Adelaide Festival 2010 Artists' Week

More than thirty emerging South Australian artists were selected by the Adelaide Festival and the Helpmann Academy to take part in workshops with international artists during the Adelaide Festival 2010 Artists’ Week.

The program offered emerging artists an unprecedented opportunity to engage with outstanding international artists in a range of intensive workshops ranging from the hands-on to the theoretical. All the international artists’ work was being shown as part of the Adelaide Festival 2010’s renewed focus on the visual arts.

A group of five artists were chosen to work with the Tara Donovan Studio to help create a major installation exhibited at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art during the Festival’s Adelaide International 2010: Apart we are together.

A further eight emerging artists were selected for a series of workshops with international artist Jorge Orta, working with him directly in intimate, hands-on sessions. Titled Heart Fabrication, the workshops introduced key aspects of how to build community and relational aesthetics, in preparation for the Lucy + Jorge Orta exhibition at the JamFactory.

During the 2010 Adelaide Festival, Dutch-Australian media theorist, activist and critic Dr Geert Lovink delivered a keynote lecture during the Artists’ Week symposium. Dr Lovink also offered to work with eight emerging artists on a two-day intensive workshop exploring key themes from his work. Topics included the politics of the Internet, social networking platforms, online activism and modes of collaboration.

The Helpmann Academy also selected a group of six artists to take part in a workshop with international artists Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani, who shared their enigmatic work as part of the Festival’s Adelaide International 2010: Apart we are together. In exclusive workshop sessions, the artists shared insights about their collaborative practice and experience of exhibiting at an international level. They also facilitated the production of short films to be made by workshop participants.

Open to final-year students and artists within three years of graduation from a Helpmann Academy partner and all current JamFactory Associates, the Adelaide Festival partnership offered emerging South Australian artists the chance to enrich their work and by exposing them to different cultures and arts practices with established international artists, right here in Adelaide.

The workshop participants certainly did South Australia proud, as we received numerous comments from the international artists and curators about their dedication, energy and commitment to the processes they were all involved in.