Landscape Art
For those of us living in non-urban centres, the physical landscape – the meanderings of the waterways, the pitch of the escarpments, the vastness of the deserts, the rise and fall of the land, the heat of sun and the frequency of the rain - often defines who we are.
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Shishka Car was the key regional event for the 2002 Adelaide Festival held outdoors at the Riverview Speedway, Murray Bridge. 12 artists from WA worked with over 100 locals under the direction of Lockie McDonald, exploring the community’s relationship with the car—the passion and exhilaration as well as the terrible consequences of death behind the wheel. Key Aboriginal issues were explored with support from local elders. Photo Peter Mathew -
Bundaleer Festival in the Bundaleer Forest 2005 -
Sometimes outdoors is the only place where the expected audience can be accommodated. Where else in Murray Bridge and Port Augusta but the golf courses do you find enough sloping grass for 5000 people to sit for an Adelaide Symphony Orchestra concert framed by avenues of trees? -
Sometimes outdoors is the only place where the expected audience can be accommodated. Where else in Murray Bridge and Port Augusta but the golf courses do you find enough sloping grass for 5000 people to sit for an Adelaide Symphony Orchestra concert framed by avenues of trees? Ripples 2010 murray bridge ASO. Photo Andy Rasheed -
Watersong at Goolwa Wharf for the Regional Centre of Culture, Just Add Water 2012, State Opera SA, Adelaide Art Orchestra, Fleurieu Rhythm Makers, Artistic Director Maude Davey, set design Cath Cantlon, Executive Producer Jo Pike, Photo: Alice Bell -
Drawing on Country Alexandrina Four public drawing events around Lake Alexandrina at Raukkan, Milang, Clayton and Goolwa in 2012 as a partnership of our Change and Adaptation and Just Add Water programs in collaboration with Natural Resource Management and Alexandrina Council. An exhibition of resulting works and a narrative video documentary by Marty McNicol travelled across the four locations. Drawing on Country has been presented every year since by Alexandrina Council and in 2018 we present it statewide. -
In 2015 Country Arts SA placed 10 artists in seven small communities and townships that hug South Australia’s stretch of the River Murray, stretching along nearly all its 500 kilometre length for the 'This is a River' Project. Image: River Rites at Field Days -
Saltwater SurfArtFest was a three-day celebration of the South Coast surfing community through an arts lens curated by Barbary O’Brien and Annabelle Collett. The major weekend event was held on the stunning beachfront at Middleton. Image: Saltwater Co-ordinators Annabelle Collett & Barbary O'Brien, Photo by Richard Hodges
For city dwellers, where imposed structures often mask the natural landscape, the physical features of the land are less likely to determine subsistence and existence. Where large outdoor celebrations in cities often happen in the only open space available, away from the big cities, they can happen in places of great beauty, places that have determined local stories and legends and places that have a fundamental resonance for people.
Our moment in 1998 is literally EPIC. It was the first of many large scale expressions of regional identity which have happened since, all of them notable for the matchless natural features of the chosen site, the cooperation of industry, community, government and local first nations peoples, and the marriage of artistic endeavour with a celebration of local stories and achievements.
Tcharkulda Rock, a massive granite outcrop in the wheat belt, was the site for Eyre Peninsula in Concert (EPIC), which saw 300 writers, dancers, choral singers, musicians and visual artists create a spectacle for 4000 people to promote a positive expression of regional identity. Aside from its sheer scale and artistic scope, EPIC was notable as an arts project in that was an integral part of a broadly focussed regional development strategy – a blueprint for the instigation of many major outdoor events in the years to come.
