Art Gallery of South Australia Announces 2019 Program

The Art Gallery of South Australia today announces its 2019 program. The year ahead promises new encounters with art through dynamic exhibitions and displays. Highlights of the 2019 program include Australian premieres, AGSA's permanent collection presented in new light, and engaging explorations of contemporary art from across the country and overseas.

The year begins with the transformation of the historic Elder Wing with a new hang of Australian art. In this renewed display, seven 'anthologies' weave together moments in our history and highlight the national, regional and local nuances of Aboriginal art, colonial art, Australian Impressionism and Modernism.

In March, AGSA presents Quilty, the first major survey exhibition of one of Australia's most celebrated contemporary artists, Ben Quilty. Developed by AGSA, the exhibition will be presented first in Adelaide as a partnership with the Adelaide Festival before touring nationally.

The month of May welcomes the Ramsay Art Prize in its second iteration with a $100,000 acquisitive prize for Australian artists under the age of 40. Through a major exhibition of the finalists, and the announcement of the 2019 winner, the Ramsay Art Prize brings to the fore the vital pulse of contemporary Australian art.

In celebration of philanthropy, Ways of Seeing: Recent acquisitions from the collection will feature new works to the AGSA collection, and feature many works shown for the first time including a major work by Helen Frankenthaler.

In the second half of the year, the Gallery focuses on works by international contemporary artists. William Kentridge is described as one of the most distinctive, powerful voices in contemporary art. William Kentridge: That which we do not remember will trace the artist's thirty-year career connecting the myriad of aspects of his work including drawing, collage, stop-motion animation, performance, theatre, tapestry and sculpture.

Initiated by Director Rhana Devenport, the Gallery welcomes Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei as he engages AGSA audiences with Sonic Blossom, a performance of one-to-one exchanges between singers and Gallery visitors. Shown at the likes of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, AGSA's presentation will mark the premiere of Sonic Blossom to South Australian audiences.

TARNANTHI returns as a city-wide festival in October. Showcasing the latest contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander art from across the country, Among the major projects is an ambitious installation created by Tiwi artists, a ground-breaking exhibition on universal kinship by Yol?u artists and an innovative moving-image venture. In 2019 TARNANTHI is presented at AGSA and partner venues across Adelaide. TARNANTHI Art Fair returns for the weekend of 18-20 October, following the record-breaking success of the 2018 event.

Further 2019 offerings

Export Empire: Japan and the modern world | 26 January - 21 July 2019

Tarryn Gill: Guardians | 23 March - 5 May 2019

Honor Freeman: Ghost Objects | from 27 July 2019

No god but God: Art of Islam | from 24 August 2019

To coincide with this exciting 2019 program announcement, AGSA has undergone a brand refresh and today launches an online store with a new website revealed later this month.