The artworks we can't stop thinking about from the Adelaide Biennial

Topic:Visual Art

Award-winning artist Archie Moore is one of the artists featured at the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art.

The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Yield Strength brings together 24 artists.

It covers the Art Gallery of South Australia, Samstag Museum of Art, and the Adelaide Botanic Garden.

Contemporary Australian art is not one thing, says Ellie Buttrose.

It speaks to the diversity of Australia and the problems Australians face.

The title, Yield Strength, is an engineering term for the maximum stress a material can handle.

Many artists looked at materials and how they performed.

They tried to speak about what they were making art with.

The title has a second meaning too, about being pushed to our limits.

Here are five artworks at the Adelaide Biennial of Australian art you have to see:

Black Mist by Josina Pumani

Josina Pumani won the Emerging Artist Award in 2024.

Pumani brings a collection of clay pots to the biennial.

She was happy and proud to bring her work to the biennial.

Pumani started working with clay in 2024.

She uses clay to make pots that tell the story of nuclear testing.

Seven bombs were tested at Maralinga between 1956 and 1963.

The tests devastated Pumani's family and community.

Maralinga has since been declared safe, but vegetation hasn't grown back.

Pumani scatters sand in the pots, which turns to glass when fired.

The pots represent the mushroom cloud, smoke, and poison of the bomb.

Pumani's dad told her a story about what happened a long time ago.

She's making the story on the pot now.

Ciceroni by Nathan Beard

Beard combines observation with personal experience in his process.

Ciceroni refers to guides who took sightseers to experience local culture.

Beard is interested in how this practice extended to south-east Asia.

He looks at how those visits informed how Thai culture is perceived today.

Beard cast his hands and feet in silicone for Ciceroni.

The sculptures are hyper-real and strange, with elongated arms and fingers.

The body of work features his hands as a perverted form of ciceroni.

Beard uses prosthetic techniques to expand his hands and arms.

The sculptures are also strangely funny.

The form is inherently comical, says Beard.

Foods That Don't Rhyme by Lauren Burrow

Two torches are part of Foods That Don't Rhyme, one switching on and off to a heartbeat.

Burrow has been interested in the writing of Australian philosopher Val Plumwood.

One essay caught her attention, about being attacked by a saltwater crocodile.

The essay describes a transformative experience through a loss of selfhood.

Burrow had her own close encounter with a crocodile as a teenager.

She came across a crocodile in the pool during swimming training.

Burrow's work for the biennial is a sculpture of an overturned canoe.

The sculpture is crafted to look like it has a crocodile's skin.

Burrow achieves the effect with sea glass and beeswax.

She's been working with beeswax for the last few years.

Necrorealist Sunscreen by Erika Scott

Scott has 20 boxes of materials she uses over and over.

Scott turns piles of detritus into art that invites audiences to think.

She draws on necrorealism, a Russian art movement from the 80s.

Scott has assembled what looks like junk around a framework.

There's something about thinking beyond the body and present, says Scott.

When things break down, you think of how they're made and your own mortality.

Scott melted tanks with a heat gun to pierce them with smaller objects.

She finds objects like these on the mainland and puts them in her van.

Remnants of My Father by Archie Moore

It's about Moore's relationship with his father, says Buttrose.

Kamilaroi and Bigambul artist Archie Moore didn't know what to do after winning the Golden Lion.

He decided to tell the story of his father, Stanley, who believed there was gold on his property.

Moore turned parts of his father's story into gold, including war medals and a treasure map.

The gold pieces sit behind glass in the Museum of Economic Botany.

It's a different way to make a portrait, says Moore.

The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art is at the Art Gallery of South Australia until June 8.

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