Parallel Collisions: 12th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia

Parallel Collisions is divided into three sections and spread across the Gallery’s spaces, intermingling the new and transitory with the old and permanent. The Tracking Shot, in the temporary exhibitions space downstairs, presents the new work of sixteen artists. The Redux presents a revisitation of seven Australian artists, while The Incursions bring contemporary still, video, and installation works into contact
with the Gallery’s permanent collection of Australian art.

The highlights?

Downstairs, Tim Silver’s self-portrait — a cast sculpture — is a half-chilling, half-warming depiction of decay and demise: the sculpture’s lifespan will mirror that of the exhibition. Marco Fusinato’s Imperical Distortion is a large, immersive installation that, triggered by your clap, showers you with neon lights presenting startling statistics estranged from their subject.

In the Elder Wing of Australian Art, I loved the idea of interspersing the strikingly contemporary biennial works with the permanent collection of colonial landscapes, aboriginal artwork, and twentieth-century Australian paintings. Nicholas Folland’s installation is particularly hard to pass by without gaping — a suspended sculpture of 2000 cut glass decanters, bowls, and vases, it’s romantic and a little bit magical.

Nicholas Folland, Jump Up, 2012. Found crystal and glassware, stainless-steel wire, steel, timber.

But my very favourite work, as a Melbourne girl dutifully in love with laneways, was Daniel Crooks’ A garden of parallel paths — a video work involving the seamless sampling of urban lanes, paths and alleys. The pathways and their walkers inhabit a realm of twisted time and distorted space: it’s intriguing, meditative, and hard to tear yourself away from.

The whole exhibition has been carefully pulled together, and the darkened spaces downstairs are mysterious and contemporary. Parallel Collisions ends on 29 April.

The Art Gallery of South Australia