This year’s festival sees an incredible 10,915 artists participating and 697 exhibitions in 620 registered venues across Adelaide and regional SA.
SALA runs the full month of August 1st – 31st and is the world’s largest open access visual arts festival, celebrating South Australian artists’ creativity and vision through their artistic practice. Discover exhibitions in galleries cafes, along the city streets and laneways to our community spaces and creative hubs in the outer suburbs and regional areas. SALA highlights the state’s brilliant visual artists embracing all mediums from traditional artforms and ideas to more contemporary concepts that push the boundaries, constantly redefining what art is.
SALA acting CEO Bridget Alfred “South Australians live in an innately creative community, we have incredible artists around every corner and once again, in August SALA Festival throws open the studio doors, lights up the galleries and gets art into the most unlikely of places. Visual arts is for everyone and during SALA there are many ways to enjoy and celebrate our artists and tap into our own creativity, we invite everyone to download the program, tap into the SALA app or pick up a print copy and a SALA art bag at your local Foodland. “
Shop SALA, the new South Australian art sales platform, celebrates and supports South Australia’s living artists by offering a wide range of art mediums including painting, prints, sculpture, ceramics, glass and photography for all budgets and is a year-round offering. For the first time people will be able to scan a code next to a work on exhibit and be directed to Shop SALA to learn more about the artist and buy artwork easily from the website.
SALA is bringing back for the second year the SALA Hub at the Queen’s Theatre in the city, this iconic venue will host a range of events, including a Drawing Marathon led by Christopher Orchard, a five-day drawing intensive presented by SALA Festival, with the support of Adelaide Central School of Art, 7th -11th August. There are also workshops, including Painting: The Figure; Expressive Ink led by Kate Kurucz on 4th August, and on 5th August Portrait Drawing with Jasmine Crisp and a Jewellery workshop Lost Wax Carving with Olivia Kathigitis.
Don’t miss the chance to participate in one of the SALA Tours, hear from the expert tour guides as they walk you through a selection of exhibitions in the city of Adelaide, including the SALA Art Tour in Mandarin led by artist Shirley Wu and the Local and Contemporary Art Tour with Dr Melanie Cooper. Explore the city’s street art with Leah Grant and join Jenna Pippet and her Weimaraner Zelda as you meander the city streets on the Dog Friendly Art Tour. Tikari Rigney will also lead a tour of SALA exhibitions taking place in Tarntanya (Adelaide) featuring diverse work from First Nations artists.
This year SALA is introducing the Artist Studio Bus Tours with artist Oakey taking you behind the scenes at some of the city’s East Side studios, where you will hear from practicing artists and have the opportunity to explore their studios. Artist Ida Sophia will host the Westside Bus Tour, an exciting exploration of galleries and studios in Bowden and Hindmarsh. There are also regional self-guided tours in the Adelaide Hills, Encounter Bay, McLaren Vale and the Limestone Coast. Visit the SALA website or download the app for more details.
SALA’s famous Slide Night returns on 3rd August, a night of fun and frivolity, where you can hear from SA artists about their art, interests, or something else entirely. Far from your grandma’s slide night, this event is a fast-paced snapshot into what SA contemporary artists are thinking about.
SALA’s featured artist for 2023 is Helen Fuller. As SALA’s featured artist Helen’s work is on the cover of the 2023 SALA Festival program and poster and she has been commemorated in the official 2023 South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Publication, funded by Arts South Australia to be published by Wakefield Press and penned by Ross Wolfe, Sasha Grbich and Glenn Barkley.
Helen has had an extensive career and has established a multidisciplinary practice encompassing a rich variety of painting, sculpture, installation and in recent years ceramics. Driven by intuition and materiality, she approaches ceramics in a manner she likens to painting, concerned with the characteristics of form rather than the function of the vessel. Unfailingly experimental Helen describes her instinct as ‘off-road’.
Helen’s art is influenced by her travels in Australia, Europe, Asia, Scandinavia and the United Kingdom, but is also intensely personal to her own family history and life. In ‘Helen Fuller’ the first major publication devoted entirely to Helen’s work, the authors explore aspects of her fifty years of practice and a life of art.
SALA has become a key winter festival in SA celebrating the diverse and vibrant talent of artists in our state. Artists of all skill levels participate; from those just starting out, to more established artists with national and international reputations. Some of Australia’s most exciting and dynamic artists, both established and emerging, are represented in this year’s program including: Angela Valamanesh, Geoff Wilson, Tony Kearney, James Tylor, Laura Wills, Kaspar Schmidt Mumm, Vans the Omega, Gail Hocking, Ian Gibbins, Kate Kurucz, Crista Bradshaw, Michael Carney, Gemma Rose Brook, Ashlee Hopkins.
When planning your SALA diary for August make sure to download the free SALA app.
SALA Festival
1st – 31st Aug, 2023
