Adelaide Festival Kicks Off Artists' Week 2014 Program Today

The full 2014 Adelaide Festival visual arts program is out today with a complete line-up of Artists' Week events and speakers. Highlights include a keynote from Erik Davis (USA) and full day co-convened by internationally renowned art historian, independent curator and writer Lars Bang Larsen (DEN).

Artists' Week features presentations that explore some of the ideas and approaches within Adelaide Festival's visual arts program and the Adelaide International exhibition Worlds In Collision. Themes include the visionary, the psychedelic, the digital horizon, undergrounds, the outsider, the marginalised and ideas of the alternative, and other issues shaping contemporary practice.

Under the title of Radical Enlightenment Larsen has curated a playful day of panel discussion, presentations and performative 'illustrated interludes' connected by a rhythmic structure over three sessions. Guests include Marco Pasi (NED), Susan Hiller (UK), Julie Stephens (VIC), Suzanne Treister (UK) and Ramona Altschul (SUI). Larsen and his research partner Yann Chateigné have recently held similar discussions at the Palais de Tokyo Paris.

An emphasis on alternative readings and radical models runs through other events at Artists' Week, where over three days speakers from across Australia and the globe will explore a multitude of approaches, world views and histories that shape or reflect contemporary visual arts practice. Subjects will include Space is the Place, Imagining an Underground and Another Sort of Real.

For the first time, the symposium will include guests from Adelaide Festival's contemporary music program with the curator of the Tectonics Adelaide, Ilan Volkov featuring in the panel Distortion, Reverb and Noise.

Artists' Week presenters include:

Tess Allas (AUS), Lars Bang Larsen (DEN), Glenn Barkley (AUS), Troy-Anthony Baylis (AUS), Erik Davis (USA), Charlotte Day (AUS), Benedict Drew (UK), Marco Fusinato (AUS), Richard Grayson (UK), David Haines & Joyce Hinterding (AUS), Susan Hiller (UK), Gordon Hookey (AUS), Khalil Joreige (LEB/FRA), James Luna (AUS), Rä di Martino (ITA), Marco Pasi (NED), Colin Rhodes (AUS), Suzanne Triester (UK), Julie Stephens (AUS), Lynette Wallworth (AUS), Anthony White (AUS), William Yang (AUS), Guy Mannes-Abbott (UK) and Artur ?mijewski (POL)

Adelaide International and Artists' Week curator Richard Grayson says: "The presentations included in Larsen's section look at narratives and methodologies that have perhaps been sidelined or overlooked by the Rationalist and Enlightenment approaches that determine our culture, to see if certain strands and ideas might be considered as providing an expanded means of understanding, giving us a richer and more complex picture of the world and its operations and new ways that we might negotiate it."

Adelaide Festival's colossal visual arts program presents work from more than 40 artists and collectives, featuring the Australian premiere of River of Fundament, a major new seven-part film project by award-winning American artist Matthew Barney and composer Jonathan Bepler; Worlds in Collision, the third Adelaide International 2014; the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart; and some of Australia's most exciting contemporary Aboriginal artists in Four Rooms at Tandanya. All visual art events are exclusive to Adelaide.

Lars Bang Larsen bio:
Lars Bang Larsen is an art historian at the University of Copenhagen and Guest Professor at HEAD - Geneva. He has curated exhibitions such as A History of Irritated Material, Raven Row, London (2010) and Populism, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2005). He is a frequent contributor to Afterall, Artforum International, Frieze and Mousse, and has authored such publications as The Model: A Model for a Qualitative Society, 1968 (2010) and Art and Psychedelia (2013).

Eric Davis bio:
Eric Davis is an author, award-winning journalist, speaker and teacher based in San Francisco. He is the author, most recently, of Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica. He also wrote TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information and The Visionary State: A Journey through California's Spiritual Landscape. His essays on music, media, technoculture and spirituality have appeared in dozens of books, including Sound Unbound, AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man, Zig Zag Zen and Rave Culture and Religion.

The University of South Australia is the proud sponsor of both Artists' Week and Worlds in Collision: Adelaide International 2014 next year will mark the third time the university has supported both events.

Booking Details:

Artists' Week
Co-convened by Richard Grayson and Lars Bang Larsen
Associate Rayleen Forester

FREE

Fri 28 Feb - Sun 2 Mar
Allan Scott Auditorium, University of South Australia

Worlds in Collision: Adelaide International 2014
Curated by Richard Grayson

FREE

Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art
55 North Terrace
Susan Hiller (UK), Paul Laffoley (US), Rä di Martino (ITA) and Katie Paterson (UK)
Fri 28 Feb - Fri 28 Mar (Daily 10am-5pm)

Australian Experimental Art Foundation
Lion Arts Centre, Corner North Terrace & Morphett Street
Fred Tomaselli (US) and Artur ?mijewski (POL)
Fri 28 Feb - Sun 16 Mar (Daily 10am-5pm)
Tue 18 Mar - Sat 29 Mar (Tue to Fri 11am-5pm, Sat 2-5pm)

Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia
14 Porter Street, Parkside
Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige (LEB/FRA)
Thur 27 Feb - Sun 16 Mar (Daily 10am-5pm)
Tue 18 Mar - Sun 30 (Tue to Fri 11am-5pm, Sat to Sun 1-5pm)

SASA Gallery, Uni SA (School of Art, Architecture & Design, University of South Australia)
Level 2 Kaurna Building, City West Campus, UniSA, Corner Fenn Place & Hindley Street
Benedict Drew (UK)
Fri 28 - Sun 16 Mar (Daily 10am-5pm)
Mon 17 Mar - Fri 28 Mar (Mon to Fri 11am-5pm)

2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart
Curated by Nick Mitzevich

FREE
Art Gallery of South Australia
Saturday 1 March to Sunday 11 May 2014

Four Rooms
Curated by Troy-Anthony Baylis

FREE
Tandanya - National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Grenfell Street
Tue 25 Feb - Sun 6 Apr
10am - 5pm daily

River of Fundament
By Matthew Barney

Capri Theatre, Goodwood Road
Sun 2 Mar 10:30am and 6pm
Mon 3 Mar 5pm

$30 - $49 - adelaidefestival.com.au or BASS 131 246
Approximately 6 Hours (including intervals)