Artist Talk: Hamish Fleming, NOWHERE IS EVER REALLY THAT DARK

Photo: Hamish Fleming, The Roof is Leaking, (detail) 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

Artist Talk

When: Friday, November 13, 5:30-6:30pm

Gallery I, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta

Free

• Visiting the exhibition

  You can find Nowhere Is Ever Really That Dark in Gallery I, located at The Mill, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta (Adelaide).

  The Mill’s galleries are 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.

Join exhibiting artist Hamish Fleming in conversation with The Mill’s Visual Arts Curator Adele Sliuzas.

Together, they’ll be chatting about process, material and inspiration behind Hamish’s solo exhibition NOWHERE IS EVER REALLY THAT DARK.

• About Hamish

  Adelaide-based painter Hamish Fleming blends the unlikely combination of grunge aesthetics and classical realism, creating a distinctive style that merges the raw with the refined. Driven by a fundamental curiosity and an obsessive pursuit of understanding, Fleming often focuses on unremarkable aspects of contemporary life, capturing scenes and objects that are usually overlooked. His work frequently explores subtle juxtapositions, creating an intriguing tension between the familiar and the unexpected.

  Despite his contemporary subject matter, Fleming approaches his art with a deep respect for tradition. He works exclusively from life, rejecting reference photos and digital aids, and even makes much of his own paint from raw pigments. This hands-on process reflects his blunt artistic demeanor, rooted in a desire to understand the inherent qualities of both materials and subjects. He embraces what is present, rather than seeking idealized representations.

  The result is a series of paintings that exude a palpable atmosphere, drawing the viewer in with gritty yet harmonious details. The works invite deeper reflection, encouraging viewers to lose themselves in the subtle complexities of everyday life, captured through Fleming's unique lens.

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

Exhibition: Zane Qureshi, Where Are You (Really) From?

Photo: Zane Qureshi, 2026, courtesy of the artist.

February 5 - March 19, 2027

Opening night: Friday, February 12, 6-8pm

Gallery I, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta

Free entry, all welcome

• Visiting the exhibition

  You can find Where Are You (Really) From? in Gallery I, located at The Mill, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta (Adelaide).

  The Mill’s galleries are 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.

We are excited to present Where Are You (Really) From? a new photographic exhibition by Zane Qureshi exploring identity, culture and belonging. This exhibition is an outcome of our Photographer in Residence, presented with support from the Ana and Christopher Koch Foundation, and Black and White Photographic.

In this exhibition emerging photographer Zane Qureshi presents a series of intimate portraits of young creatives, artists and models. Each portrait explores the subjects own ties to cultural identity through personal style, objects and locations. Inspired by his own experiences growing up as an American-Australian with Greek and Pakistani heritage, Zane’s new body of work opens conversations about growing up in Australia as a person of colour.

Zane builds layers of meaning through colour, texture and lighting- the series jumps between locations in Adelaide’s uniquely recognisable farmland, to fashion-led studio photography, and then on to one of his subject’s heavily curated bedrooms. Through these snapshots audiences get an intimate introduction to each of Zane’s subjects, allowing us to more deeply connect with the rich self-expression and cultural pride of diverse young Australians.

• Artist Statement

  Where Are You (Really) From? is a reflective portrait series exploring identity, culture and belonging through personal storytelling and contemporary portrait and fashion photography.

  The title is inspired by my experiences growing up as an American-Australian with Greek and Pakistani heritage. After moving from New York to Adelaide at age eight, I was often asked, “Where are you from?” When I answered “America” or “Australian-American,” the conversation would often continue with, “But where are you really from?” While these interactions might seem minor, they reflected assumptions about race and belonging that shaped how I understood my identity throughout adolescence.

  As I’ve grown and connected with more culturally diverse Australians, particularly creatives, I’ve realised these moments are far from unique. Many people from multicultural backgrounds face similar questions and the feeling of having their identity reduced to their appearance. This project grew from a desire to explore these shared moments while celebrating the individuality and richness of multicultural identities.

  Working with POC artists, models and creatives across Australia, I began every portrait with an intimate conversation to better understand their background, experiences and relationship with identity. At the end of our discussions, I asked about their dream photoshoot or something true to them that they had always wanted to create. From there, I developed a shoot around what was shared, working together on styling, hair, makeup, clothing, objects and locations to create something that felt authentic to the individual and their background.

  These conversations opened my eyes even further to the realities of growing up as a person of colour. Hearing these personal accounts brought up difficult memories, but I also found comfort in recognising parts of my own journey in theirs. The process became more than creating an image; it was an opportunity to connect, share and build something together.

  Over the past two years, I’ve used a combination of digital and analogue photography to develop the series in the studio and on location. Colour, texture and lighting played a big part in bringing every subject to life. I used strobe flash alongside artificial and natural light for studio and on-location shoots, while outdoor photos relied on natural sunlight and a reflector to keep the environment feeling true to how it appeared in person.

  Some images are more colourful and fashion-photography-led, focusing on hair, makeup and styling choices that hold deeper meaning for the subject. Others are stripped back, focusing on composition, posing and the individual. My practice often draws on nostalgia, culture, identity and creativity, and this project pushed me to explore new locations and ways of working while creating visuals that feel raw and intimate, but still fun and expressive.

  Every piece is distinct, reflecting the people, places, clothing and objects that hold meaning for the subject. The works are exhibited together, with visually connected images presented alongside one another. The visuals are accompanied by a written account and biography from my perspective, sharing the subject’s identity and how we worked together to bring their narrative to life. Together, the works create a collective picture of multicultural Australia without suggesting there is only one way to experience culture or belonging.

  As someone who also creates and designs magazines, I’ve always loved print media and the way photographs can exist beyond a screen. I’m used to sharing my shoots on social media, but with this project, I wanted to keep the work private until the exhibition and allow it to be experienced together.

  Beyond the exhibition, I hope the project will become a lasting photographic archive documenting the identities and lived experiences of multicultural Australians, keeping these narratives visible and creating an enduring resource for dialogue, learning and cultural understanding.

  At its heart, Where Are You (Really) From? is about identity, self-expression and the importance of being able to define yourself. By combining contemporary editorial photography with personal stories and community voices, the project challenges assumptions about where people belong and what it means to be Australian. Through these portraits, I wanted to celebrate each individual on their own terms and create work that feels true to their story. Ultimately, I believe only we can truly define ourselves, and I hope this project creates space for people to be seen, understood and celebrated.

• About Zane

  Zane Qureshi is a photographer, designer, and multidisciplinary creative born in New York and raised between Brooklyn and Adelaide. Influenced by nostalgia, identity, self-expression, and culture, his practice moves fluidly across fashion, portrait & editorial photography, shot with digital, film and polaroids.

  Central to Qureshi’s approach is a deliberate balance between structured creative direction and intuition. Whether directing high-fashion editorial sets, shooting in a garage or a bedroom, or capturing live performances, he approaches image-making as a collaborative dialogue, allowing for organic, unscripted moments within meticulously framed environments. His work relies heavily on texture, light, and raw intimacy, transforming quiet personal narratives into striking visual studies.

  Beyond image-making, Qureshi’s practice extends into building and promoting creative communities. He is the founder, designer, and publisher of FRND Magazine, an independent publication for creatives, by creatives, in which he documents emerging artists and subcultures. He also founded FRND Models, a casting and management agency created to champion non-traditional and diverse talent. Through his solo work and dual brands, Qureshi creates an ecosystem centred on authentic storytelling and cultural documentation.

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

Exhibition: Chloe Noble, shelter without safety

Photo: Chloe Noble, shelter without safety, 2026, courtesy of the artist.

November 19, 2026 - January 22, 2027

Opening night: Thursday, November 19, 5:30-7:30pm

Dentons, Level 1, 19 Gouger Street, Adelaide

Free entry

• Visiting the exhibition

  You can find shelter without safety in Dentons, located at level 1, 19 Gouger Street Adelaide.

  Dentons’ galleries are open Monday-Friday, 8:30am-5pm.

  Accessibility

  Dentons is a legal practice with a gallery space, they have partnered with The Mill to present this exhibition.

  Their entrance is via a foyer at 19 Gouger street. Inside the foyer are a bank of lifts. The gallery space is on Level 1.

  During gallery hours, Denton’s entrance will be unlocked.

  Dentons’ gallery has a mix of tile and carpeted flooring throughout with no internal steps and a disability toilet on site.

We are excited to present shelter without safety a new exhibition of digital drawings and textile works by Chloe Noble. This exhibition is an outcome of our Disability Access Studio, presented in partnership with The Honig Foundation and Access2Arts. 

In this exhibition Chloe Noble explores their experience of housing instability, disability and trauma through a series of new mixed media works. Chloe invites audiences to consider their own experiences of housing, with digital drawings that illustrate familiar domestic scenes. Chloe’s dogs greet us from a victorian porch, a vase of native flowers is complete with a note ‘congratulations on moving’.

While these familiar scenes might feel warm and nostalgic for most, the works reference Chloe’s lived experience of housing instability. In this exhibition Chloe uses materiality to speak about the embodied and experiencial, Chloe writes ‘Weight, texture, repetition, enclosure, distance and movement become ways of communicating vigilance, fatigue, disorientation and endurance. I am interested in what happens when these internal states are given a physical form, and when the materials themselves begin to carry the weight of an experience.’

• Artist Statement

  shelter without safety explores housing insecurity, disability and trauma through lived experience. The work comes from a period in which I moved through more than twenty places over the course of a year, not through travel or choice, but in search of somewhere safe for myself and my dog.

  Rather than attempting to represent this experience literally, I am interested in how it can be embodied through material, space and sensation. The work considers what it feels like to live without permanence: to be constantly assessing a room, anticipating what might happen next, adapting to other people’s expectations, and never quite knowing how long a place can remain home.

  I work across painting, digital imagery, writing, textiles and installation. These materials are brought together through a shared visual and physical language of softness, fragmentation, layering and impermanence. Fabric can hang, fold, conceal and divide.

  Images can overlap or become partially obscured. Soft materials sit alongside architectural forms, creating spaces that feel both domestic and unsettled, reflecting the experience of moving between places and continually adapting to them.

  Materiality is important to this work because materials can hold qualities that language cannot. Weight, texture, repetition, enclosure, distance and movement become ways of communicating vigilance, fatigue, disorientation and endurance. I am interested in what happens when these internal states are given a physical form, and when the materials themselves begin to carry the weight of an experience.

  The work also considers the relationship between safety and institutions. Housing, healthcare and other systems can provide forms of shelter and support while simultaneously placing conditions on who is able to access them and how. For disabled people, access can become dependent on compliance: being quiet enough, flexible enough, well enough, grateful enough, or able to minimise the complexity of our needs.

  shelter without safety sits within this contradiction, questioning what it means to be given somewhere to exist without necessarily being given the conditions required to feel safe there.

  I am particularly interested in the ways disabled bodies experience space differently. Fatigue, chronic illness, sensory sensitivity and trauma can change how a room is navigated, how long it can be occupied, and what is required to feel comfortable within it. These experiences inform not only the subject of the work but its making. Access is therefore embedded within the process and material language of the installation rather than added afterwards.

  For disabled people, home can hold a different significance. It can be a place of rest, recovery and regulation, where the body can withdraw from the demands and sensory pressures of the outside world. Home can also be a space where routines, objects and familiar surroundings create a sense of safety and control. When that stability is disrupted, the loss is not simply the loss of a physical address, but the loss of a place in which the body can rest and exist without constantly adapting.

  The work invites audiences to move through an environment that is shifting, incomplete and deliberately difficult to read as a single narrative. There is no one moment or image that explains the experience. Instead, meaning accumulates through fragments, textures, objects and spatial relationships.

  At its core, shelter without safety is about the difference between having somewhere to be and having somewhere you can feel safe. It is about the physical and emotional labour of adapting to unstable environments, and the ways that experiences of housing insecurity and disability can remain hidden even when a person appears to have somewhere to live.

  Through the work, I am interested in creating a space where these experiences do not need to be simplified in order to be understood. Instead, they can exist as fragmented, contradictory and embodied — held within the materials, the space and the experience of moving through it.

• About Chloe

  Chloe Noble (she/they/he) is a multidisciplinary visual artist, facilitator and arts worker based on Kaurna Yerta / Adelaide, and the current Disability Access Studio recipient at The Mill. They also work as an Access Assistant at Access2Arts. Their practice spans expressionist portraiture, impressionist landscapes, digital art, installation and poetry, working across watercolours, oils, acrylics and digital mediums. Through gestural mark making and vibrant colour harmonies, Noble explores memory, domesticity, identity, disability, trauma, queerness and the emotional residue held within spaces and objects. Drawing from lived experiences of disability, chronic illness and neurodivergence, their work combines personal narrative with socially engaged approaches that invite reflection, connection and dialogue.

  Alongside their studio practice, Noble is deeply invested in accessibility and community-centred arts practice. Facilitation and collaborative making have shaped the way they approach art as a tool for care, participation and social change.

  Noble graduated with a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Visual Arts) from Adelaide College of the Arts / Flinders University in 2019 and has worked extensively across South Australia’s arts sector in workshop facilitation, arts administration, event coordination and access-focused programming. They have previously held studio spaces at Collective Haunt Inc., Carclew and Floating Goose Studios Inc.

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

Centre Stage Residency: Alby T Grace, MY CLIMATE IS CHAOS

Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

Showing and Q&A

When: Friday, November 20, 6-7pm

Where: The Breakout, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta

Cost: $10 (+ booking fee)

Note: Please arrive 15 minutes early to grab a drink. This event will be 1 hour (including a Q&A).

• Getting to the showing

  This showing and Q&A will be held in The Breakout. Please come to The Mill at 154 Angas Street, the bar will be open to grab a drink before we take you through to The Breakout.

  Please arrive 15 minutes early to get a drink.

  This event will be 1 hour (including the Q&A).

  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.

  The entrance into The Breakout is wheelchair accessible, with no internal steps.

  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.

  If you have questions or would like to talk to one of The Mill team contact info@themilladelaide.com

Please join us for a work in progress showing of MY CLIMATE IS CHAOS, written and performed by acclaimed, award-winning playwright Alby T Grace, and directed by Adelaide's beloved Eddie Morrison. 

Alby is a non-binary performer who begins to tell the story of their life - set to a pulsing synth score created by Tristan Louth-Robins - and as this confessional storytelling work unfolds, truth becomes insubstantial. Alby descends into a chaotic crisis of confidence. While attempting to combat climate change and ecological destruction, Alby fails to keep their huge ego out of the equation. A love-song to failure and activism - this work asks - how will you react to the end of all things - with defiance, or denial?

MY CLIMATE IS CHAOS is being developed as part of our Centre Stage Residency, in collaboration with Adelaide Fringe, and will be presented as part of our 2027 Adelaide Fringe program.

The showing will be followed by a short Q&A with Alby, hosted by The Mill CEO/Artistic Director Katrina Lazaroff. Audiences will have the opportunity to ask questions about the development and provide feedback about the performance.

About the artist:

• Alby T Grace

  Alby T Grace has been writing stories since he had a pen license. After graduating from an acting course in 2007, he founded a theatre company called Duende with other graduates, which went on to produce ten new Australian plays, many of them written by Alby. These include the acclaimed The Embryos, No Hello and Slicing and Dicing. In more recent years, he co-wrote the film Awoken with Daniel Phillips, and has written six plays commissioned by SAYARTS for young people. In 2023 he and some friends founded Zero Theatre Collective who regularly host reading nights and have developed the yet-unproduced Bois Ch@t in 2024. Proudly non binary, and a single dad, Alby’s work is funny, political, ecological and challenging. 

Photo: Courtesy of the artist

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This showing has support from