Thursday 21 March 2024, 12:00–1:00pm
Location: Adelaide Town Hall
Pricing: Free, bookings essential (places are limited)
Featuring: ART WORKS Early Career Curator Chira Grasby with exhibiting artists H. Fleming and Cynthia Schwertsik.
Join us for the Kinetic Structures Curator and Artist Talk with ART WORKS Early Career Curator Chira Grasby with exhibiting artists H. Fleming and Cynthia Schwertsik.
Exhibition: Kinetic Structures
19 January – 5 April 2024
This one-hour conversation will unpack the curatorial premise of the exhibition while exploring each artists’ practice and we can live in harmony with man-made forms and built environments
Taking namesake from the phenomena of Kinetic Architecture, Kinetic Structures likens citizens to man-made forms in our contemporary built environment. Six South Australian artists present exploration into human movement through metropolitan cityscapes by analysing the motion of daily life, and the realities of densely populated spaces.
This exhibition features work by Deidre But-Husaim, Brad Darkson, Callum Docherty, H. Fleming, Rama Kaltu-Kaltu Sampson and Cynthia Schwertsik.
Kinetic Structures is presented at the Adelaide Town Hall as part of ART WORKS Early Career Curator Program, delivered by Guildhouse in partnership with the City of Adelaide.
ART WORKS is a collaborative program of residencies, curatorial mentorship and creative engagements, designed in partnership with the City of Adelaide to provide a city-based platform for artists, curators and writers to pursue new ways of working and engaging with audiences.
Chira Grasby
ART WORKS Early Career Curator and Writer in Residence
Chiranjika Grasby is an Adelaide based emerging artist, curator, and tattoo artist. She completed a Bachelor of Visual Art at Central School of Art in 2019 focusing on oil painting and miniature portraiture. During her studies she also completed an internship through Flinders University Art Museum exploring the archiving and storage of gallery collections, and was involved in Carclew’s 2019 Emerging Curator program.
Her practice spans across painting, illustration, ceramics, textiles, and installation. She’s interested in topics of connection, particularly that of herself and her cultural heritage, but also the relationships between herself and others. Often this involves the incorporation of autobiographical iconography and symbolism, with nods to personal narrative as well as the outward influence of pop culture and her childhood.
Chiranjika has exhibited at Sister, Nexus Arts, Brunswick Street Gallery, Urban Cow Studios, Newmarch Gallery, Good Bank Gallery, and curated across Adelaide Town Hall, Urban Cow Studios, Nexus Arts, Collective Haunt, and FELTspace ARI. She was recipient of a Deep Dive Residency at Post Office Projects in 2021, and Artist in Residence for Nexus Arts in 2022. She is also part of Index Adelaide, an initiative that focuses on the Zine community in South Australia, and co-owns Halfpace Studio, an inclusive tattoo space and residency site.
H. Fleming
H. Fleming is a contemporary realist painter currently based in Adelaide (Kaurna Country), South Australia. Fleming is a self-taught artist, working closely both with and against the long-standing traditions of realism. He works solely from life, without the use of any reference photos, to convey the subtler elements of the human experience through frequently mundane subject matter. Fleming’s practice draws upon many influences, ranging from the classical masters and post-modernism, to gothic and dirty realism literature.
Cynthia Schwertsik
Cynthia’s art practice includes visual art and contemporary performance with participatory inclusion. She has generated an array of projects across visual art, installation, public art and theory, and worked in collaboration with various artists. Her work has been commissioned and presented throughout Europe, Australia, South Africa and the USA. Cynthia holds a diploma of dance and is a qualified Yoga instructor. Upon relocation to Australia she has completed a BVA in fine Arts. Cynthia started her career as a dancer and performer in Austria, in the initial days of contemporary dance’s establishment, costume and set-design followed as a matter of course. Her primary interest lies in movement and dialogue. Much of her work responds to everyday elements and the attitude derived from embracing the wonders and beauty of mundane experience, the daily chores of parenting and the ever challenging task of making sense of life the universe and everything. Projects that include audience participation, performed or realised in public space are at the heart of Cynthia’s practice. Her current line of inquiry is to create images and interventions that reflect the starkly modified landscape shaped by the events of the Anthropocene era. The materials and methods in her repertoire to achieve this are broad; photography, paint, the found object, illumination and most of all drawing and movement.
Images (L-R): ART WORKS Artist and Curator Talk 2023, Adelaide Town Hall. Photograph Lana Adams; Chira Grasby. Image courtesy the artist; H. Fleming, Round the Side, 2023, oil and aerosol paint on board, courtesy the artist; Cynthia Schwertsik, UTE-ilitarian, 2019, courtesy the artist.