2016 SALA Artist in Residence at Adelaide Festival Centre Announced

Following the success of last year's SALA Festival Artist in Residence, Aurelia Carbone and her large scale illusion-based installation, Q*bert's Ball, Adelaide Festival Centre is excited to announce James Dodd as this year's Artist in Residence. 2016 will be the third year Adelaide Festival Centre has hosted a SALA Festival Artist in Residence.

James Dodd is an Adelaide-based artist who has been exhibiting in publicly funded, artist run and commercial spaces across Australia for more than a decade. His interests revolve around representations of landscape, with a focus on urban landscapes and the ways in which people can creatively engage with these public spaces. Dodd has a strong affinity with graffiti as a creative act and often uses sprayed pigment applications such as airbrush, aerosol and pneumatic spray guns. His other core concern is with bicycles, their various forms and functions and their potential as creative sites, this fascination has resulted in unusual cycle-based public interventions and odd adventures. As part of Adelaide Festival Centre's 2016 OzAsia Festival he collaborated with Tutti Arts and Perspektif for Shedding Light, a performance that incorporated neon-glowing, pedal powered transport as a component of intimate audience experience in and around the Riverbank Precinct.

Dodd has been drawn to the Fred Williams Murray River murals, which were commissioned as part of Adelaide Festival Centre's original opening, finding links between his landscape works and the Williams paintings, there is a timely sense of continuation in taking inspiration from this art foundation of Adelaide Festival Centre as the Centre redevelopments will be underway during James' residency. Dodd has a long history of working on large scale mural paintings within community art projects and is keen to pursue the potential of large-scale outcomes for this project. Dodd has many plans for his residency that range from simple and reserved to challenging and experimental. Just as Adelaide Festival Centre undergoes redevelopment, his work will take shape over the changing scenery of the Centre.

"I'm excited about the chance to spend some time considering Fred Williams' Murray River murals as a starting point for making work. Commissioned as a component of the original Adelaide Festival Centre construction in 1978, they give us a chance to consider the origins of this iconic theatre and it's contemporary redevelopment. I am looking forward to spending time on the Murray developing paintings as one part of my outcome. During my residency I will also be developing a river-oriented vessel that responds to the Murray, Adelaide Festival Centre's Torrens site and my ongoing interest in pedal powered vehicles and their potential as art. This component is quite prospective at this stage and will likely lead into future outcomes for other projects" said James Dodd.

Prior to his selection as SALA Festival Artist in Residence at Adelaide Festival Centre, James Dodd has participated in projects with the National Gallery of Australia, the National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, QAG/GOMA, Brisbane, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne and Fremantle Art Centre. He is represented by Hugo Michell Gallery, a lecturer at Adelaide Central School of Art and is regularly engaged in youth and community art projects.

"Visual arts are an important part of Adelaide Festival Centre's annual program and we're very pleased to be involved with SALA again this year. James Dodd is our third SALA artist in residence and we look forward to his works enriching and adorning the Festival Centre" said Adelaide Festival Centre CEO and Artistic Director Douglas Gautier.

"James will be an excellent SALA Artist-in-Residence at Adelaide Festival Centre. From urban landscapes to unusual cycle-based public interventions his work is distinctive, generous and philosophical. We are curious to see how James responds to the environment of the Festival Centre" said Penny Griggs, General Manager, SALA Festival

James Dodd's work as SALA Festival Artist in Residence at Adelaide Festival Centre can be viewed in and around Adelaide Festival Centre during this year's SALA Festival from 1 - 31 August 2016.