Image: Nicolas Ottavio Saccardo, Untitled, 2026, coloured pencil on found wood and masonite box, 50cm x 91.9cm x 6.5cm, image courtesy of the artist.
July 27 - September 4, 2026
Opening night, Wednesday, July 29, 5:30- 7:30pm
Gallery II, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta
Free entry, all welcome
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You can find Nicolas’ exhibition in The Mill’s Gallery II, located at 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta (Adelaide).
Gallery II is open Monday-Friday, 10am-4pm.
Accessibility
The Mill’s entrance has a small step into the building. We have a ramp available, please ring the doorbell and our friendly team will assist you.
During gallery hours, our entrance will be unlocked. If the door is closed, please ring the doorbell to alert our team.
The Mill has concrete flooring throughout with no internal steps and a disability toilet on site.
Read more in-depth information on our accessibility web page.The Mill has concrete flooring throughout with no internal steps and a disability toilet on site.
Read more in-depth information on our accessibility web page.
We are excited to present A scratch to a whisper, a new exhibition by Nicolas Ottavio Saccardo. In this exhibition Nicolas explores materiality, mark-making and trace through a series of works on found surfaces. Using previously discarded panels, boards and pages, Nicolas examines the relationship between surfaces and the body, both as the material of our human ecology and as artefacts of our culture.
Through this body of work Nicolas draws our attention to mark making, honouring found marks- carpenters measurements once hidden on the inside of cabinets, scuffs from use, the wearing away of surface through repetitive touch. Through studio practice, they add layers of text like marks, sometimes referencing writing, scribbles, shopping lists, diary entries, and sometimes gestural, abstract marks across the surface.
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Nicolas Ottavio Saccardo (they/them) is an emerging visual artist living and practicing on Kaurna land. Utilising primarily drawing and sculpture, their work revolves around an interest in human-object dynamics and finding unexpected ways of viewing often mundane, found materials. Through material-led experimentation, they attempt to intervene with objects as a way to dislodge them from familiar day-to-day contexts and blur the lines between material, place, self, and others, all in a world that grows increasingly dense and chaotic.
Nicolas is a recent graduate from The Adelaide Central School of Art (2024) and is also an active member of Highhorse Collective, a multidisciplinary artist-run group active in the SA arts scene.
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A scratch to a whisper is a collection of artworks that explore the concept of the trace, and how mundane human rituals render themselves into physical memory. Sparked from a wider interest in material histories, this body of work makes use of drawing and mark-making as tools to document narratives of who, how, where, and what. Each piece carries with it an abstract record of a particular moment in time, as passing interactions, thoughts, gestures, and routines are archived onto the object’s surfaces - mindlessly, compulsively, curiously.
The work examines the crossovers between humans and objects, and how the spaces we inhabit and the materials we use remember us. Routine registers itself a physical existence through our collisions with the material world – a door, opened daily, leaves a reminder of itself through scuff marks on the floor. Notations are inscribed on whatever materials are on hand – phone numbers copied on receipts, to-do lists scribbled in the margins. Mundane traces of our actions become preserved as anthropological artefacts. In much the same way, I myself have become frozen into the spatial and temporal record, whispering out upon the surfaces of these objects and calling to the viewer and others beyond.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body
