Announcement: The Guildhouse Collections Project + City of Adelaide

Guildhouse and the City of Adelaide are proud to announce Crista Bradshaw as the selected artist for The Guildhouse Collections Project + City of Adelaide.

The Collections Project is a unique visual art, craft or design program that offers artists the opportunity to research an area of one of South Australia’s most important and established institutions and develop new work for exhibition.

This opportunity champions the art and artists of our time while celebrating our cultural, historic and scientific heritage. Eleven years since its inception, the Collections Project has demonstrated the ability to provide new audience experiences while delivering long-term benefits to the artistic and career development of participating artists.

The Guildhouse and City of Adelaide initiative provides a paid opportunity for an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander artist to research and respond to the City of Adelaide’s extensive cultural collections. In response to this research, Bradshaw will create new work for presentation during the 2025 Tarnanthi Festival, exhibited in the City of Adelaide’s ART POD on Pirie Street.

The City of Adelaide manages several significant cultural collections including the City Archives, civic collection, public art, commemorative monuments, memorials, and a growing collection of contemporary artworks. These collections reflect the city’s cultural identity and values, past and present.

Through The Collections Project , Bradshaw will be supported by the teams at both Guildhouse and the City of Adelaide, with opportunities to connect with cultural consultative staff, curators, and Advisory Group representatives.

A proud Wangkumara contemporary artist, Crista Bradshaw’s practice explores cultural identity, memory, and cross-cultural artistic dialogues. Using a multidisciplinary approach spanning painting, sculpture, installation and text-based media, she examines narratives of dispossession and resilience.

Her research-based practice employs an Indigenist methodology to make visible the silences caused by colonisation, drawing on archives, connections to Country, and creative experimentation. Bradshaw’s work is deeply invested in creating dialogue between First Nations and Western art forms, foregrounding resilience, truth-telling and community connection.

Beth Neate, Chief Executive, Guildhouse said;

‘Crista Bradshaw’s selection for The Collections Project with City of Adelaide is both a powerful opportunity for the artist and an exciting shift in perspective toward a more fulsome examination and exposition of cultural archive. We congratulate Crista on her selection and thank our program partner City of Adelaide for their collaboration and Create SA for their support.’

Dr Jane Lomax-Smith AM, The Lord Mayor of Adelaide said;

‘The City of Adelaide is the oldest local government in Australia and its archives are a rich source of social, cultural and historic material. The archives housed in Topham Mall are a magnificent resource that continues to inform and inspire all those who explore them. By opening the archives to artists like Crista Bradshaw, these records can be re-examined through fresh eyes and shared in new and creative ways.’

Crista Bradshaw, artist said;

‘This project is a significant opportunity for me to deepen my practice and research into cultural identity, memory, and the silences created by colonisation. My work often navigates the intersections between First Nations and Western art forms, and engagin g with the City’s archives, civic collection, public art and contemporary artworks will allow me to critically explore how civic narratives are shaped—whose voices are amplified, and whose are missing.

I hope to create work that not only acknowledges absence and resilience, but also fosters dialogue, connection and understanding within the community.’

The Guildhouse Collections Project + City of Adelaide is supported by CreateSA and presented with Tarnanthi Festival.