The Artist behind Adelaide’s iconic fish gates and David Jones’ leaves to be commemorated in 2016 SALA monograph and program cover. Renowned artist Catherine Truman has been named SALA Festival Featured Artist for 2016 at the festival’s official opening night gala at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
A multi award-winning contemporary artist famed for her work spanning art and science, Truman is well known to Adelaide locals for her iconic public artwork The Slate-Pool Walkway at the Art Gallery of SA, better known as the fish gates, and the giant leaf sculptures adorning the David Jones building on North Terrace.
She is also co-founder of Adelaide’s Gray Street Workshop, a collectively run studio and access facility for artists working in the field of jewellery and object making, which celebrates 30 years this year. As the festival’s featured artist Truman will be commemorated in the official 2016 SALA monograph, to be published by Wakefield Press, and will have her artwork featured on the cover of the festival program.
“I feel very honoured to be selected as the SALA featured artist for 2016,” said Truman. “Adelaide is my home and I have always based my practice here. The South Australian arts community is renowned for its vitality and SALA is a wonderful vehicle to celebrate the breadth of arts’ practice across the state. It’s a community that supports individualism – that is its strength, and I’m very proud to be a part of that.”
Truman said she felt ‘privileged’ to be producing the 2016 SALA monograph with writer Melinda Rackham and mentee, emerging artist Andre Lawrence. “We hope it will capture the richness and diversity of my 35 year practice and sit comfortably amongst the wonderful growing collection of SALA monographs – all testament to the extraordinary talent in South Australia,” she said.
Truman follows in the footsteps of this year’s SALA featured artist Giles Bettison, whose monograph Giles Bettison: Pattern and Perception was officially launched at Friday night’s gala. Written by Margot Osborne and published by Wakefield Press, the book chronicles Bettison’s more than 20 year career as one of the world’s foremost glass artists.
Bettison’s work is currently on show in two SALA exhibitions: The Engaging Object – Masterworks 2000-2015 at Aptos Cruz Galleries in Stirling, and Pattern and Perception at the Jam Factory in Adelaide.
Now in its 18th year, the SALA Festival presents the works of more than 5000 artists in 610 free exhibitions across Adelaide and regions. Encompassing all forms of visual art from painting, sculpture and jewellery to video and multimedia and much more, SALA will give South Australia an arty makeover as more than 550 venues from pubs and cafes to wineries, cinemas and even florists are turned into pop-up art galleries for 31 days.
The 2015 SALA Festival continues to 31 August. For more information, visit: www.salafestival.com for details.
Image: Catherine Truman (supplied)