Adelaide exhibition guide: October 2018

Sera Waters: Genealogical Ghostscapes
Praxis Artspace
Thursday, October 11 to October 25

Drawing on her South Australian settler colonial family history dating back to 1838, alongside investigations into local and national archived collections and documents, Genealogical Ghostscapes is the culmination of four years of Sera Waters’ postdoctoral research.

“This exhibition is a response to some of the knots, gaps, touchy spots, shameful secrets, unknowable pasts and ‘ghostscapes’ which plague the history of this colonised country of Australia,” Waters says.

Through her practice, Waters looks at the domestic space and how everyday traditions contributed to the process of colonisation. She acknowledges the repetitive textile and hand-craft traditions, usually performed by women, such as embroidery, quilting, or shell collecting placing them into a contemporary context.

“I hope to give these colonising inheritances new trajectories into traditions which bring recognition to knotty pasts.”

praxisartspace.com.au

Glenn Kestell: Forever in Paint
Fisher Jeffries
Friday, October 5 to Wednesday, October 31

In his latest exhibition Forever in Paint, Glenn Kestell is reigniting early influences of Romanticism and the pre-Raphaelites on his painting practice. Like the masters who drew inspiration from visual art and literature, Kestell focuses on creating a mood or feeling rather than a specific narrative, though there are hints of a narrative.

“I’m reverting back to beauty, with voluptuous nudes and classical compositions and observations rather than some convoluted concepts and theories,” he says. “I wanted to create things of sensuous beauty, allure and elegance. An alternate reality that we desperately want to be part of or involved in.”

Kestell has further added a sense of elegance to these works by using lavish gilded frames. Like the pre-Raphaelites, Kestell is looking back to move forward. “It has felt like some kind of revival for me and definitely a big step in a forward direction.”

glennkestell.art

Min Wong: Born to give not to get
Hugo Michell Gallery
Thursday, October 18 to Saturday, November 10

Sculptures resembling a Pilates bed and gym equipment are some of the items you will find in Min Wong’s gym ‘interior’, the installation work Born to Give not to Get. Wong examines the commodification of the spiritual self through high performing branding and prescriptive spiritual accessories such as yoga, activewear and affirmative phrases.

By using paraphernalia associated with a surge in the self-care industry,  Wong explores the contemporary dilemma of whether it’s a holistic approach that includes emotional, mental and spiritual fulfillment or is our pursuit of perfection based on self-interest and an unattainable quest for a utopian collective.

hugomichellgallery.com

Sophie Corso, Peter Drew, Jake Holmes, Andy Petrusevics
Artroom5
Saturday, October 6 to Sunday, October 28

At her ‘home gallery’ Artroom5 at Henley Beach, curator Vivonne Thwaites presents local artists whose work highlights the current political climate: Sophie Corso, Peter Drew, Jake Holmes and Andy Petrusevics.

Petrusevics’ paintings go against the trend of our conservative society obsessed with hyper perfection and instead he uses messy paint and ‘factography’, developed by Russian artists 100 years ago. “Factography uses stories of real people, real places and real events, traversing time,” Petrusevics says. “I’ve even supplied painstaking notes, so you’ll be able to identify what’s going on.”

Drew is well known for his posters that draw on the ongoing international refugee crisis. Holmes also creates political posters highlighting the games associated with Australian politics. Corso works with multi-media materials to create an interactive space that looks at our whimsical interactions with the world around us.

artroom5.com.au

Feature image credit: Peter Drew Monga Khan AUSSIE poster Dorothy Sym Choon  AUSSIE poster 61 x 91 cm