Kirsten Coelho Named SALA Festival Featured Artist for 2020

Celebrated artist Kirsten Coelho has been named SALA Festival featured artist for 2020 at the festival's official opening night gala at the Art Gallery of South Australia. (Friday July 26).

Kirsten Coelho works in porcelain, producing reduction fired works that attempt to fuse the formal and the abstract. More recently her work has been influenced by nineteenth and early twentieth century enamel wares and the abstracted surface possibilities these objects can show as they begin to age.

Kirsten Coelho trained in Adelaide at the South Australian School of Art before moving to the UK in the early 1990's where she worked for a number of years in a London Studio.

Since returning to Australia in 1998, Kirsten Coelho has been a studio tenant at the JamFactory Centre for Contemporary Craft and Design and completed a Master of Visual Art at the South Australian School of Art. Kirsten now works from a studio at her home in Adelaide, South Australia.

"I am so excited and very honoured to be the recipient of the 2020 SALA / Wakefield Press artist monograph. This is such a wonderful opportunity and I feel very fortunate. I am very much looking forward to working together with SALA Festival, Wakefield Press and esteemed South Australian writer Wendy Walker" Ms Coelho said.

"This monograph will provide incredible support to an exhibition programme I have in place for the next two years in which I shall be exhibiting nationally and internationally. Being invited to exhibit at the Samstag Museum of Art during SALA 2020 is such an honour and I am thrilled to be able to exhibit my work there. I will also be having my first solo exhibition at the Scottish Gallery Edinburgh, UK and exhibiting at Phillip Bacon Galleries Brisbane, Adrian Sassoon, UK and Sullivan and Strumpf Sydney and Singapore. I am very grateful to SALA, Wakefield Press and the South Australian Government through Arts South Australia for this momentous opportunity."

SALA Festival CEO Kate Moskwa says: "SALA looks forward to featuring Kirsten's beautiful work during the 2020 Festival. The SA Living Artists publication is a great collaboration between Arts South Australia and Wakefield Press and we are privileged to highlight the exceptional work of South Australia's finest artists via this partnership."

Louise Haselton is this year's featured artist, Haselton's work is on the cover of the 2019 SALA Festival program and poster, and the official 2019 SA Living Artists Publication, funded by Arts South Australia, published by Wakefield Press and penned by local writers Gillian Brown, Leigh Robb and Jenna McKenzie. Haselton's major exhibition will be at The Samstag Museum of Art from August 2.

The SALA Festival runs from August 1- 31, with over 8000 artists participating in almost 700 exhibitions and events across Adelaide and regional SA.

The SALA Festival is Australia's largest community based open access visual arts festival, providing the opportunity for artists from all backgrounds and skill levels from amateur to professional and working in a variety of mediums to be part of one of the key festivals on the South Australian arts calendar.

More information about all SALA exhibitions and events can be found online at www.salafestival.com or by calling 7077 0011. All SALA events are free unless otherwise noted.

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