Adelaide exhibition guide: June 2019

Ariel Hassan: Translation
GAGPROJECTS
Until 26th June

Ariel Hassan’s exhibition Translation is a series of drawings, sculptures, paintings and video work which explore the meaning and importance of art in our world, suggesting that perhaps the value is in the equality it provides in the viewing population. Hassan promotes the idea that art doesn’t care for personal views and opinions.

Translation includes works produced with broken, discarded and found materials, transformed into new structures, which symbolise the fluidity of what is original. Hassan questions what’s the point of it all and proposes that art is a poetic lament on reality. This is reflected in works such as the large installation Poem for Uselessness, which consists of 11 plywood panels adorned with phrases such as ‘identity without form’ and ‘to be of no use’.

Hassan explains: “From our fragmented reality, I keep striving to bring versions of this poetry into the world, creating translations, or transformations, that remain always imperfect and incomplete, but are done with as much fidelity as possible.”

Jason Cordero: The Expedition
BMG Art
21 June – 13 July

In his current work Jason Cordero reflects on the mythologising of the landscape, in particular the need to populate it with imaginary beings, events and symbolism in order to gain a greater understanding of our identity and culture. The idea that the landscape can be a means for imaginary expeditions in search of meaning and to create a sense of belonging is reflected in Cordero’s landscapes.

The Expedition includes works drawn from Cordero’s experiences and memories of mountainous regions in Australia both forested and arid. This includes local landscapes such as the Adelaide hills and the city parklands as well as those further afield.

Through his practice Cordero is exploring how we view the landscape. By bringing our own narrative to it, we can view the same environment differently. Cordero’s landscapes can be seen as a parallel universe that sits somewhere between the real and imaginary.

Kate Bohunnis: with each little death
FELTspace
Until 22nd June

With each little death continues Kate Bohunnis’s preoccupation with reworking and reappropriating materials to rewrite memories and form a new narrative. Much of Bohunnis’s practice focuses on the idea of recognising that the fractures of our lives can offer us strength and comfort. Although they may be born from misfortune, they remind us that everything can find a new shape. Through remembering, repeating and working through them we can find cathartic empowerment.

In this instance Bohunnis suggests that at some point we welcomed these fractures into our lives to provide safety, offer boundaries or assist in managing the construction of identity but it is important to know when to let them go, offering them a “little death”. She explains: “These are the last rites of some of my parts. I bring them out of my body and I thank them in their death.”

Head to our Adelaide Review Event Guide to find out what else is happening around the city