Media Release

For immediate release, Wednesday 31 October 2018

Leading Australian artist Sally Smart to present world premiere of installation The Violet Ballet at Festival 2019

Adelaide contemporary art gallery ACE Open will premiere leading Australian artist Sally Smart’s installation, The Violet Ballet, as part of the 2019 Adelaide Festival from 2 March – 27 April, 2019.

Widely known for her large-scale assemblage installations, South Australian-born Smart has amassed a significant international career over more than three decades. Her accolades include major exhibitions in New York, Singapore, Jakarta and across Australia, as well as a 2017 collaboration with luxury Italian fashion house, Marni.

The Violet Ballet continues Smart’s investigation into avant-garde dance company the Ballets Russes, and their experimental choreography, costume and theatre design. In an immersive and layered installation constructed from textile curtains, costumes, projection, puppetry, shadowplay and dance-on- film, Smart re-imagines one of the Ballet’s most macabre and visually complex works, Chout (Tale of the Buffoon). Through her research and the resulting installation, the artist draws parallels to the Indonesian Wayang character Punokawan (the clown), to examine ideas of identity politics, cultural hybridity, the historical and contemporary avant-gardes entwined legacies of colonialsm and orientalism.

As part of the re-staging of Chout in the film component of the work, Smart has collaborated with the writer Maria Tumarkin to create spoken and sung word, with operatic vocals performed by Billie Tumarkin, along with choreography and performance by dancer Brooke Stamp. Billie Tumarkin and Brooke Stamp will also perform live as part of the exhibition’s free opening celebration on Saturday 2 March from 5pm.

“This experiential installation is both highly sensual and keenly political. The curtain devices function as both a conceptual framework and as practical assemblage: hanging, dividing and revealing to articulate ideas as well as delineate space,” said Sally Smart.

The inclusion of The Violet Ballet in the Adelaide Festival follows ACE Open’s landmark presentation, Waqt al-tagheer: Time of change by Muslim-Australian collective eleven at the 2018 event.

“Sally Smart, who was born here in , is one of the country’s most acclaimed contemporary artists. ACE Open is delighted to be presenting her rich and multi-faceted work as part of Australia’s leading multi-arts festival” said Liz Nowell, CEO, ACE Open. “With a deep connection to dance, performance, puppetry and costume traditions, Sally’s iconic work is a perfect fit for Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy’s 2019 program, and a fabulous follow-up to the success we had with Waqt al-tagheer: Time of change earlier this year.”

Public programs will be announced in late January 2019.

ACE Open provides transformative contemporary art experiences for artists and audiences from its CBD art space in Adelaide, South Australia. As South Australia’s flagship contemporary art gallery, ACE Open presents a year-round program of free exhibitions by practicing South Australian, Australian and international artists. ACE’s programs extend the edges of contemporary visual art practice, embrace diversity and provide a space for artists and audiences to take risks. aceopen.art

Sally Smart is available for interview.

For more information and interview requests please contact Stephanie Lyall, [email protected] or 08 8211 7505; or Anthea Hagar, Adelaide Festival on [email protected] or 08 8216 4444

Exhibition details and biography follows.

The Violet Ballet Sally Smart 2 March – 27 April 2019 Opening Saturday 2 March, 5pm-7pm | Free

ACE Open North Terrace (West End) Adelaide Festival Kaurna Yarta, Adelaide 1-17 March 2019 adelaidefestival.com.au / @adelaidefestival 2-17 March, 11am-4pm daily From 19 March, 11am-4pm Tue-Sat

Free entry aceopen.art / @ace_open

Biography

Sally Smart (b.1960) is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists recognized internationally for large-scale cut-out assemblage installations and increasingly, performance and video, her practice engages identity politics and the relationships between the body, thought and culture including trans- national ideas that have shaped cultural history. Smart’s most recent work includes artisan embroideries as assemblage elements in her project The Choreography of Cutting. The project re-imagines and encapsulates a dynamic discourse between the historical and contemporary avant-garde using experimental performance, costume design and visual art forms, mapping multiple ideas, temporalities and space—a materialisation of thought/gesture/action.

The recipient of numerous awards and prizes, Smart is currently-Vice Chancellor’s Professorial Fellow, University of , a board member (Deputy Chair) National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) and was awarded an Australia Council Fellowship (2014) and Sackler Fellow Artist-in Residence, University of Connecticut, USA (2012). Sally Smart’s major public art commission Shadow Trees was installed in Melbourne Australia (2014).

Sally Smart exhibitions include: The Choreography of Cutting Postmasters Gallery, New York (2016); Odyssey: Navigating Nameless Seas, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2016); Conversation: Endless Acts of Human History (with Entang Wiharso), Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta (2016); Six Degrees of Separation Galeri Canna, Jakarta (2015); Dark Heart: 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2014); Negotiating This World, National Gallery of , Melbourne, Australia (2013); The Pedagogical PuppetContemporary Galleries, University of Connecticut, CT., USA (2012); Contemporary Australia: Women, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane, Australia and No Name Station, Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China.

Smart is represented in significant public and private collections including: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; The Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; GOMA/Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; The Art Collection, Melbourne; Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki, Auckland, New Zealand; Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Ithaca, NY, USA; The William Benton Museum of Art Connecticut’s State Art Museum, USA; , London, UK; Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt, Germany; and the International Collage Center, Pennsylvania USA.

Sally Smart acknowledges support from The University of Melbourne, where she is currently Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Fellow. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

ACE Open is supported by and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, and is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. ACE Open maintains membership as South Australia’s only representative in the national peak organisation Contemporary Arts Organisations Australia, which represents Australia’s independent publicly funded key visual arts organisations.