The Collections Project
The Collections Project is a collaborative project between Guildhouse and South Australia’s state institutions.
This unique project provides artists the opportunity to research an area of one of the institution’s collections and develop new work for exhibition. Championing the art and artists of our time while celebrating our cultural, historic and scientific heritage, The Collections Project has the demonstrated ability to provide new audience experiences while delivering long-term benefits to the artistic and career development of participating artists.
The Guildhouse Collections Project is supported by Arts South Australia.
The Collections
The South Australian Museum
2021: Peter Turner & Clem Newchurch
Artists Peter Turner and Clem Newchurch will be responding to the George French Angas collection of 1880’s illustrations of botanicals, First Nations people and the south-eastern coastal landscape of South Australia, with a particular focus on works depicting Kaurna/Rammindjeri people painted between Adelaide and Cape Jervis.
2014: Deborah Prior
Exploring the material makeup and sensory possibilities of yarn, fabric and thread, as well as the socio-political and historical implications of the materials and process employed by the artist, Fleece was informed by a period of research undertaken at the South Australian Museum as part of The Collections Project.
2014: Robin Tatlow-Lord
The Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium of South Australia
2021: Kasia Tons
Contemporary artist Kasia Tons proposes an exploration of the symbiotic relationship held between plants and humans using hand embroidery, wearable soft sculpture and photography.
2020: Laura Wills & Louise Flaherty
Plant Notes
Researching within the SA Seed Conservation Centre and the Botanic Gardens Library, Laura Wills and Louise Flaherty will bring together their research processes to investigate personal and environmental effects of native seed extinction.
2019: Kath Inglis
of uncertain value
Kath Inglis examined the marine algae collection in context to the broader holdings of the Botanic Gardens of South Australia. She considered ‘value’ and the impact of plastic waste on marine health.
2018: Heidi Kenyon
Heidi Kenyon’s research focussed on the memories and knowledge held within hundreds of thousands of years of plant medicine, extending her interest in the nature of memory and the memories of nature.
2017: Michelle Kelly
Flinders University Museum of Art
FUMA is a cultural facility responsible for preserving, developing and presenting the University’s contemporary and historical collections of art and connecting them with students and staff. With over 8000 works of art in its care, they are one of the largest University art collections in Australia.
2024: Bin Bai, Stephanie Doddridge, Sue Kneebone, Olga Sankey and Truc Truong
The Disquiet presents newly commissioned artworks by South Australian artists Bin Bai, Stephanie Doddridge, Sue Kneebone, Olga Sankey and Truc Truong.
In developing their ideas for this exhibition, these artists drew inspiration from FUMA’s collection of political posters focusing on the works of the Progressive Art Movement (PAM) – a multi-arts group established at Flinders University in the 1970s.
Informed by PAM’s agendas, motivations and artistic processes, the five contemporary artists have explored the relationship of their own practices to complex and urgent issues of the 21st century.
2021: Elyas Alavi, Kate O'Boyle & Louise Haselton
South Australian artists Elyas Alavi, Kate O’Boyle and Louise Haselton present new bodies of work inspired by the mythologies, subjects, and techniques of FUMA’s European print collection dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries.
New works in sculpture, painting, video, and printmaking, are shown alongside more than 60 historical prints including woodcuts from the 15th century Nuremberg Chronicle, and impressions by European masters Francisco Goya, Käthe Kollwitz, William Blake, John Martin, Agostino Carracci and Albrecht Dürer.
Taking its cue from the biblical Fall, where Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden, the exhibition reflects on themes of grief, faith, and end-times, and considers how artists respond to crises from the renaissance to contemporary times.
2020: Ray Harris
Ritual Nature
Informed by investigations into FUMA’s mid-1960s and 1970s Australian and international Post-object and Documentation collection, Ritual Nature features a new series of evocative performative videos by South Australian artist Ray Harris, that explores ritual actions in connection to cleansing and death.
2019: Jake Holmes
Writing the climate
In response to FUMA’s extensive Australian Political Poster collection (one of the most diverse in the country) Holmes aimed to re-contextualise 1980s environmentalism for our current time. He created new works giving voice to the emotional, nihilistic anxiety felt by today’s youth towards uncertain futures.
2019: Cynthia Schwertsik
UTE-ilitarian
Cynthia Schwertsik responded to the Flinders University Art Museum’s collection of Post Object Art through performance and digital work, gaining insight into Australian artistic concepts of the 1960s and 70s.
2018: Gail Hocking
Peripheral Disturbance: Wandering Between Worlds
Through an exploration of a transient state of being, Gail Hocking observed the transient state of matter and investigates the interconnections of temporal disruptions, ephemeral matter, differing environments, and nonhuman forces that contribute to alternate pathways of making and knowing.
2017: Fran Callen
Fran researched the Art Museum’s collections of botanical and zoological prints and drawings, including engravings by Ferdinand Bauer and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur’s early 19th century scientific prints, alongside a collection of work by her uncle, Brian Callen.
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
For over 80 years, the ASO has been there to corroborate life and contribute to South Australia’s identity. Today the ASO plays a major role in Adelaide’s cultural and economic vibrancy, and enriches the community through a diverse program of world-class performances.
2021: Chelsea Farquhar
Chelsea Farquhar’s interests lie in responding to the performative rituals and historic importance of the ASO and their archive. Utilising sculpture, performance and video to highlight moments of exchange and collaboration, Farquhar is researching the ASO as a living collection, including sheet music, performance brochures and posters, instruments, architecture and the players themselves.
2020: Michael Kutschbach
fuliguline
This new digital work explores contemporary visual artist Michael Kutschbach’s intuitive response to the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra as a living collection. It is the result of a research-based residency with the ASO investigating the interactions between the musicians, their instruments, sound and the theatre space.
Art Gallery of South Australia
2018: Honor Freeman
Through the lens of the domestic – the undervalued, discarded and everyday – Honor Freeman encouraged a poignant reading of our collective understanding of loss and grief. Impelled by a mission to make sense of a loss of her own, the exhibition conducted a dialogue with a number of historical collection pieces, these being recalibrated to speak to the contemporary theory of self-care, expression and vulnerability.
2016: Kate Kurucz
2016: Zoe Kirkwood
Adelaide artist Zoe Kirkwood expands the very idea of painting, challenging its traditional associations with two dimensions and with representation. Her sumptuous installation explored the idea of a contemporary Baroque aesthetic with a distinctly Australian vernacular through bold, elaborate ornamentation, saturated colour, theatricality and eclecticism.
2015: Maarten Daudeij
Spirit Skin expanded Maarten Daudeij’s research into ideas surrounding the sustained experience of a transcendental state. This Guildhouse Collections Project enabled Maarten to explore the artworks, environment and interactions that occur at the Art Gallery of South Australia
2015: Raymond Zada
2015: Jason Sims
2014: Dan Withey
2014: Deidre But-Husaim
Adelaide City Council
2016: Chris De Rosa
2015: Dan Withey
The Collection Projects News
The Collections Project: Deidre But-Husaim
The Collections Project Art Gallery of South Australia 01 February 2014 Deidre But-Husaim further explored her fascination with the subject of people looking at and experiencing art in a museum space in new work for The Collections Project. Deidre But-Husaim was the...
Images (L-R): Ray Harris, Untitled (pyre), (HD digital video still), 2020, photograph courtesy the artist; Kath Inglis, of uncertain value (installation view), 2019, photograph Daniel Marks; Ray Harris, Ritual Nature (installation view), 2021, photograph Brianna Speight, courtesy FUMA; Honor Freeman, Ghost Objects (installation view), 2019, photograph Saul Steed, courtesy AGSA; Dan Withey (installation view), 2015, photograph James Field; Michael Kutschbach, fuliguline (installation view), 2021, photograph Claudio Raschella; Robin Tatlow-Lord at The South Australian Museum, 2014, photograph Guildhouse.