Melbourne Street Open Air Gallery - Art Trail - SALA 2024
Melbourne Street
Explore and rediscover Melbourne Street, North Adelaide during SALA, as you follow an open-air art trail featuring ten established South Australian artists. Reproductions of the digital and photographic works feature on the windows of 20+ cafes, retail and other businesses forming a visual treat along the trail.
The artworks can be viewed 24/7 during August on the exterior windows of Melbourne Street businesses in North Adelaide. Wander the art trail at your leisure, stopping for brunch, lunch, a drink or a spot of retail therapy along the way.
See below for the opportunity to join a free 1-hour walking tour of the trail with the artists.
Download the trail map or pick one up from participating businesses.
Meet the Artists
Register to join a free guided tour along the trail with the Curator and artists. Hear about and from the artists and understand more about their digital and photographic works.
2024 Featured Artists
Through these artworks, the disconnect caused by protective barriers is scrutinized, showcasing how plastic frames encase nature's spectacle while distancing us from its true essence, underscoring a pervasive fear of the world's vulnerabilities. They prompt contemplation on the delicate balance between safeguarding and nurturing genuine connections with nature. “Personally photographing plastic forms and landscapes, I digitally merge them using both AI and non-AI Photoshop techniques, creating composite images that challenge our perceptions and provoke introspection”.
Artwork: Kimber, Mark. Mountains Weep #1, 2024.
Photography is at the centre of LOK’s inquiry as a Hong Kong born person now living in Australia. Moments and everyday events provide memories of political conflict, home, and family.
“Watching a country suffering a difficult period while only being able to see the pain through a screen and being on the other side of the world; let alone that place is where your home is.”
Artwork: LOK. Hands, 2019
Presence is a photographic series materialised by replicating capture methods used in paranormal photography, experimenting with infrared filters, long exposures, and movement capture. The works portray concepts of time and phantasm within the realm of spiritism, and magical rationale relevant to anomalistic psychology. “My interest in the paranormal stems from my experiences of sleep disorders, and an ongoing fascination with extraordinary beliefs and mythologies. Within the realm of phantasmic experience, this series seeks to synthesize transient emotions, sensations, forms, and figures from the visual experience”.
Artwork: Northey, Emma. Presence Capture 2, 2024.
Joshua Olavesen is a versatile multimedia artist with a background in film and theatre. As a long-time participant in SALA, he has garnered numerous awards for his work. His art blurs the boundaries between reality and the miniature, capturing the essence of local architecture through meticulously crafted diorama landscapes.
Artwork: Olavesen, Joshua. It all starts…, 2024
An exploration into the accidental aesthetics that exists in spaces built with form and function as a priority, exploring the idea of art intersecting with science and vice versa.
Artwork: Parham, Taylor. Nanofabrication Cleanroom, 2023.
“Recently a tonal realist painter of botanicals, photographic effects are an ongoing influence for me. These include background blur, Kodachrome palettes, enhanced saturation and high contrast. The digitally enhanced versions of my painting process feature here, discovering a new interest in repetition”.
Artwork: Poulson, Joanna. Echoed Hellebore, 2024.
Yasemin is an actor, artist, film director and photographer. Winner of the SALA 2023 photography award, her prize awards her a solo show at Praxis Artspace, Bowden for SALA 24.
“Mirror selfie game strong. I’ve been taking selfies most of my life and it’s been a tool of empowerment and play. Since before times...back when it was seen as indulgent and weird.”
Artwork: Sabuncu, Yasemin. Mirror Phase 1, 2023.
Mary Ann has been a part of Melbourne Street and City of Adelaide’s community arts in place projects since 2014. The ‘pebbles’ or sculpture, Memorial to an Ash Tree, is a much-loved seating and play space near the Melbourne Street Pharmacy. The artwork on the wall for SALA24 captures another similar installation for Palmer Sculpture Biennial.
Digitally manipulated x-rays are an on-going link for themes around memory since 2019. This new work uses her own recent foot x-ray, donated MRIs of knees and layers of Japanese silk.
Artwork: Santin, Mary Ann. Foot in May 2024, 2024.
Southcott transforms conflict images into abstracted landscapes or symbolic photography, exploring light and colour to create alternative spaces for peace, reconciliation, hope, and resolution.
The Clemency Wings series evolved from photographs of Beverley’s open hands or fists, with sunlight reflected into prism strands. This series addresses the need for clemency and the choice of war or peace.
Artwork: Southcott, Beverly. Clemency Wings One, 2024.
A filmmaker and photographer, Thorne’s work explores contemporary “Australian” identity, spirituality, masculinity, and relationship to land, through blurred fiction/non-fiction frameworks, often working directly with real communities and people using co-created and re-enacted storytelling practices.
“It’s becoming clear to me that filmmaking is itself a spiritual endeavour imbued with the significance of ritual”.
Artwork: Thorne, Matthew. ‘Australians’ series, ongoing.
The Art Trail is curated by local artist Mary Ann Santin, courtesy of GAG Projects Adelaide and brought to you by the City of Adelaide and Adelaide Economic Development Agency.