visual Arts collaborations, presenting One, a new exhibition by emerging multidisciplinary artists Tarsha Cameron and Tailor Oriana-Julie Winston. With an interest in developing relational connections and shared stories, Tarsha and Tailor developed a unique, evolving installation in the gallery. During the first ‘soft opening’ week audiences were invited to visit and witness the work in progress, share their responses and also contribute. With sculptural, installation, sound, photography, video, painting and textiles, One is an exploration of collaboration and connectivity.

Image: Tarsha and Tailor in the Exhibition Space, Photo Morgan Sette.

Artist statement

The threads of connection

Stay

Forever present

In our genes

Across space and time

And

In our bodies; flesh and ethereal 

Life is an entangled whole

Connectivity surrounds us. It is more than just between you and I, but also between the moon and the stars, the trees and the sea; all living beings living in symbiosis with one another. Close your eyes and notice for a moment. Breathe. Feel it in the air. Feel it in you.

One attempts to creatively explore and materialise the more complex and subtle forms of collaboration that occur in everyday life, yet remain hidden to our visual and auditory perception. We are in constant developmental flux with ourselves, nature, our immediate and distant surroundings; reciprocally invoking the law of cause-and-effect that expands across time, space and place.

The process leads us into a philosophical investigation where everything co-exists, akin to an ecosystem with many differing identities that inform, inspire, and rely on the other. It is a continuous collaborative exploration as we respond to and negotiate nature, each other,  and our close and more remote environmental, historical and ancestral storylines. 

Situated on Kaurna Yarta, One culminates as a work that is both fluid and organic, still, yet full of life. A reflection of the interconnectedness of existence.

Social photos: Daniel Marks / All other photos: Morgan Sette.

Virtual Gallery: Dance Launchpad 2022

Presented by The Mill and supported by venue partner Australian Dance Theatre (ADT), Dance Launchpad is a professional development program designed to support emerging dancers to build experience in the professional industry, by working with local South Australian choreographers.

The program nurtures the ecology of dance in SA by commissioning established SA choreographers to make new work, and share their industry knowledge with emerging SA dance artists.

In 2022 the outcome was the creation of two choreographic works, Loom by Amanda Phillips and Semblance by Tobiah Booth-Remmers. These works were performed by emerging dancers Jess Minas, Amelia Watson, Isobel Stolinski and Amelia Walmsley, presented as a double-bill performance at ADT’s Odeon Theatre.

This program resulted in professionally filmed showreels for the four dancers, which you can watch below.

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Full length performances

Composer: Alexander Waite Mitchell

Videographer: Peter Drew

Lighting designer: Aaron Herczeg

Videographer: Peter Drew

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Amelia Walmsley

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Amelia Watson

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Isobel Stolinski

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Jess Minas

Virtual Gallery: Jingwei Bu, ‘Life Maps’

The Mill is excited to present Life Maps, an exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Jingwei Bu. This series of drawings have been created through performative action, using stylized gestures as a record of movement. Jingwei’s process of intuitive action uses techniques of focus and meditation to translate emotion and memory onto the paper.

Photos: Morgan Sette

Image: Jingwei Bu in front of works from Life Maps series (photo: Morgan Sette).

Each mark has its character to me, together they are telling complex stories. This exhibition shows the old Life Maps from the previous years and the recent ones since my mother’s passing two years ago. The making of new life maps has helped me get through the grieving and to gradually heal.

⏤ Jingwei Bu

Artist statement

My Life Maps drawings are a performative movement of the hands. The marks, numbers and lines carry the intuitive motion performed on the paper. The endurance of the movement uses the paper as a stage and as a boundary for action. The results of the performances are either purely intuitive or an action for a reflection on a life event. The repetition of motion is like meditation and ritual. The repetition is never the same.

The freedom of movement is paralleled by the process of creating space among lines, forms, and marks that resonate the actions of navigating distance and space among people. The longer the movement, the deeper I can go into the subconscious of emotion and memory accumulated in the life journey. To reach, to fix, to answer the questions locked.

Image: Jingwei Bu performing Life Map Trap, 2021(Photo: Vision Studio).

Photos: Ying He

Virtual Gallery: Adrianne Semmens and Jennifer Eadie, Unravel

From February to April 2022 The Mill welcomed South Australian based artist and writer Jennifer Eadie and dance practitioner, Adrianne Semmens to present their collaborative project Unravel.

The artists invite you to first read through their accompanying text, which can be dowloaded as a PDF from the linked image below, and then take time to look through the videos and photographic documentation of the exhibition.

This Virtual Gallery is an online offering to bring you into the space virtually.

(Images below: Daniel Marks)

Q&A with artists Adrianne Semmens and Jennifer Eadie

Hi, my name is Adele Sliuzas, I am the Visual Arts Curator at The Mill. I’d like to acknowledge the Kaurna people as the traditional custodians of the Country that this exhibition takes place on, and where I am privileged to live and work. It’s so great to be here in the Unravel exhibition, thank you so much to artists Adrianne Semmens and Jennifer Eadie for creating this exhibition and performances. We’re going to have a chat about your practices and some of the themes you have explored in this exhibition.

Lets start with hearing a little bit about yourselves, and how you came to begin this collaboration?

A&J—Jen and I thank The Mill for bringing us together – Katrina the Director of The Mill introduced us in 2019 whilst Jen was Writer in Residence and I was the Engage Program recipient. We discovered a shared interest and connection with each other’s work, which led to a first project, creating a text together for Delving into Dance/Critical Path Commission (2020). We were then eager to explore how the text’s dialogue could be explored and presented across our disciplines and were fortunate to undertake a Breakout Residency at The Mill (2020/21). The residency allowed for a creative development and exploration of text, movement, and installation, this in turn led to our collaboration on this exhibition.

A— I am a dance practitioner and descend from the Barkindji People of NSW. I enjoy working across performance, choreographic and dance education roles. Connection to place continues to be a central theme of my practice, explored in this collaboration and my own choreographic works: https://www.adriannesemmens.com/

J— I am an artist, writer, and academic currently living on Kaurna Country. I grew up on Taribelang Bunda Country. My creative work is interdisciplinary (text, installation, and performance), but always grounded in place: exploring the stories, bodies, and histories that emerge from place when it is recognized as living country rather than property or resource. Methodologically, my practice involves collating and then responding to site-based material. This material may take the form of text, bodies, archives, natural and man-made objects, textiles, recordings, and/or image: https://jennifereadie.cargo.site/

Adele: Place, belonging, and connection are key themes in the exhibition, and you have both taken personal journeys in order to present work that is considered and vulnerable, and opens a conversation for audiences to do the same. Can you tell us a little about how you came to this theme and what meaning it holds for both of you?

A— we connected through our discussions of place, belonging and connection. At the time of our connection I was considering my own relationship to place, having returned to Adelaide to make this my home, treading lightly and respectfully on Kaurna Country whilst acknowledging my pull and yearning for time and deeper connections to ancestral country.

J—I had only just moved to Adelaide-Kaurna country when we first met so I was still finding my feet here and was also in the process of tracing my heritage and encountering difficulties gaining any clarity about my ancestry. So, I was experiencing a sort of double dis-connection to place in this regard. It became obvious very quickly that we both recognized place and our relationship with it as central to our practice. From the beginning then, we have always understood and respected this shared vulnerability as point from which we create work together.

Adele: Creating a non-hierarchical collaborative relationship has been such an important focus of your work here. I wondered if you could both speak a bit about why that has been something that you have valued, and what things you have put in place to achieve it?

A— We respect and admire each other’s work and placed an emphasis throughout our collaboration to ensure our practice and individual disciplines initially sit together and in this project begin to entwine. I am really grateful for the new possibilities and mediums to present my work, opportunity for risks and extensive development that our ongoing collaboration has allowed for.

J—Yes, like Adrianne said, as a gesture of respect, our interest was in creating an exhibition that embodied both of our practices (text, art, and movement). Bringing different disciplines together means you see things in unexpected or new ways. We are both drawn to natural material and the aesthetic that emerges when one places the body in relation to that material – so this shared interest is what guided us. Both of us are honest and non-judgemental which removes the awkward diplomacy that can sometimes characterise collaboration.

Adele: Can you each speak about the materials that you have brought into the space and how you have worked with them? And about the relationship between material, body and place.

J&A—The exhibition is grounded by natural elements and textiles as a gesture, hands outwards, continuing lineage to country.

A— Our interest in material began during our residency, eager to use the fabric to designate a space/place. We experimented with cloth to depict our care of place, fragility and lineage. For this exhibition and our focus on our relationship to our current homes, here on Kaurna Yarta, I was interested in using the beautiful feather spear grass in my front yard.

J—The materials are our means of exploring the questions that inform our work: ‘what if authentic relationship to place is an act of opening that fractures a stable sense of identity’ and; ‘what tensions that arise when we, with mixed heritage, attempt to articulate a sense of connection or belonging to land that is not our ancestral country.’ UNRAVEL responds to these questions indirectly, as a means of acknowledging the difficulty of not being able to articulate a resolute response. We decided to explore the question via our connection with the natural environment where we live – in my case that with the False Caper plants that grow in the sand dunes across from where I live and for Adrianne, it was the spear grass that grows in her yard.

Photographs to each other when we had decided on the plant we would focus on for the exhibition:

The sculptures were a means of imbuing-returning a sort of energy back into the plants as a gesture of respect and care for being part of our process.  For the images – we wanted to create a dynamic where the plant and our body are in dialogue, as a means of breaking down borders between us and country:

Early work-in-progress images:

Adele: Text sits in the exhibition space in the form of mono prints and an artist statement, and also in the catalogue which you have both contributed writing to. I’d love to know a bit about the process of forming these works, and how you worked together on them.

J— I wrote the poem in the artist statement after first meeting Adrianne, as a means of trying to articulate what I felt was our shared experience – a sense of unravelling that occurs when one tries to articulate identity or connection to place. The description and poems that are included in the ‘accompanying text’ and monoprints were our attempt to authentically engage with Kaurna country via those singular plants who form part of our home: what is their history, what have they witnessed, if we were to have a yarn with them, how would it go? The monoprints are these ‘love letters’ in printed form:

A— Our text is a continuation of our ongoing dialogue, sharing thoughts, posing questioning, refining ideas. I appreciated Jen’s lead in our creation of text and the opportunity to explore my own writing through this process, each writing a poem and presenting it as a mono print. This was a new experience and presentation of my work, enabled through the support and sharing of Jen.

Thank you’s and good byes!

J&A – we would like to thank The Mill again for giving us the space and care to create our exhibition and for everyone who has gotten in touch with feedback. We would also like to thank Rosemary Wanganeen again for welcoming us to her country and for her words in conversations since, which carry such immense strength and kindness.

Virtual Gallery: CHARTS Community Housing Arts Awards South Australia

In January 2022, The Mill was thrilled to open our 2022 Visual Arts program with the CHARTS Awards exhibition, a celebration of the inaugural Community Housing Arts Awards, South Australia. Created to celebrate and showcase the creative diversity, and depth of talent within tenants of community and social housing, the exhibition features painting, sculpture, photography, digital art and writing.

Hover over installation images below to find out more about the artworks, and watch the recording of the livestreamed opening event, with commentary from Access2Place housing officer Luke Wilcox and Art Gallery of South Australia’s Contemporary Art Curator Leigh Robb.

(Images below: Sam Roberts)

Image: Elaine Roberts, Elvis in the arty.

CHARTS is a joint project between seven different Community Housing Providers. It was established in 2020 to celebrate and showcase the art being made by tenants of community and social housing. CHARTS aims to provide opportunities for artists living in community housing to exhibit their work, build their skills and establish networks. It seeks to encourage them to keep making and to legitimise their practice, or be the point from which they launch their own art career. The works in this exhibition are all the finalists, as chosen by our independent panel of practicing artists who judged the CHARTS awards for us.

Virtual Gallery: Hussain Alismail, In search of a good laugh

In June 2021, The Mill welcomed Hussain Alismail to undertake a residency as part of our Sponsored Studio program. The outcome of this residency was a new exhibition, In search of a good laugh, presented in our Showcase gallery in November-December 2021. The Mill’s Sponsored Studio is a new initiative supported by Drs Geoff and Sorayya Martin, and an anonymous philanthropist beginning in 2021.

(Images below: Daniel Marks)

Image: Hussain Alismail, courtesy of the artist.

The title of the exhibition is inspired by an interview I recently watched where visitors to an art exhibition were asked: ‘What you are looking for in this exhibition?’ One visitor answered ‘I don’t know! Maybe a good laugh!’ This answer struck me, and took me back to ten years ago when I worked as a cartoonist at KFUPM newspaper (a university publication in Saudi Arabia), where my art work attempted to generate laughter about the hardest issues faced by students. Since then, my work has shifted to become more abstracted and conceptual, however, I believe laughter is a worthwhile pursuit. This exhibition may not be overtly comedic, but I would like to invite audiences to consider the work through a lens where it can be both serious, conceptual and parodical.

-Hussain Alismail

Artist statement

As much as identity defines who we are, our culture and morals; it is always a challenge to prevent misconception, misrepresentation and misjudgment. This challenge and other issues like belonging, individualism, autonomy, gender tension make no identity idle. Through In search of a good laugh I explore the possibilities of identity within a Saudi/Middle Eastern and Australian context.

Over the past few years, I have been working with the significant visual elements that represent Arab people, creating an abstract visual catalogue of identity. The artworks suggest the colourful shapes and patterns that speak truly about Arabic diversity and culture.

Image: Blend In, 2021, photographic digital prints on fine art paper, dimensions variable, image courtesy of the artist.

‘In search of a good laugh’ at The Mill’s annual Donor Circle event (Photos: Dylan Minchenberg).

Virtual Gallery: City Mobilities 2021

City Mobilities was a three-day intensive that explored ideas about the way we access and move in public spaces, supported by City of Adelaide. This was a follow-up workshop, building on the first workshops in 2020 and 2021.

Over the three days, participants worked with lead artists Tom Borgas (The Mill resident artist) and Paul Gazzola (OSCA Artistic Director) to explore how they could rethink and reconfigure the city’s infrastructure into other forms and functionalities.

This was an opportunity for participants to expand and develop their initial ideas into something more developed and considered, explore new ideas and further establish collaborative connections with like-minded peers and colleagues.

“This was an excellent workshop. I found the process that we were guided through led to everyone presenting interesting ideas a activities. This has definitely informed how I will approach generating ideas in my own arts practice going forward.”

Photos: Morgan Sette

City Mobilities is an ongoing initiative between The Mill and OSCA, supported by the City of Adelaide Strategic Partnership program.

Virtual Gallery: Lilla Berry, STRNG WMN for Tarnanthi 2021

In June-September 2021, The Mill welcomed Yankunytjatjara woman, multidisciplinary artist Lilla Berry to undertake a residency in our studios supported by City of Adelaide. The outcome of this residency was a new exhibition, STNRG WMN, presented in our gallery for Tarnanthi 2021. Lilla has collaborated with strong women, including Pearl Berry, Iteka Ukarla, Carly Tarkari Dodd, Mali Isabel, Amber Ahang, Kirsty Williams and Morgan Sette.

(Images below: Morgan Sette)

Image: Lilla Berry in the Exhibition Space, Photo Morgan Sette.

Image: Lilla Berry and Mali Isabel in conversation with The Mill’s Adele Sliuzas. Photo Morgan Sette.

Artist statement

The arts have always been embedded into my life. My family is made up of musicians and visual artists, and practicing art was something I just did when I was younger. Although using my body seemed to be one of the things I enjoyed most, whether that was dancing or acrobatics. As I got older and more influenced by others around me, the inherent idea that I was an artist shifted and changed. My practice moved towards a dance focus, as this was what I had the greatest opportunity to practice. However, as I’ve continued to develop as an arts worker, I’ve been able to tap into the other areas of my practice and continue to develop my skills across a range of mediums, and now have the confidence to articulate myself as a multi-disciplinary artist. Even if each discipline doesn’t get the same amount of my attention, they are equally as important and rewarding for me to practice.

STRNG WMN. will explore what it means to be strong Aboriginal women. Including culturally, physically and mentally. I have always been surrounded by strong women growing up. I was raised by a single mother, and as an athlete all of my team mates were strong women, being strong role models. And growing up watching other young Aboriginal woman dancing with Kurruru, I was so inspired by their strength in culture.

Through working with my community, I will take the lived experiences of other women to inform movement to be captured on film, still images and installation. I want to capture the authentic voices of our community, and explore all the ways we as women find strength, as it comes in all different types of forms.

⏤ Lilla Berry

Virtual Gallery: ‘Stitch and Resist’ with Centre of Democracy

In July-August 2021 The Mill welcomed The Centre of Democracy to present Stitch and Resist, an exhibition of contemporary craftivism. Bringing together 140 works by activists from all around the world, this project is an example of the agency of communities working with a shared goal.

Below Images: Morgan Sette

Image: Deco Photography.

Image: Deco Photography.

Artist statement

This exhibition is the culmination of a year long project of the same name, in which the Centre of Democracy engaged with community organisations and groups, as well as with the general public, to discuss, and create works addressing a range of contemporary issues.

Stitch & Resist showcases craftivist pieces that vary in terms of skill level and artistic merit. Their significance lies less in these values than in the political work they do, the contribution they make to social change. Pieces that appear in the exhibition have been created in English, Arabic, and indigenous languages, and many address diversity, inclusion and equality. As well as functioning as vehicles for addressing contemporary social issues, the works demonstrate the fact that everyone can be involved in craftivism. Over 140 works have been produced by a large number of individuals, community groups, and partner organisations from across South Australia, Australia, and internationally.

The Centre of Democracy is a collaboration between the History Trust of South Australia and the State Library of South Australia. It showcases the people, ideas and movements that have shaped, and continue to shape, democracy in South Australia. Featuring treasures from the state’s collections, the gallery contents challenge visitors to think again about people and power.

Virtual Gallery: Quartz Pistol, Umbrella Festival 2021

Quartz Pistol and The Mill present NATURE VS NURTURE, a three-part live video inspired by the deep sea, hydrothermal vent ecosystems where life on Earth is said to have originated.

Quartz Pistol AKA Abbey Howlett shares with you three tunes, representative of three different stages in her songwriting career featuring Myka Wallace on drums and Moses Carr on keys. Special thanks to Umbrella Festival and ArtsSA.

DOP/producer: Joli Vision

Second Camera: Will Hamilton-Coates

Set design: Abbey Howlett

Costume: Abbey Howlett

BTS shots: Back2back Media

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Virtual Gallery: Thomas Readett, ‘Complexities’

The Mill is excited to present Complexities, a solo exhibition by artist Thomas Readett. This new body of work uses self-portraiture as a medium for exploring the complexities of contemporary life. Thomas’ self-exploration and personal narratives become opportunities to reflect the wider world, through themes of love, loss, and grief.

Image: Thomas Readett in front of works from his Complexities exhibition (photo: Morgan Sette)

My love of video games and thinking games has driven the development of these works, using these games as a conduit to describe the complexities of connection and reflection. Using a small and technical object known as the Rubik's cube as the starting point, the original thinking game. My Rubik’s cube speaks to the pixel like painted snapshots on the walls and creates an environment to explore and contemplate life, connection, and love.

⏤ Thomas Readett

Artist statement

Perception is a fundamental trait of the creative mind. It allows us to interpret ideas differently to others, bring fresh ideas but also brings a different set of mental and social processes. These processes mean that we have deep and empathetic connections to people and the world around us.

Complexities explores how convoluted the creative mind can be. In this abstracted self-portrait body of work I reflect on the importance of self-expression and how overwhelming the world, life and relationships can be without it. In the world’s current climate all aspects of life have been more challenging than usual, using a form of self-expression has never been more important and, for me, it has become compulsory.

Image: Thomas Readett in conversation with Adele Sliuzas (Photo: Morgan Sette)

Virtual Gallery: Cinematic Experiments

Cinematic Experiments was a 10-day professional development project, presented by The Mill in partnership with artist Margie Medlin and Mercury CX, funded by Arts South Australia.

In response to creatives pushing further into exploring digital spaces, this intensive workshop challenged a mixed cohort of dance, performance, film and design artists to explore the development of interdisciplinary, hybrid and digital platforms. The stimulating, experiment-based structure built digital technologies skills for participating artists and ignited new ways of thinking and practicing. 

The partnership between The Mill and Mercury CX reflected the labs interdisciplinary aspirations.

Below you will find some of the images and videos captured during this project.

Virtual Gallery: Carolyn Corletto, ‘Random Acts of Obsession: The artist as the Collector’

The Mill’s 2021 Exhibition Space program opened with Random Acts of Obsession: The Artist as the Collector, a new body of work by multidisciplinary artist Carolyn Corletto. Working with found materials, paint, clay, thread and words, Carolyn has created a personal Wunderkammer.

Image: Courtesy of the artist.

Image: Courtesy of the artist.

Artist statement

I often find myself inhabiting the liminal space between passion and obsession, where collection becomes compulsion. Discarded objects begin to speak to me of a new accumulative value. Motives for collecting or over-collecting vary and combine differently for each collector. For me the selection of an object worthy of collection is rooted in memory and biography. The fixation becomes physical with the need to hunt, to store (sometimes display) and inevitably (for me) the need to make something. My art practice is an emotional response to my experience of the landscape and the materiality of the objects I collect as I move through it. I usually find myself focussing on the smallest objects, appreciating their unique properties and design. In my mind anything can become something else through the ministrations of conceptual meditation. Connections are made between found objects and material processes as they assert their status as saved, rehabilitated or collected.

In this exhibition I have created works that are inextricable from the process itself. Expanding on my finalist work in the Parklands Art Prize I have continued my daily walk through the Parklands and other green spaces, collecting tiny specimens of natural materials or domestic debris and making a one inch wheel thrown ceramic vessel for each object. As the vessels contain my daily thoughts I have found the clay responding differently each day into a myriad of iterations. During Covid restrictions when obsession with making was able to take hold undistracted or tempered by reason I came to appreciate the sense of control these occupations afforded in times of uncertainty, the curative effect before the compulsion returns.

This exhibition embodies a response to my wanderings, my research and the interior landscape of my personal obsessions, all the while mining childhood memories of lying on the grass gazing through the tracery of trees. With deliberate energy each work offers an acutely focussed encounter and collaboration with an environment balanced between vulnerability and resilience. By bringing materials out of their habitat and into the gallery, recontextualising with a mindful counter of tension and tenderness, I confirm that my eyes are open to the urgency of fragility.

Virtual Gallery: Danny Jarratt, ‘FlatWorld 64’

Flatworld 64 is a new series of paintings by digital artist Danny Jarratt. Co-opting the design language of 90’s collect-a-thon video games, Danny invites audiences to step into a flattened, graphic world. He offers audiences a momentary escape from the noise of navigating heteronormative daily life. This series of bright, digital paintings are made up of gestures and painterly marks translated into a digital realm. Low-resolution and pixelated graphic shapes sit alongside digital airbrush and drop shadows, giving a sense of collapsed perspective and a non hierarchical plane of existence. Danny describes them as ‘perhaps paintings, or perhaps screenshots’ of a queer videogame landscape.

Photos: Morgan Sette

Within these worlds there were valuable objects to collect: Golden Jigsaws, Golden Bananas and Golden Stars. The worlds were filled with collectables and quickly the player would learn the lore of the land and develop a spatial understanding of the world and a connection to the place and self. In searching for these objects, I became connected. I feel deep attachments to Donkey Kong 64’s Jungle Japes and Super Mario 64’s Tick Tock Clock. All these spaces are queer escapes, where identity is transformative and always resistant.

This body of work portrays the world as flattened and paused, populated with unseen people, remnants of buildings and rare Ghost Diamonds.

Photographer: Will Adams.

Artist statement

Through my heteronormative childhood, I found the media landscape of television oppressive. I was told to sit in front of the ‘idiot box’ and be a passive viewer. However, with the introduction of the Nintendo 64 and collect-a-thon video games the television transformed from passive to collaborative experience. Through role playing games my identity shifted from repressed to forever-in-flux: I could be male, female, a bear and/or a bird. As I inhabited these avatars I would explore different worlds including jungles, ruins, factories or outer space.

Photographer: Will Adams

The player/audience is given reprieve from heteronormative noise and left with a peaceful queer silence; a moment in the game where everything stops. The bright colours and silence offer a zen and meditative escape. Unlike the video games which inspire them, this space does not reward the player/audience with level progression or bosses to fight. Instead you're rewarded with a better understanding of this queer environment, a search for diamonds and a queered quiet & flow.

Virtual Gallery: City Mobilities 2020

City Mobilities was a two-day intensive that explored ideas about the way we access and move in public spaces, supported by City of Adelaide.

Over the two days, participants worked with lead artists Tom Borgas (The Mill resident artist) and Paul Gazzola (OSCA Artistic Director) to explore how they could rethink and reconfigure the city’s infrastructure into other forms and functionalities.

“Learning more about the practice of the facilitators, Paul and Tom, gave us a realistic understanding of what it takes to create a public art project. I enjoyed the exercises and opportunity to share ideas with peers with the knowledge we could work collaboratively in the not-too-distant future. Furthermore, the workshop validated my interest in performance art in public.” 

Photos: Morgan Sette

City Mobilities is an ongoing initiative between The Mill and OSCA, supported by the City of Adelaide Strategic Partnership program.