The Mill presents a much anticipated 10-day professional development project, Cinematic Experiments, in partnership with artist Margie Medlin and Mercury CX, funded by Arts SA.
In response to creatives pushing further into exploring digital spaces, this intensive workshop challenges 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 builds digital technologies skills for participating artists and ignites new ways of thinking and practicing.
The partnership between The Mill and Mercury CX reflects the labs interdisciplinary aspirations.
Images: Margie Medlin, dancer Vicki Van Hout, Cinematic Experiments 2019
Participants can expect:
The project, spans two weeks working with Margie Medlin as lead artist, a film/camera production person and editing teacher/facilitator. The process will combine;
Introduction to avant-garde cinema practices:
Exploring aesthetics of the cinematic frame e.g. on-screen and off screen, depth of field, focus
Practical sessions such as: working with the video camera (video or DSLR camera), light for the camera - practical lighting movement in the void (black box studio, cameras, tripods, lights, sound), video editing (introduction of premiere pro-editing software), layering testing ideas and exploring the potential of projection
Participants will work in small groups to create, share, and discuss cinematic experiments at The Mill’s studios and Mercury CX editing suites.
When: May 10 - May 21, 2021, 9.30am - 5.30pm (Monday to Friday) Artist Fee: $2000 + $200 super contribution (artists paid for this workshop)
Applications open: February 24 Applications close: March 18, 12am midnight Applicants notified: March 31
The Mill Breakout Space is a versatile black box theatre. Expect everything from theatre to circus, comedy, live music and more.
This year, we will be playing host to 90+ Adelaide Fringe shows from across Australia, the UK, and Europe. Take a look through our program list below or browse our shows via Adelaide Fringe
The Mill is an accessible space. Disability access is available via Angas St, and a disability toilet is also available. If you have any questions or additional accessibility requirements, please contact us at info@themilladelaide.com
The over-produced drama and the production values of reality TV and movies sure have a lot to answer for.
Meet Carla; 34, single, Virgo, outgoing, straight forward, Cabaret Artist and she's looking for love... still. From first love to happy ever after, every relationship seems to have 'a catch'! Sometimes the road to love is definitely not what you expect and a bit longer. Ok, a lot longer.
If you've ever been in love, out of love, looking for love, or happily ever single - this cabaret show is for you.
Winner of Best Cabaret Weekly Award, Adelaide Fringe 2020.
Heroes never die...they just cry deep down inside.
Sam Dugmore (The Latebloomers Scotland! & The Bakers) is back as one of the greatest action heroes of all time, MAN-BO.
MAN-BO must un-earth his ruthless man skills to confront his greatest nemesis...himself. A deadly mission filled with calamity and raw emotion. One-man vs himself. A feel-bad comedy about heroism.
Three bakers, one bakery! Dough up the walls, flour in your eyes. Join The Latebloomers, award winning creators of 'Scotland!', for another dose of the ridiculous and the sublime.
Winner Best Comedy weekly award Adelaide Fringe 2019.
The newly formulated one man solo project of South Australian musician, Hunter Rogers, embarks on a narrative and auditory spectrum of song and journey. Drawing elements from multiple flavours of music performance from Rock to Baroque Pop; Synthwave to Music Theatre; Industrial to Prog. This showcase of work will be a crack in the ice.
Do you suffer from an ache that ails you or a maddening malady? Do you feel like a chunk of rotting butcher's meat that's been ripped apart in the sweltering heat of the day by hungry dogs?
Then look no further than the miracle cure we have for you. Two brothers performing sketch comedy: it will make you laugh, make you cry, put a pep in your step and some fuel in your mule.
Dad used to say, "anything worth having comes at a price". Are you willing to pay what it takes for 'Success'?
Success is not always a direct path, not everything works out like we planned. Maybe, we think we are just not good enough. Overcoming self-doubt and fighting those destructive thoughts may be the biggest battles we experience.
The Baroque is running free in hedge mazes and dancing in champagne fountains. Bursting with silliness, Swedish clown Oliver Nilsson ('The Latebloomers' 'Scotland!' & 'The Bakers') will charm and titillate in this rollercoaster of stupidity, slapstick and the sublime. Curtains draw! Lights up! BEHOLD! This is The Baroque!
Directed by Britt Plummer ('Chameleon' by FRANK. Theatre).
Johnnie and Janine Smithergreen (Stuart Day & Dianne Reid) are a middle-aged brother-sister singing act (not so) fresh from the sixties and seventies. They revisit a selection of groovy girl-boy duets that outdo the Osmonds, crush the Carpenters and reconcile Sonny and Cher. Delivered with their own unique mix of wholesome positivity and ageing hippy sarcasm, they will blow your idea of political correctness to Smithergreens!
She's been in the same room for a while now, and things are starting to get weird. Out of a smokescreen of dirty laundry and shaggy dogs, a mysterious voice challenges her to cut the bull. But can she work out how?
Does unravelling the truth mean unravelling herself in the process? If the foundation of sanity is knowing fact from fiction, was it the outside world or her own brain that first started feeling a bit shaky? When the hell is the sun going to come up?
A mind-bending and jaw-dropping journey through the human psyche. The demonstrations within 'Confessions' will look like genuine psychic ability. But they are not. And Tom is honest about that. The show will provide a glimpse into how it works and why so many people want to believe it's real.
Join Rebel Lyons in her Adelaide Fringe debut as she muses on Matrimony, Monogamy and Masturbation. A Hen's Night party for those who aren't sure if they're ready to commit to an eternity of mediocre sex. This hysterical ride will leave you questioning the romanticism of romance and the absurdity of bridal culture in the present day.
A poignant yet funny play with original songs. The story spans 3 generations of women and begins in Northern England in 1965. Jennifer follows her sisters to Australia leaving her mother Dotty with an empty nest. Weaving in and out of time, Jennifer says the last goodbye to her own daughter many years later.
Christine Firkin wrote the book from snippets of family history. Her single woman show premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017. Audiences loved it for its strong writing and nuanced performances.
Where: The Mill Exhibition Space, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta
Cost:Free
Disability access is available via our Angas St entrance, access the pedestrian ramp on the corner of Gunson St. The Mill has concrete flooring throughout and a disability toilet. View more in-depth information on our accessibilitypage.
Join us for the launch of Hussain’s exhibition In search of a good laugh, the outcome of work produced during his sponsored studio residency at The Mill. In Search of a good laugh opens alongside The Many Faces of Frances on Friday, November 26. Hussain will also present an artist talk in conversation with The Mill’s Visual Arts Curator Adele Sliuzas in November.
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.
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.
In constant flirting with meaning and medium; Saudi visual artist Hussain Alismail focuses on the pleated part of Saudi society in his work. Coming from the marginal community of Shia in the Eastern providence, he was constrained to examining a rich perspective of social interactions and discourses. Alismail draws inspiration from direct/indirect communications, experiences and history to tell stories about our culture.
He holds BFA in drawing & painting from OCAD U with an emphasis on illustration and social science. He is currently in the final year of visual effects and entertainment design studies (VEED) at Flinders University. Alismail exhibits both nationally and internationally, most recently presenting work in his third solo show Frilly at Argo on the parade in Adelaide. In 2020, he was one of the recipients of Maan grant from Athr gallery and one of the participants of the inaugural Albalad residency by Saudi Arabia Ministry of Culture. He was awarded in many competitions including Alkassbi International Award II (2015) and MCY by Edge of Arabia (2011).
Where: The Mill Breakout Space, 154 Angas St (enter via Gunson St), Kaurna Yerta
Price: $25 + booking fee
The Mill is an accessible space. Disability access is available via Angas St, and a disability toilet is also available. If you have any questions or additional accessibility requirements, please contact us at info@themilladelaide.com
The Baroque is running free in hedge mazes and dancing in champagne fountains. Bursting with silliness, Swedish clown Oliver Nilsson (The Latebloomers, Scotland! and The Bakers) will charm and titillate in this rollercoaster of stupidity, slapstick and the sublime. Curtains draw! Lights up! BEHOLD! This is The Baroque!
Directed by Britt Plummer (Chameleon by FRANK. Theatre), The Mill and Adelaide Fringe 'Centre Stage Residency' Recipient 2020.
Have you ever wondered what the future might look like? Feel like? Taste like?
Eating Tomorrow is a back-to-the-future time travel experiment, immersing audiences in prospective scenarios of what our food systems, customs and behaviours might become in the next fifty years.
In Post Dining's most daring and exciting immersive food experience yet, come and be enveloped into a journey of the senses. With support from the Department of the Premier and Cabinet through Arts South Australia and Adelaide Fringe.
When: Thursday April 22 to Saturday 24, 7:00pm Where: Space Theatre at Adelaide Festival Centre, King William St, Kaurna Yerta Duration: 1 hour
We're absolutely thrilled to announce tickets are on sale for The Move, a curated initiative of Dance Hub SA, The Mill and Ausdance SA, presented by Adelaide Festival Centre.
In April 2021, commissioned choreographers Gabrielle Nankivell and Lewis Major will unveil their world premiere works in an enthralling dance double bill, ranging from the innovative wit of Nankivell's Wonder Grit through to the visceral intensity of Major's Satori.
This exhibition celebrates 10 years of collaboration between renowned photographer Chris Herzfeld and dancer Erin Fowler. Creative collaborations such as these are immensely valuable to artists practice, and Chris and Erin have shown how strong creative relationship can grow and develop over time. Both have spent the past 10 years becoming attuned to each other’s practice, and are able to work intuitively as well as push each other to grow. In this series of portraits we see Erin’s incredible skill as a dancer and model showcased by Chris’ photography. Both have also made significant contributions to The Mill, Erin as Co-Founder and Chris as a long term supporter and contributor to our programming. Through this series of images we celebrate their collaboration, and also thank them for their continued contribution to the Adelaide creative sector!
CHRIS : I’ve been really fortunate over the last 17 years to have collaborated with some fantastic dancers and artists on some really special projects. But it’s always super special when you reach a big milestone as I have done in 2020 with Erin Fowler. 10 years ago we started helping each other out on projects and over the years our relationship has morphed into fully collaborating in setting up and executing projects together.
Ok, maybe there been a few cakes eaten along the way as well to satisfy the 3pm sugar craving but it’s been an incredible, thoroughly rewarding & enjoyable journey working with Erin over the last 10 years. We’ve created a diverse range of projects over that time with memorable outcomes. A massive thanks to Erin, Kyra and all of those we’ve dragged into our vortex over the years.
ERIN : Chris, Kyra and I have been working together on dance photography collaborations since 2010. Together we have developed an attuned and creative approach to creating shots. Both Chris and I enjoy working relatively quickly and intuitively and I think that this approach results in very alive and energised shots.
At the beginning of 2020 Chris, Kyra and I decided that we would create 10 new projects for our 10th year of working together. These projects range from dance to fashion, as promotional shoots for dance projects and lots in between. We’ve shot in the studio & on location, here in South Australia and around the world. This exhibition is a small sample of the 20+ collections we have created together.
Established in 2003 by Chris Herzfeld, Camlight Productions is a unique business that provides photography, cinematography and lighting services. Chris works extensively in the arts and in particular throughout the Australian dance industry as a photographer & a cinematographer.
Chris’s images are a fusion of fashion and dance. Drawing on the distinctive range of movement and shapes of dance in combination with the more traditional modelling poses, the image embodies a sense of drama, poise and style. This unique style creates images that have a sense of narrative within them. Chris likes to leave it to the viewer to use their imagination to create that story. In a world where digital manipulation and compositing are commonplace in photography Chris's approach is more classical, with an emphasis on lighting, colours and composition with the look of minimal post production processing. His images take on a 3D appearance so the viewer feels as if they are present in the location watching the action happen before their eyes.
Erin Fowler is an Australian artist working across the dance, theatre, music and film industries. She creates and presents deeply feminine, audience driven, socially minded work. Erin is a multi-faceted performer that blends together an eclectic mix of contemporary dance, theatre, music, clowning and martial arts. Erin’s choreographic credits includes FEMME, (2019 Adelaide Fringe - Best Dance Award. 2020 Adelaide Fringe – Made in Adelaide award), and toured to Reykjavik, Edinburgh & Stockholm. Other works include Gen- y (2018) commissioned for the Adelaide Dance Festival; Epoch (2016) created on Australian Dance Theatre for their Ignition season; and the dance film, Gaia (2014), which has currently screened in over 23 international film festivals.
Erin is a qualified Qoya teacher (a holistic movement practice for women) as well as a facilitator of women’s circles and women’s embodiment practices. Through her new NFO company The Gaia Movement, she is currently working with a number of international schools and partner organisations to develop a school education program and community engagement strategy bason on Gaia.
Venue: The Mill Breakout, The Mill 154 Angas Street, Adelaide
Cost: $23
The Mill is an accessible space. Disability access is available via Angas St, and a disability toilet is also available. If you have any questions or additional accessibility requirements, please contact us at info@themilladelaide.com
The Mill in partnership with Adelaide Fringe present a masterclass with performers The Latebloomers.
The Latebloomers are an international company of performers who met at the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School in Paris.
About the Masterclass:
This masterclass caters for either professional performers wanting to learn new skills for their repertoire or brush up on the art of 'play' or beginners/amateurs wanting to have some fun, build confidence and discover new skills. A brief introduction to clown including a Lecoq style physical warm-up with improv games, characterisation, improvisation and slapstick.
The Latebloomers are an international company of performers who met at the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School in Paris. Their work draws on training in physical theatre, clown and mime. Their first show 'Scotland!' has toured to multiple countries in Europe and Australia, winning awards at the Adelaide, Prague and Paris Fringe festivals.
Opening event: Friday, January 22, 5:30pm to 7:30pm
The Mill Showcase is a gallery spacededicated to artists who work in our studio spaces at our Angas Street location, exhibiting some of the artworks and products that have been produced under our roof. The Mill Showcase profiles our artists, so that you can put a face to the name and get to know some of our dedicated makers.
This fourth edition of The Mill Showcase features work by Kirsty Martinsen, Steel Chronis and Evie Hassiotis.
About the artists:
Steel Chronisis an emerging artist, working and living on Kaurna land, who works across various media in their practice. Their work typically focuses on the mundane and macabre with consideration of the fleeting nature of time. Their work is often a preservation of structures, subjects and moments, highlighting the beauty of the ordinary. Steel has had a studio at The Mill since 2020.
These works are a segment of my investigation into various types of inks and application styles of the medium. The parameters of this exercise were to work with a brush, gesturally and within the compositional limitations of a landscape orientation. The works presented utilise Indian Ink, an ink that can be applied in an diverse manner - either thinned out, layered or painted thickly to achieve a dramatic black. What makes this ink unique is that it is made with a shellac gum binder, giving the ink a unique brilliance and a high level of water resistance.
Evie Hassiotisis an Adelaide based artist who works intuitively with textures and mixed media, photography and improvised dance. Evie believes in the potential of art to emotionally heal the human soul and to promote spiritual growth in the art practitioner and in the viewer. Improvised movement together with her art practice have been an avenue to express spirituality, creativity and art as a healing practice. Evie has had a studio at The Mill since 2019.
These prints were nearly all created in 2020 during the social and physical restrictions enacted in response to Coronavirus. This series reflect on the metaphorical masks most of us wear every day, masks we wear to cover our true selves, whatever our reasons. These works offer an observation of human behaviour and what people choose to reveal and not to reveal to others and themselves.
Kirsty Martinsen’s practice is predominantly drawing and painting, and recently as a Writer/Director of the short documentary, Limited Surrender, with SBS and SA Film Corporation. She has a BA Visual Art from SA School of Art (UniSA) and Dip. Painting from New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, has exhibited in USA, Australia and Amsterdam. Kirsty Martinsen has had a studio at The Mill since 2014.
In the middle of a pandemic I had moved into an apartment on the 11th floor, looking West. During this period of self-isolation, I began doing a daily pastel drawing of the setting sun. Every day the sky is different, sometimes the sun pops out from behind the cloud and looks like it is being born. Seeing the sunsets grouped together you can trace changes in season, and my thinking about light.
Where: The Mill Breakout Space, 154 Angas Street, (enter via Gunson Street)
Duration: 1 hour (including Q+A)
Cost: Free
Unravel is a first stage development of multi-disciplinary work exploring identity and connection to place that is enabled through embodied movement and text.
This project builds upon a collaboration between dance practitioner Adrianne Semmens and writer Jennifer Eadie and the publication created together, Unravel, facilitated by The Mill’s Writer in Residence program, and commissioned by Delving into Dance in partnership with Critical Path as part of the 2019/20 Digital Interchange Festival.
The project explores what it means to acknowledge a sense of disconnection-connection to place, exploring through memories, agitations and the calling for deeper connections to ancestral country.
About the artists:
Adrianne Semmens is a dance practitioner with experience working across the arts, education and community sectors. Adrianne is a descendant of the Barkindji People of NSW and a graduate of NAISDA Dance College and Adelaide College of the Arts.
Identity and place continue to be reoccurring themes within Adrianne’s practice, investigated throughout her own choreographic explorations and community based projects to embody place and memory, and interrogate social constructs.
Choreographic highlights include Thread (2020), created for The World’s Smallest Stage, in collaboration with Australian Dance Theatre, and engagement in Dance Epidemic (2018), creating a site specific work on a group of international youth dancers as part Creative Gatherings for Panpapanalya, Joint Dance Congress.
Adrianne’s professional experience also includes her role as a Dance Presenter for The Australian Ballet’s Dance Education Ensemble, as a performer for Gina Rings, Jo Clancy, Jade Erlandsen, Cathy Adamek and recent performances for Dance Rites, choreographed by Kaine Sultan-Babij. Passionate about dance education and the role of dance in maintaining wellbeing, Adrianne has worked on many youth focused initiatives, including projects for Kurruru Arts and Culture Hub, Carclew, University of South Australia, Department for Education and Ausdance SA.
Jennifer Eadie is a writer and artist living and working on Kaurna Yerta in South Australia. She is a graduate of UNSW Art & Design. Currently, an academic at UniSA and PhD candidate in the Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders University. Her creative practice is primarily text and installation based: combining word, image, video, and found objects.
Her writing and art has been published in CORDITE Poetry Review, criticalpath, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Borderlands e-journal, Extempore and Frankie Magazine.
Cost: $20 + booking fee (attend both for $30 + booking fee using discount code)
The Mill is an accessible space. Disability access is available via Angas St, and a disability toilet is also available. If you have any questions or additional accessibility requirements, please contact us at info@themilladelaide.com
Presented by The Mill and Jess Martin, this two part workshop series will guide participants through the essential skills of writing engaging and generous arts criticism, including how to develop a critical voice and start getting published as a reviewer.
About the workshops:
Workshop One, January 22: Pitching and Structure for Arts Reviews
This workshop will cover the ins and outs of choosing what to write about and pitching to publications. We will also get into how to structure a review to achieve clarity, word length, and the expectations of publishers. Workshop One will deliver local industry knowledge for getting published as well as the key skills to get started as a reviewer.
Workshop Two, January 23: Writing Approaches and the Ethics of Arts Criticism
Workshop Two is all about the skills to make your writing stand out and develop toward a career as a generous and engaging arts critic. This workshop will also discuss how to make responsible choices in writing positive and negative reviews, and how to find bold and interesting angles to write from. We’ll get into the nitty gritty of writing techniques, how to frame feedback for performers, as well as how to get readers’ attention and keep them on the hook for your whole review.
Jess Martin is a freelance writer and interdisciplinary artist based on Kaurna land in Adelaide. They have extensive experience as an arts critic, published in The Adelaide Review, Witness Performance, and Fest Magazine among others. Jess is interested in experimental performance, sharing experiences of queerness and disability, and making work in regional contexts. They also have experience facilitating creative projects and workshops as a poet, performer and textile artist. Jess is currently Writer in Residence at The Mill, and was programmed in National Young Writers’ Festival 2020.
Artist talk and Fringissage: Sunday, February 21, 1pm-3pm
The Mill’s 2021 Exhibition Space program opens 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. Following her compulsion to obsessively collect, she uses discarded domestic objects and ephemeral natural objects as sites for material investigation. The objects of her collections are often found while walking through public space and parklands, then taken back to the studio to be reimagined, investigated, and imbued with memories. Carolyn’s process speaks to the affinity that she holds with her collection, as material objects but also repositories of identity and memory, ‘I respond to the call of things’ she says.
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.
Carolyn Corletto is an emerging multidisciplinary artist working in the fields of painting, sculpture, textiles, ceramics and assemblage. Using found materials, paint, clay, thread and words she contemplates and prospects the materiality of discarded domestic objects and ephemoral natural objects as repositories of identity and memory. Since graduating with Honours from Adelaide Central School of Art she has been actively exhibiting both in South Australia and interstate including being selected by Guildhouse to exhibit her Honours work in a solo show.
The last 3 years have been highly productive for Corletto. She was a finalist in the Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, the Broken Hill Outback Art Prize and the Parklands Art Prize and was awarded the Wilson Wine Label Commission through the Helpmann Academy. This year she was a finalist in both the Don Dunstan Award and the Adelaide City Incubator Award during the 2020 SALA Festival. Corletto is currently working out of Collective Haunt Studios and has recently been awarded a Diderot Scholarship towards a residency in France that will be taken up after the lifting of travel restrictions.
Unravel is a first stage development of multi-disciplinary work exploring identity and connection to place that is enabled through embodied movement and text.
This project builds upon a collaboration between dance practitioner Adrianne Semmens and writer Jennifer Eadie and the publication created together, Unravel, facilitated by The Mill’s Writer in Residence program, and commissioned by Delving into Dance in partnership with Critical Path as part of the 2019/20 Digital Interchange Festival.
The project explores what it means to acknowledge a sense of disconnection-connection to place, exploring through memories, agitations and the calling for deeper connections to ancestral country.
About the artists:
Adrianne Semmens is a dance practitioner with experience working across the arts, education and community sectors. Adrianne is a descendant of the Barkindji People of NSW and a graduate of NAISDA Dance College and Adelaide College of the Arts.
Identity and place continue to be reoccurring themes within Adrianne’s practice, investigated throughout her own choreographic explorations and community based projects to embody place and memory, and interrogate social constructs.
Choreographic highlights include Thread (2020), created for The World’s Smallest Stage, in collaboration with Australian Dance Theatre, and engagement in Dance Epidemic (2018), creating a site specific work on a group of international youth dancers as part Creative Gatherings for Panpapanalya, Joint Dance Congress.
Adrianne’s professional experience also includes her role as a Dance Presenter for The Australian Ballet’s Dance Education Ensemble, as a performer for Gina Rings, Jo Clancy, Jade Erlandsen, Cathy Adamek and recent performances for Dance Rites, choreographed by Kaine Sultan-Babij. Passionate about dance education and the role of dance in maintaining wellbeing, Adrianne has worked on many youth focused initiatives, including projects for Kurruru Arts and Culture Hub, Carclew, University of South Australia, Department for Education and Ausdance SA.
Jennifer Eadie is a writer and artist living and working on Kaurna Yerta in South Australia. She is a graduate of UNSW Art & Design. Currently, an academic at UniSA and PhD candidate in the Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders University. Her creative practice is primarily text and installation based: combining word, image, video, and found objects.
Her writing and art has been published in CORDITE Poetry Review, criticalpath, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Borderlands e-journal, Extempore and Frankie Magazine.
Her artwork was included in the third Mill Showcase.
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 & 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.
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.
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. 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.
Danny Jarratt (b. 1990 Kaurna Land, Adelaide) is an emerging queer digital artist exploring installation art. His work reflects a keen interest in the intersection of pop culture, queer theory and resistance. His installations function as micro-utopias and queer counterpublics which allow people to escape the imposing day to day ideologies and expectations, with fun and convenient methods, such as videogame design. He graduated at the University of South Australia with Bachelor of Art & Design (Honours) and recently finished a residency with George Street Studios. Jarratt’s emerging practice has exhibited locally at FELTspace, MOD., Praxis Artspace, Fontanelle Gallery and The Adelaide Festival Theatre Media Screens. He recently undertook his first interstate solo exhibition Neo Glitch City at Seventh Gallery and has international features in group exhibitions at MOM-us Experimental Center for the Arts in Greece, Dovetail Gallery in North England and was a finalist in the STARVD art prize in Singapore.
Opening event: Friday, October 30, 5:30pm to 7:30pm
Where: The Mill Showcase, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta
Cost: Free
The Mill Showcase is a gallery spacededicated to artists who work in our studio spaces at our Angas Street location, exhibiting some of the artworks and products that have been produced under our roof. The Mill Showcase profiles our artists, so that you can put a face to the name and get to know some of our dedicated makers.
This third edition of The Mill Showcase features work by Jennifer Eadie, Amber Cronin and Robyn Wood.
About the artists:
Jennifer Eadie is a writer and artist, living and working on Kaurna Yerta in South Australia. She is academic in the Aboriginal Pathway Program at UniSA, a doctoral candidate at Flinders University and a graduate of UNSW Art & Design. Her creative practice is text and installation based; exploring themes such as censorship and connection to place, while her research focuses on ecological rights and approaches to caring for Country. This work is a response to the censorship carried out by institutions to justify colonialization. The censor exploits language such as ‘development’ and ‘modernization’ - which characterizes and objectifies Country as a resource / property - as opposed to a sentient living being, of which we are a part.
Jennifer is The Mill’s Writer in Residence 2019 and current Scotch College Writer in Residence
Amber Cronin is an emerging cross-disciplinary artist living and working on Kaurna Land. A recent graduate, her visual arts research is rooted in performative and sculptural gestures that engage the audience through the connection of memory, time and space. Amber is also the co-founder and previous co-director of The Mill Adelaide
My work is developed through a vocabulary of processes, forms emerge that reframe everyday actions as sites of ritual activity. Utilising elements of ceramics, textiles, performance, moulding and casting, my studio experiments are gathered and displayed in combinations that facilitate meditations on connection and discovery.
Amber is a Co-Founder and previous Director of The Mill, and continues to work from our studios
Robyn Wood is an Adelaide based designer and maker. Creating furniture, objects and lighting, she works with her clients on custom and small production pieces. Her work is informed by artisan approach, traditional joinery and current manufacturing techniques. She has a Bachelor of Design-Interior Design from the University of South Australia.
Maintaining a connection to nature is an important theme in my designing. Simple sculptural forms; Lines gently curved; The touch and feel of warmer materials; These are things I am drawn to. I aim to connect the end user to nature and to bring warmth and character into the spaces they inhabit.
Image: Zoe Freney, Postcard from Close to Home #3, 2020, pen on paper postcard, 152 x 132mm (Photographer: Chloe Metcalfe)
Postcards from Motherhood Public Program
Postcards from Motherhood is a group exhibition and community engagement project curated by multidisciplinary artist Tanya Voges. The exhibition features work by artists who are also mothers Bridget Currie, Zoe Freney, Rochelle Haley, Alana Hunt, Tania Mason and Tanya Voges. Postcards from Motherhood will be accompanied by a series of public programs which allow parents to participate as part of a rigorous arts community. All welcome!
Due to COVID-19 restrictions numbers are limited in our space. Please read carefully as some events are ticketed!
Tuesday 6 October:
Opening day & Tanya Voges ‘Performance for the Gallery’
When: Wednesday, October 14, and Thursday, October 15 10am–4pm
Venue: The Mill Breakout Space, 154 Angas Street, Adelaide (enter via Gunson St)
Cost: $60 + booking fee
City Mobilities is a two-day intensive exploring ideas about the way we access and move in public spaces, supported by City of Adelaide. The workshop is open to artists and non- artists interested in gaining new skills and knowledge in site-based art projects. Over the two days, participants will work with the lead artists Tom Borgas (The Mill resident artist) and Paul Gazzola (OSCA Artistic Director) to explore how we can rethink and reconfigure the city’s infrastructure into other forms and functionalities.
What participants can expect:
The workshop will explore a variety of visual, design and performance making methods to highlight, question and renegotiate the importance of individual participation in public space. Participants will be invited to research various city sites and public spaces and develop a series of conceptual and physical responses in a collaborative studio-based set up.
The masterclass will:
Offer participants a fertile space to share, learn, create and exchange ideas, skills and processes
Open up new ways of thinking, doing and making in a collaborative and collegial gathering
Stimulate and support the skills development of local SA artists seeking new approaches to working within the public domain
What to wear: Participants are requested to dress adequately and bring a hat for the sun as we will be working outside at times
What materials to bring:
Participants need to bring a sketch pad and pencil/pen
All other materials will be supplied
The City Mobilities masterclass is a precursor to the development of a longer collaborative public art project planned for 2021/22 and is the second outcome of an ongoing partnership between The Mill and OSCA.
About the masterclass leaders:
Tom Borgas is an Adelaide-based visual artist working from a sculptural foundation across multiple platforms including gallery and project work, public sculpture, festival interventions, performance and education. His research finds its inspiration in the blurry spaces between image and object, virtual and physical, maker and viewer. Borgas’ work has been shown at galleries and venues across Australia. His practice continues to expand through commissioning agents including UAP, Stockroom and MARS gallery Melbourne, the City of Adelaide and the Adelaide Festival Centre. His practice has also been supported through organisations that include the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts South Australia, NAVA, Guildhouse and The Helpmann Academy. madebytomborgas.com
Paul Gazzola is an artist and curator working in the expanded field of participatory art practice, contemporary performance, sculpture, scenography and video. Over the last 25 years he has generated an innovative array of projects that explore the relationship between the body, site and the built environment. These works for stages, galleries, museums, site-specific settings and print have been commissioned and presented in Australia and internationally. He is also the Artistic Director of OSCA – Open Space Contemporary Arts. www.paulgazzola.org
Image: Zoe Freney, Postcard from Close to Home #3, 2020, pen on paper postcard, 152 x 132mm (Photographer: Chloe Metcalfe)
October 6 – 30, 2020
Opening event: Friday, October 6, 2020, 5:30-7:30pm
Where: The Mill Exhibition Space, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta
Cost: Free
Postcards from Motherhood is a group exhibition and community engagement project curated by multidisciplinary artist Tanya Voges. The exhibition features work by artists who are also mothers: Bridget Currie, Zoe Freney, Rochelle Haley, Alana Hunt, Tania Mason and Tanya Voges.
Postcards from Motherhood centres Mother Artists who continue to practice in the arts alongside their commitments to their families. The exhibition responds to the idea of sending a postcard from within the time and space of motherhood. Presenting paintings, drawings, textile works, photographic, film, performance and community contributions of postcards-as-artwork. Sent from around the world, these postcards connect local audiences to a community of mothers working across the globe. Postcards from Motherhood will be accompanied by a series of public programs which allow parents to participate as part of a rigorous arts community.
This project is presented as part of The Mill’s new program CaM-Res (Curatorial and Mentorship Residency) presented in partnership with City of Adelaide. In August Tanya Voges began a twelve week studio residency at The Mill, during which she has been developing this exhibition, collaborating with The Mill Studio resident Louise Flaherty and undertaking mentorship with The Mill’s staff. Tanya is stepping into a curatorial role for the first time, in an act that she refers to as ‘choreographing an exhibition’.
A postcard is sent from a place you visit, not the place you normally inhabit.
For this exhibition I’ve invited mothers who are practicing artists throughout the early years of motherhood to create work about the process and time of life we are in. The resulting works across a broad spectrum of mediums are influenced by inhabiting motherhood, yet not prescriptively about the act of mothering. This exhibition embraces the connections that these artists have to their families and because of that focus on creating life, respects that there is multiplicity at play in their practice.
Through curating this exhibition I aim to create an exemplary process practice modelled on the movement for Mother Artists that is taking place throughout the world. The model of an Artist Residency in Motherhood that Lenka Clayton detailed as an open source model has given me an anchor to my changing practice at a time where my life is in flux. Developing a supported studio practice with integrated childcare and arts spaces that welcome children has become part of my process as I recognise the need for my community, inspired by the Mother House model in London. My focus is on caring for more than just my own wellbeing, and the importance I feel to be an example for the next generation, so that we can stay engaged in meaningful work and connected to a broad community, while being a mother.
Mothers should be supported. There is a profound need in society of understanding what motherhood means, the invisible unpaid labour of caring for a child and raise him or her into an adult in this society should be evaluated and recognised and not ignored…Starting from this awareness then we can try to create more infrastructures that facilitate a woman in pursuing her career while nurturing her practice as a mother.– Dyana Gravina (Procreate and Mother House)
Tanya Voges is The Mill’s inaugural CaM-Res artist. She has begun a twelve week studio residency at The Mill as part of a new program, CaM-Res (Curatorial and Mentorship Residency), presented in partnership with City of Adelaide.
Call for Contributions
In the lead up to the exhibition Tanya invites mothers to contribute postcard sized works. Imagined as a way of capturing a moment from the time and place of motherhood, send us a postcard that speaks to some aspect of your experience of being a parent. Use an existing postcard and modify it, use either side of the paper, or create something out of other materials that is 4”x6”/A6. This modest size has been selected as it is manageable, small and fits between all of your other commitments.
Please send postcards to: ATTN Tanya Voges C/o The Mill, 154 Angas Street, Kaurna Yarta Adelaide 5000
When: Friday, September 25, 2020, 5:20pm for a 5:30pm start
Where: The Mill Exhibition Space, 154 Angas St
Cost: Free
COVID-19 Note:Our capacity for this event is 25. Doors will close at 5:30pm, please arrive early for contact tracing and to get a seat. All attendees are required to know our hygiene policy before attending.
The Mill invites you to hear from ceramicist Frances Rogers in conversation with The Mill's Visual Arts Curator Adele Sliuzas. Frances will be speaking about her exhibition Future Fossils, currently showing at The Mill.
About the exhibition:
Future Fossils is a new solo exhibition by ceramicist Frances Rogers. Within this body of work Frances explores a sensory connection to earth, asking the audience to consider the materiality of clay through sound and touch, as well as the formal qualities produced through sculptural shapes.
Exhibition Details
Frances Rogers Future Fossils September 4 - 25 EXTENDED- now open Saturday 26th 10am-1pm and Sunday 27th 11am-3pm
Showing alongside Evie Hassiotis, Xenitia August 3 - September 25
EXTENDED- now open Saturday 26th 10am-1pm and Sunday 27th 11am-3pm The Mill, 154 Angas Street, Adelaide 5000
Where: The Mill's Exhibition Space, 154 Angas Street, Adelaide
Cost: $15, including a glass of wine (or softie)
What to bring: your favourite pen and notebook, or whatever you like to write with
Join The Mill's Writer in Residence Jess Martin for a poetry workshop in The Mill's Exhibition Space.
Presented by The Mill as part of the Writer in Residence program, participants will be guided through experimental ways to start creating poetry and express themselves authentically through text.
This two hour poetry workshop is for all levels, from the absolute beginner to confident poets looking for new creative tools. The workshop will lead participants through a variety of approaches to start writing poetry and understand what poetry is all about.
Jess will introduce participants to established poetic forms and branch out to explore the weird experimental possibilities that poetry provides.
Hosted in The Mill’s gallery space, we will have the opportunity to respond poetically to the September exhibition Frances Rogers, Future Fossils. This workshop is designed to be accessible to people from all creative backgrounds, for writers and non-writers wanting to explore poetic techniques to kick start the creative process.
