The Mill Showcase is a gallery spacededicated to artists who work in our studio spaces at our Angas Street location, exhibiting some of the artworks and products that have been produced under our roof. The Mill Showcase profiles our artists, so that you can put a face to the name and get to know some of our dedicated makers.
This fifth edition of The Mill Showcase features work by Sandy Kumnick, Kate O’Callaghan and design studio Small Room.
About the artists:
Sandy Kumnick is an experimental multidisciplinary environmental artist. Following Media Studies at Uni SA, Sandy’s Video Art productions were shown at Adelaide Festival Centre and Media Resource Centre. Since completing a Visual Art and Design degree at Adelaide College of the Arts in 2012, Sandy has exhibited paintings, drawings and sculptures at galleries in China, Adelaide, Goolwa, and undertaken an Artist Residency at Sauerbier House, Port Noarlunga.
My work leads me as I create, with no intent of final outcome when choosing colours, making gestural marks or tossing dried kelp onto paper. It is humbling, meditative and enriching. I often incorporate found objects from the natural world as pure aesthetics and for thier significance, such as how Nature’s spiral pattern represents beginnings, resilience and eternity. I pay respect to the First Nation people and their connections with the natural materials used in my exhibits
Kate O’Callaghan graduated with Honours from the National Art School in 2004 majoring in Ceramics, where she won the graduate prize for her unique vessel designs. Her writing about South Korean Ceramics has been published in The Journal of Australian Ceramics. Kate is the Founder and Director of Artful, a company focused on teaching the benefits of clay to people of all ages.
I am completely drawn to throwing clay on the wheel, along with teaching as many people who are as equally excited by the possibility inherent in working with clay.
Small Room is the ongoing creative project of Lachlan Stewart, Angus Plunkett & Rafal Liszewski. Lachlan, Angus and Rafal have been working together since 2013. Graphic design was a gateway and framework for the creative practice they have developed. Small room has taken many forms since its conception and is currently exploring work through screen printing, illustration, painting, installation, photography, web and graphic design.
We have created an installation which displays work from the past two years. This installation which houses our work is a glimpse into the creative environment Small Room like to operate in. Taking inspiration from many zones and internet holes we get caught in, linked with a hindsight view of our childhoods and working experiences. We use our creativity as a way to express and process the world. Informed by y2k tech aesthetics, metalheart/depthcore, consumer culture, minimalist furniture, international style design and brutalism.
When:Friday, March 12, 2021, 3pm-5pm, arrive 15 minutes early to sign in and warm up
Venue: Dance Hub SA, Lion Arts Centre, level 1, corner Morphett St and North Terrace, Adelaide
Cost:$30 + booking fee
The Mill in partnership with Adelaide Festival and venue partner Dance Hub SA, present a masterclass with Branch Nebula (NSW).
About the Masterclass:
The creative team working on High Performance Packing Tape have been exploring how objects and the body collide in risky situations. Doing the wrong thing. What happens when you change the priorities in terms of risk. The workshop participants are invited to prepare by bringing materials and objects that they would like to work with. Thinking about everyday items that can be sourced from shops, or off the street. Materials that when multiplied may have increased integrity. Or perhaps no integrity. Things you may wish to climb, or be used to change your shape. Its ok to bring more than what you think you will need for your exploration. As a workshop leader, Lee will share some techniques for controlled falling, stages of preparation for a risky manoeuvre, and escape routes. We will work with the props to create short pieces.
Participant level:
Emerging and professional artists: performers, dancers, physical people.
Lee Wilson is one of the co-Artistic Directors of Branch Nebula. He is based in Sydney, and has toured extensively throughout his 30 year career as a performer and director. Lee trained at UWS Theatre Nepean and with the company Acrobat. Since co-founding Branch Nebula with Mirabelle Wouters 20 years ago, they have created many new works including the Helpmann Award winners Snake Sessions and Whelping Box. Branch Nebula’s aesthetic draws its dynamism from a passionate engagement with street culture. Refined art-making is everywhere, if you know how to look. We champion the exquisite skills of the skater as we do the fluid movement of the contemporary dancer, and we build our work with both.Branch Nebula is one of Australia’s most adventurous performance companies working at the nexus between theatre, dance, sport & street-styles. They work with non-conventional performers to collaboratively devise work that defies categorization. Lee’s credits with other artists include dramaturgy on Nick Power’s dance pieces Cypher, Between Tiny Cities and Two Crews. He has also worked with Roslyn Oades, Ahilan Ratnamohan, Shaun Parker, Shaun Gladwell, Urban Theatre Projects, Kate Champion, Acrobat and Post Arrivalists. Lee has led many workshops including Body of Ideas at Critical Path.
A choreographic commission, The Move is a curated initiative of Dance Hub SA, The Mill and Ausdance SA, presented by Adelaide Festival Centre.
The project seeks professional South Australian Choreographers and their artistic teams to each create and present a fully realised 20-30 minute dance work for The Move to be staged at Adelaide Festival Centre’s Space Theatre as a combined production in April 2021.
When: March 5, 2021, 10am to 12pm, (arrive 15 minutes early to sign in)
Where: Dance Hub SA, Lion Arts Centre, level 1, corner Morphett St and North Terrace, Adelaide
Cost: $30 + booking fees (Dance Hub SA Member Discount $25 plus fees)
The Mill in partnership with Adelaide Festival and venue partner Dance Hub SA, present a masterclass with Gravity & Other Myths.
About the Masterclass:
This masterclass will be divided into two sections:
Acrobatic Skill Training
As an acrobatic based company, skill training is integral to our process. With guidance from some of Australia's leading acrobats, you will have the opportunity to trial GOM's favourite physical languages from creative floor based tumbling to towers and acrobatic swinging, this will be a little taste of the fundamental components of Australian contemporary circus.
An Introduction into GOM's Creative Process
Drawing from many varied influences, GOM has built a strong toolkit for creating physical work from a conceptual or thematic launching point. From acrobatics through to dance and even theatre, our experienced artists will run you through a collection of creation exercises that we use to create our own work.
Participant level:
Emerging and professional artists: performers, dancers, actors, physical people.
Gravity and Other Myths (GOM) is an acrobatics and physical theatre company pushing the boundaries of new circus. Formed in Adelaide, Australia in 2009, GOM has rocketed to stellar acclaim with a series of disarmingly accomplished ensemble works. GOM utilises an honest approach to performance, to create work with a focus on human connection and acrobatic virtuosity.
Our first work, A Simple Space, has achieved momentous international success, having performed more than 850 times across 34 countries and receiving multiple awards, most notably the IPAY Victor Award for People's Choice. Backbone, GOM’s subsequent work, premiered as part of the 2017 Adelaide Festival to critical acclaim and 3 Helpmann Award nominations, cementing the company’s position as a leader in contemporary circus. GOM’s latest work, Out Of Chaos…, premiered at the 2019 Adelaide Festival and went on to receive the 2019 Helpmann Award for Best Physical Theatre.
Alongside our onstage work, GOM deeply values engaging with both our immediate and wider community through workshops and education. Our artists are all experienced coaches in both physical skill training and conceptual creation and are eager to share their skills and knowledge.
The Mill is excited to present Life Maps, an exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Jingwei Bu. This series of drawings are both the artworks itself and a document of performative action. Jingwei speaks of her process as intuitive action, where she uses techniques of focus and meditation to translate emotion and memory onto the paper.
Formally, the works have a simple palate and are constructed of a handful of stylised gestures- repeated lines, shading, sequenced numbers and spirals. Each drawing is created in one sitting, which lasts several hours, drawing from the genre of time based performance. They are built through an intricate and layered mark making process, where Jingwei moves about the page purposefully. Meaning shifts as earlier marks are covered, or extended over. Abstraction allows Jingwei to express deeply personal and emotional experiences through movement in a way that allows audiences to engage their own curiosity, their own mental performance of map-making. The exhibition also includes a performance by Jingwei, extending her Life Maps into live action in the gallery space.
My Life Maps drawings are a performative movement of the hands. The marks, numbers and lines carry the intuitive motion performed on the paper. The endurance of the movement uses the paper as a stage and as a boundary for action. The results of the performances are either purely intuitive or an action for a reflection on a life event. The repetition of motion is like meditation and ritual. The repetition is never the same.
The freedom of movement is paralleled by the process of creating space among lines, forms, and marks that resonate the actions of navigating distance and space among people. The longer the movement, the deeper I can go into the subconscious of emotion and memory accumulated in the life journey. To reach, to fix, to answer the questions locked.
Each mark has its character to me, together they are telling complex stories. This exhibition shows the old Life Maps from the previous years and the recent ones since my mother’s passing two years ago. The making of new life maps has helped me get through the grieving and to gradually heal.
Jingwei Bu is an art student from Adelaide Central School of Art, graduating with her associate bachelor degree of art in 2020. Jingwei’s practice draws on Buddhist Chan/Zen teachings. She references both Western and Eastern cultural and artistic traditions in duration-based works on paper titled Life Maps. In creating them Jingwei utilises the principles of a mindfulness meditation, committing to a length of time engaging memory, experience and reflection to document her life’s journey using mark-making.
She is passionate about sharing this creative process with others and credits the cathartic artmaking process as possessing positive and even therapeutic benefits, citing an emphasis on acceptance and the ability to transform negative thoughts and feelings through creativity.
Cost: $30 + booking fees (Dance Hub SA Member Discount $25 plus fees)
The Mill in Partnership with Adelaide Festival and venue partner Dance Hub SA, present a masterclass with Sydney Dance Company.
About the masterclass:
A visceral and thrilling exploration of the juxtaposition of beauty and devastation, Sydney Dance Company’s full-length work, Impermanence is Rafael Bonachela’s newest creation. This two-hour masterclass led by Company Dancer Jesse Scales will incorporate contemporary technique, an opportunity to learn repertoire from Impermanence, and exploration of the creative tasks that informed the choreographic process behind the work. Aimed at tertiary and professional-level dancers, this workshop provides insight into the contemporary dance processes used in the development of a work at Sydney Dance Company.
Born in Hobart, Jesse is from Adelaide where they trained with Terry Simpson and was awarded their RAD Solo Seal. They received full scholarships to study with Complexions Contemporary Ballet in New York and Nederlands Dans Theatre in The Hague and went on to major in classical ballet at the New Zealand School of Dance.
Since joining Sydney Dance Company in 2012, Jesse performed a feature role in the Australian premiere of William Forsythe’s Quintett for which they were awarded the 2015 Green Room Award for ‘Best Female Dancer’ and a nomination for the 2015 Helpmann Award for ‘Best Female Dancer’. Jesse made their choreographic debut in Sydney Dance Company’s 2016 New Breed season. In 2017 Jesse was named ‘Most Outstanding Dancer’ in the Dance Australia Critics’ Choice Survey.
Jesse choreographed a new work for New Breed 2020.
Dance changes you. More than simply witnessing something beautiful, or engaging with culture, to experience dance is to be positively altered. From performances at the Joyce Theatre in New York, to the Grand in Shanghai, the Stanislavsky in Moscow and the Sydney Opera House at home, Sydney Dance Company has proved that there are no passive observers in a contemporary dance audience.
Venue: Dance Hub SA, Lion Arts Centre, level 1, corner Morphett St and North Terrace, Adelaide
Cost: $23
The Mill in partnership with Adelaide Fringe and venue partner Dance Hub SA, present a contemporary dance masterclass with Thomas E.S. Kelly, a proud Bundjalung-Yugambeh, Wiradjuri, Ni-Vanuatu man, who co-created Karul Projects in 2017.
About the masterclass:
The masterclass, suitable for contemporary trained dancers, explores Contemporary Indigenous Dance Technique, a grounded physical form that will leave you sweaty, energised and connected.
Karul Projects is a company led by new First Nation voices telling new stories. Karul is situated in South East Qld and Northern NSW. Thomas creates work that explores high intensity physical works stemming from a cultural practice fused with contemporary, which incorporates voice and physical percussion. Creating work that ebbs and flows whilst mimicking nature. Remembering the past to better understand the present so we can move forward into the future.
The Mill presents a much anticipated 10-day professional development project, Cinematic Experiments, in partnership with artist Margie Medlin and Mercury CX, funded by Arts SA.
In response to creatives pushing further into exploring digital spaces, this intensive workshop challenges a mixed cohort of dance, performance, film and design artists to explore the development of interdisciplinary, hybrid and digital platforms. The stimulating, experiment-based structure builds digital technologies skills for participating artists and ignites new ways of thinking and practicing.
The partnership between The Mill and Mercury CX reflects the labs interdisciplinary aspirations.
Images: Margie Medlin, dancer Vicki Van Hout, Cinematic Experiments 2019
Participants can expect:
The project, spans two weeks working with Margie Medlin as lead artist, a film/camera production person and editing teacher/facilitator. The process will combine;
Introduction to avant-garde cinema practices:
Exploring aesthetics of the cinematic frame e.g. on-screen and off screen, depth of field, focus
Practical sessions such as: working with the video camera (video or DSLR camera), light for the camera - practical lighting movement in the void (black box studio, cameras, tripods, lights, sound), video editing (introduction of premiere pro-editing software), layering testing ideas and exploring the potential of projection
Participants will work in small groups to create, share, and discuss cinematic experiments at The Mill’s studios and Mercury CX editing suites.
When: May 10 - May 21, 2021, 9.30am - 5.30pm (Monday to Friday) Artist Fee: $2000 + $200 super contribution (artists paid for this workshop)
Applications open: February 24 Applications close: March 18, 12am midnight Applicants notified: March 31
The Mill Breakout Space is a versatile black box theatre. Expect everything from theatre to circus, comedy, live music and more.
This year, we will be playing host to 90+ Adelaide Fringe shows from across Australia, the UK, and Europe. Take a look through our program list below or browse our shows via Adelaide Fringe
The Mill is an accessible space. Disability access is available via Angas St, and a disability toilet is also available. If you have any questions or additional accessibility requirements, please contact us at info@themilladelaide.com
The over-produced drama and the production values of reality TV and movies sure have a lot to answer for.
Meet Carla; 34, single, Virgo, outgoing, straight forward, Cabaret Artist and she's looking for love... still. From first love to happy ever after, every relationship seems to have 'a catch'! Sometimes the road to love is definitely not what you expect and a bit longer. Ok, a lot longer.
If you've ever been in love, out of love, looking for love, or happily ever single - this cabaret show is for you.
Winner of Best Cabaret Weekly Award, Adelaide Fringe 2020.
Heroes never die...they just cry deep down inside.
Sam Dugmore (The Latebloomers Scotland! & The Bakers) is back as one of the greatest action heroes of all time, MAN-BO.
MAN-BO must un-earth his ruthless man skills to confront his greatest nemesis...himself. A deadly mission filled with calamity and raw emotion. One-man vs himself. A feel-bad comedy about heroism.
Three bakers, one bakery! Dough up the walls, flour in your eyes. Join The Latebloomers, award winning creators of 'Scotland!', for another dose of the ridiculous and the sublime.
Winner Best Comedy weekly award Adelaide Fringe 2019.
The newly formulated one man solo project of South Australian musician, Hunter Rogers, embarks on a narrative and auditory spectrum of song and journey. Drawing elements from multiple flavours of music performance from Rock to Baroque Pop; Synthwave to Music Theatre; Industrial to Prog. This showcase of work will be a crack in the ice.
Do you suffer from an ache that ails you or a maddening malady? Do you feel like a chunk of rotting butcher's meat that's been ripped apart in the sweltering heat of the day by hungry dogs?
Then look no further than the miracle cure we have for you. Two brothers performing sketch comedy: it will make you laugh, make you cry, put a pep in your step and some fuel in your mule.
Dad used to say, "anything worth having comes at a price". Are you willing to pay what it takes for 'Success'?
Success is not always a direct path, not everything works out like we planned. Maybe, we think we are just not good enough. Overcoming self-doubt and fighting those destructive thoughts may be the biggest battles we experience.
The Baroque is running free in hedge mazes and dancing in champagne fountains. Bursting with silliness, Swedish clown Oliver Nilsson ('The Latebloomers' 'Scotland!' & 'The Bakers') will charm and titillate in this rollercoaster of stupidity, slapstick and the sublime. Curtains draw! Lights up! BEHOLD! This is The Baroque!
Directed by Britt Plummer ('Chameleon' by FRANK. Theatre).
Johnnie and Janine Smithergreen (Stuart Day & Dianne Reid) are a middle-aged brother-sister singing act (not so) fresh from the sixties and seventies. They revisit a selection of groovy girl-boy duets that outdo the Osmonds, crush the Carpenters and reconcile Sonny and Cher. Delivered with their own unique mix of wholesome positivity and ageing hippy sarcasm, they will blow your idea of political correctness to Smithergreens!
She's been in the same room for a while now, and things are starting to get weird. Out of a smokescreen of dirty laundry and shaggy dogs, a mysterious voice challenges her to cut the bull. But can she work out how?
Does unravelling the truth mean unravelling herself in the process? If the foundation of sanity is knowing fact from fiction, was it the outside world or her own brain that first started feeling a bit shaky? When the hell is the sun going to come up?
A mind-bending and jaw-dropping journey through the human psyche. The demonstrations within 'Confessions' will look like genuine psychic ability. But they are not. And Tom is honest about that. The show will provide a glimpse into how it works and why so many people want to believe it's real.
Join Rebel Lyons in her Adelaide Fringe debut as she muses on Matrimony, Monogamy and Masturbation. A Hen's Night party for those who aren't sure if they're ready to commit to an eternity of mediocre sex. This hysterical ride will leave you questioning the romanticism of romance and the absurdity of bridal culture in the present day.
A poignant yet funny play with original songs. The story spans 3 generations of women and begins in Northern England in 1965. Jennifer follows her sisters to Australia leaving her mother Dotty with an empty nest. Weaving in and out of time, Jennifer says the last goodbye to her own daughter many years later.
Christine Firkin wrote the book from snippets of family history. Her single woman show premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017. Audiences loved it for its strong writing and nuanced performances.
Where: The Mill Exhibition Space, 154 Angas St, Kaurna Yarta
Cost:Free
Disability access is available via our Angas St entrance, access the pedestrian ramp on the corner of Gunson St. The Mill has concrete flooring throughout and a disability toilet. View more in-depth information on our accessibilitypage.
Join us for the launch of Hussain’s exhibition In search of a good laugh, the outcome of work produced during his sponsored studio residency at The Mill. In Search of a good laugh opens alongside The Many Faces of Frances on Friday, November 26. Hussain will also present an artist talk in conversation with The Mill’s Visual Arts Curator Adele Sliuzas in November.
As much as identity defines who we are, our culture and morals; it is always a challenge to prevent misconception, misrepresentation and misjudgment. This challenge and other issues like belonging, individualism, autonomy, gender tension make no identity idle. Through In search of a good laugh I explore the possibilities of identity within a Saudi/Middle Eastern and Australian context.
Over the past few years, I have been working with the significant visual elements that represent Arab people, creating an abstract visual catalogue of identity. The artworks suggest the colourful shapes and patterns that speak truly about Arabic diversity and culture.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by an interview I recently watched where visitors to an art exhibition were asked: ‘What you are looking for in this exhibition?’ One visitor answered ‘I don’t know! Maybe a good laugh!’ This answer struck me, and took me back to ten years ago when I worked as a cartoonist at KFUPM newspaper (a university publication in Saudi Arabia), where my art work attempted to generate laughter about the hardest issues faced by students. Since then, my work has shifted to become more abstracted and conceptual, however, I believe laughter is a worthwhile pursuit. This exhibition may not be overtly comedic, but I would like to invite audiences to consider the work through a lens where it can be both serious, conceptual and parodical.
In constant flirting with meaning and medium; Saudi visual artist Hussain Alismail focuses on the pleated part of Saudi society in his work. Coming from the marginal community of Shia in the Eastern providence, he was constrained to examining a rich perspective of social interactions and discourses. Alismail draws inspiration from direct/indirect communications, experiences and history to tell stories about our culture.
He holds BFA in drawing & painting from OCAD U with an emphasis on illustration and social science. He is currently in the final year of visual effects and entertainment design studies (VEED) at Flinders University. Alismail exhibits both nationally and internationally, most recently presenting work in his third solo show Frilly at Argo on the parade in Adelaide. In 2020, he was one of the recipients of Maan grant from Athr gallery and one of the participants of the inaugural Albalad residency by Saudi Arabia Ministry of Culture. He was awarded in many competitions including Alkassbi International Award II (2015) and MCY by Edge of Arabia (2011).
Where: The Mill Breakout Space, 154 Angas St (enter via Gunson St), Kaurna Yerta
Price: $25 + booking fee
The Mill is an accessible space. Disability access is available via Angas St, and a disability toilet is also available. If you have any questions or additional accessibility requirements, please contact us at info@themilladelaide.com
The Baroque is running free in hedge mazes and dancing in champagne fountains. Bursting with silliness, Swedish clown Oliver Nilsson (The Latebloomers, Scotland! and The Bakers) will charm and titillate in this rollercoaster of stupidity, slapstick and the sublime. Curtains draw! Lights up! BEHOLD! This is The Baroque!
Directed by Britt Plummer (Chameleon by FRANK. Theatre), The Mill and Adelaide Fringe 'Centre Stage Residency' Recipient 2020.
Have you ever wondered what the future might look like? Feel like? Taste like?
Eating Tomorrow is a back-to-the-future time travel experiment, immersing audiences in prospective scenarios of what our food systems, customs and behaviours might become in the next fifty years.
In Post Dining's most daring and exciting immersive food experience yet, come and be enveloped into a journey of the senses. With support from the Department of the Premier and Cabinet through Arts South Australia and Adelaide Fringe.
When: Thursday April 22 to Saturday 24, 7:00pm Where: Space Theatre at Adelaide Festival Centre, King William St, Kaurna Yerta Duration: 1 hour
We're absolutely thrilled to announce tickets are on sale for The Move, a curated initiative of Dance Hub SA, The Mill and Ausdance SA, presented by Adelaide Festival Centre.
In April 2021, commissioned choreographers Gabrielle Nankivell and Lewis Major will unveil their world premiere works in an enthralling dance double bill, ranging from the innovative wit of Nankivell's Wonder Grit through to the visceral intensity of Major's Satori.
This exhibition celebrates 10 years of collaboration between renowned photographer Chris Herzfeld and dancer Erin Fowler. Creative collaborations such as these are immensely valuable to artists practice, and Chris and Erin have shown how strong creative relationship can grow and develop over time. Both have spent the past 10 years becoming attuned to each other’s practice, and are able to work intuitively as well as push each other to grow. In this series of portraits we see Erin’s incredible skill as a dancer and model showcased by Chris’ photography. Both have also made significant contributions to The Mill, Erin as Co-Founder and Chris as a long term supporter and contributor to our programming. Through this series of images we celebrate their collaboration, and also thank them for their continued contribution to the Adelaide creative sector!
CHRIS : I’ve been really fortunate over the last 17 years to have collaborated with some fantastic dancers and artists on some really special projects. But it’s always super special when you reach a big milestone as I have done in 2020 with Erin Fowler. 10 years ago we started helping each other out on projects and over the years our relationship has morphed into fully collaborating in setting up and executing projects together.
Ok, maybe there been a few cakes eaten along the way as well to satisfy the 3pm sugar craving but it’s been an incredible, thoroughly rewarding & enjoyable journey working with Erin over the last 10 years. We’ve created a diverse range of projects over that time with memorable outcomes. A massive thanks to Erin, Kyra and all of those we’ve dragged into our vortex over the years.
ERIN : Chris, Kyra and I have been working together on dance photography collaborations since 2010. Together we have developed an attuned and creative approach to creating shots. Both Chris and I enjoy working relatively quickly and intuitively and I think that this approach results in very alive and energised shots.
At the beginning of 2020 Chris, Kyra and I decided that we would create 10 new projects for our 10th year of working together. These projects range from dance to fashion, as promotional shoots for dance projects and lots in between. We’ve shot in the studio & on location, here in South Australia and around the world. This exhibition is a small sample of the 20+ collections we have created together.
Established in 2003 by Chris Herzfeld, Camlight Productions is a unique business that provides photography, cinematography and lighting services. Chris works extensively in the arts and in particular throughout the Australian dance industry as a photographer & a cinematographer.
Chris’s images are a fusion of fashion and dance. Drawing on the distinctive range of movement and shapes of dance in combination with the more traditional modelling poses, the image embodies a sense of drama, poise and style. This unique style creates images that have a sense of narrative within them. Chris likes to leave it to the viewer to use their imagination to create that story. In a world where digital manipulation and compositing are commonplace in photography Chris's approach is more classical, with an emphasis on lighting, colours and composition with the look of minimal post production processing. His images take on a 3D appearance so the viewer feels as if they are present in the location watching the action happen before their eyes.
Erin Fowler is an Australian artist working across the dance, theatre, music and film industries. She creates and presents deeply feminine, audience driven, socially minded work. Erin is a multi-faceted performer that blends together an eclectic mix of contemporary dance, theatre, music, clowning and martial arts. Erin’s choreographic credits includes FEMME, (2019 Adelaide Fringe - Best Dance Award. 2020 Adelaide Fringe – Made in Adelaide award), and toured to Reykjavik, Edinburgh & Stockholm. Other works include Gen- y (2018) commissioned for the Adelaide Dance Festival; Epoch (2016) created on Australian Dance Theatre for their Ignition season; and the dance film, Gaia (2014), which has currently screened in over 23 international film festivals.
Erin is a qualified Qoya teacher (a holistic movement practice for women) as well as a facilitator of women’s circles and women’s embodiment practices. Through her new NFO company The Gaia Movement, she is currently working with a number of international schools and partner organisations to develop a school education program and community engagement strategy bason on Gaia.
Venue: The Mill Breakout, The Mill 154 Angas Street, Adelaide
Cost: $23
The Mill is an accessible space. Disability access is available via Angas St, and a disability toilet is also available. If you have any questions or additional accessibility requirements, please contact us at info@themilladelaide.com
The Mill in partnership with Adelaide Fringe present a masterclass with performers The Latebloomers.
The Latebloomers are an international company of performers who met at the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School in Paris.
About the Masterclass:
This masterclass caters for either professional performers wanting to learn new skills for their repertoire or brush up on the art of 'play' or beginners/amateurs wanting to have some fun, build confidence and discover new skills. A brief introduction to clown including a Lecoq style physical warm-up with improv games, characterisation, improvisation and slapstick.
The Latebloomers are an international company of performers who met at the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School in Paris. Their work draws on training in physical theatre, clown and mime. Their first show 'Scotland!' has toured to multiple countries in Europe and Australia, winning awards at the Adelaide, Prague and Paris Fringe festivals.
Opening event: Friday, January 22, 5:30pm to 7:30pm
The Mill Showcase is a gallery spacededicated to artists who work in our studio spaces at our Angas Street location, exhibiting some of the artworks and products that have been produced under our roof. The Mill Showcase profiles our artists, so that you can put a face to the name and get to know some of our dedicated makers.
This fourth edition of The Mill Showcase features work by Kirsty Martinsen, Steel Chronis and Evie Hassiotis.
About the artists:
Steel Chronisis an emerging artist, working and living on Kaurna land, who works across various media in their practice. Their work typically focuses on the mundane and macabre with consideration of the fleeting nature of time. Their work is often a preservation of structures, subjects and moments, highlighting the beauty of the ordinary. Steel has had a studio at The Mill since 2020.
These works are a segment of my investigation into various types of inks and application styles of the medium. The parameters of this exercise were to work with a brush, gesturally and within the compositional limitations of a landscape orientation. The works presented utilise Indian Ink, an ink that can be applied in an diverse manner - either thinned out, layered or painted thickly to achieve a dramatic black. What makes this ink unique is that it is made with a shellac gum binder, giving the ink a unique brilliance and a high level of water resistance.
Evie Hassiotisis an Adelaide based artist who works intuitively with textures and mixed media, photography and improvised dance. Evie believes in the potential of art to emotionally heal the human soul and to promote spiritual growth in the art practitioner and in the viewer. Improvised movement together with her art practice have been an avenue to express spirituality, creativity and art as a healing practice. Evie has had a studio at The Mill since 2019.
These prints were nearly all created in 2020 during the social and physical restrictions enacted in response to Coronavirus. This series reflect on the metaphorical masks most of us wear every day, masks we wear to cover our true selves, whatever our reasons. These works offer an observation of human behaviour and what people choose to reveal and not to reveal to others and themselves.
Kirsty Martinsen’s practice is predominantly drawing and painting, and recently as a Writer/Director of the short documentary, Limited Surrender, with SBS and SA Film Corporation. She has a BA Visual Art from SA School of Art (UniSA) and Dip. Painting from New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, has exhibited in USA, Australia and Amsterdam. Kirsty Martinsen has had a studio at The Mill since 2014.
In the middle of a pandemic I had moved into an apartment on the 11th floor, looking West. During this period of self-isolation, I began doing a daily pastel drawing of the setting sun. Every day the sky is different, sometimes the sun pops out from behind the cloud and looks like it is being born. Seeing the sunsets grouped together you can trace changes in season, and my thinking about light.
Where: The Mill Breakout Space, 154 Angas Street, (enter via Gunson Street)
Duration: 1 hour (including Q+A)
Cost: Free
Unravel is a first stage development of multi-disciplinary work exploring identity and connection to place that is enabled through embodied movement and text.
This project builds upon a collaboration between dance practitioner Adrianne Semmens and writer Jennifer Eadie and the publication created together, Unravel, facilitated by The Mill’s Writer in Residence program, and commissioned by Delving into Dance in partnership with Critical Path as part of the 2019/20 Digital Interchange Festival.
The project explores what it means to acknowledge a sense of disconnection-connection to place, exploring through memories, agitations and the calling for deeper connections to ancestral country.
About the artists:
Adrianne Semmens is a dance practitioner with experience working across the arts, education and community sectors. Adrianne is a descendant of the Barkindji People of NSW and a graduate of NAISDA Dance College and Adelaide College of the Arts.
Identity and place continue to be reoccurring themes within Adrianne’s practice, investigated throughout her own choreographic explorations and community based projects to embody place and memory, and interrogate social constructs.
Choreographic highlights include Thread (2020), created for The World’s Smallest Stage, in collaboration with Australian Dance Theatre, and engagement in Dance Epidemic (2018), creating a site specific work on a group of international youth dancers as part Creative Gatherings for Panpapanalya, Joint Dance Congress.
Adrianne’s professional experience also includes her role as a Dance Presenter for The Australian Ballet’s Dance Education Ensemble, as a performer for Gina Rings, Jo Clancy, Jade Erlandsen, Cathy Adamek and recent performances for Dance Rites, choreographed by Kaine Sultan-Babij. Passionate about dance education and the role of dance in maintaining wellbeing, Adrianne has worked on many youth focused initiatives, including projects for Kurruru Arts and Culture Hub, Carclew, University of South Australia, Department for Education and Ausdance SA.
Jennifer Eadie is a writer and artist living and working on Kaurna Yerta in South Australia. She is a graduate of UNSW Art & Design. Currently, an academic at UniSA and PhD candidate in the Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders University. Her creative practice is primarily text and installation based: combining word, image, video, and found objects.
Her writing and art has been published in CORDITE Poetry Review, criticalpath, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Borderlands e-journal, Extempore and Frankie Magazine.
Cost: $20 + booking fee (attend both for $30 + booking fee using discount code)
The Mill is an accessible space. Disability access is available via Angas St, and a disability toilet is also available. If you have any questions or additional accessibility requirements, please contact us at info@themilladelaide.com
Presented by The Mill and Jess Martin, this two part workshop series will guide participants through the essential skills of writing engaging and generous arts criticism, including how to develop a critical voice and start getting published as a reviewer.
About the workshops:
Workshop One, January 22: Pitching and Structure for Arts Reviews
This workshop will cover the ins and outs of choosing what to write about and pitching to publications. We will also get into how to structure a review to achieve clarity, word length, and the expectations of publishers. Workshop One will deliver local industry knowledge for getting published as well as the key skills to get started as a reviewer.
Workshop Two, January 23: Writing Approaches and the Ethics of Arts Criticism
Workshop Two is all about the skills to make your writing stand out and develop toward a career as a generous and engaging arts critic. This workshop will also discuss how to make responsible choices in writing positive and negative reviews, and how to find bold and interesting angles to write from. We’ll get into the nitty gritty of writing techniques, how to frame feedback for performers, as well as how to get readers’ attention and keep them on the hook for your whole review.
Jess Martin is a freelance writer and interdisciplinary artist based on Kaurna land in Adelaide. They have extensive experience as an arts critic, published in The Adelaide Review, Witness Performance, and Fest Magazine among others. Jess is interested in experimental performance, sharing experiences of queerness and disability, and making work in regional contexts. They also have experience facilitating creative projects and workshops as a poet, performer and textile artist. Jess is currently Writer in Residence at The Mill, and was programmed in National Young Writers’ Festival 2020.
Artist talk and Fringissage: Sunday, February 21, 1pm-3pm
The Mill’s 2021 Exhibition Space program opens with Random Acts of Obsession: The Artist as the Collector, a new body of work by multidisciplinary artist Carolyn Corletto. Working with found materials, paint, clay, thread and words, Carolyn has created a personal Wunderkammer. Following her compulsion to obsessively collect, she uses discarded domestic objects and ephemeral natural objects as sites for material investigation. The objects of her collections are often found while walking through public space and parklands, then taken back to the studio to be reimagined, investigated, and imbued with memories. Carolyn’s process speaks to the affinity that she holds with her collection, as material objects but also repositories of identity and memory, ‘I respond to the call of things’ she says.
I often find myself inhabiting the liminal space between passion and obsession, where collection becomes compulsion. Discarded objects begin to speak to me of a new accumulative value. Motives for collecting or over-collecting vary and combine differently for each collector. For me the selection of an object worthy of collection is rooted in memory and biography. The fixation becomes physical with the need to hunt, to store (sometimes display) and inevitably (for me) the need to make something. My art practice is an emotional response to my experience of the landscape and the materiality of the objects I collect as I move through it. I usually find myself focussing on the smallest objects, appreciating their unique properties and design. In my mind anything can become something else through the ministrations of conceptual meditation. Connections are made between found objects and material processes as they assert their status as saved, rehabilitated or collected.
In this exhibition I have created works that are inextricable from the process itself. Expanding on my finalist work in the Parklands Art Prize I have continued my daily walk through the Parklands and other green spaces, collecting tiny specimens of natural materials or domestic debris and making a one inch wheel thrown ceramic vessel for each object. As the vessels contain my daily thoughts I have found the clay responding differently each day into a myriad of iterations. During Covid restrictions when obsession with making was able to take hold undistracted or tempered by reason I came to appreciate the sense of control these occupations afforded in times of uncertainty, the curative effect before the compulsion returns.
This exhibition embodies a response to my wanderings, my research and the interior landscape of my personal obsessions, all the while mining childhood memories of lying on the grass gazing through the tracery of trees. With deliberate energy each work offers an acutely focussed encounter and collaboration with an environment balanced between vulnerability and resilience. By bringing materials out of their habitat and into the gallery, recontextualising with a mindful counter of tension and tenderness, I confirm that my eyes are open to the urgency of fragility.
Carolyn Corletto is an emerging multidisciplinary artist working in the fields of painting, sculpture, textiles, ceramics and assemblage. Using found materials, paint, clay, thread and words she contemplates and prospects the materiality of discarded domestic objects and ephemoral natural objects as repositories of identity and memory. Since graduating with Honours from Adelaide Central School of Art she has been actively exhibiting both in South Australia and interstate including being selected by Guildhouse to exhibit her Honours work in a solo show.
The last 3 years have been highly productive for Corletto. She was a finalist in the Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, the Broken Hill Outback Art Prize and the Parklands Art Prize and was awarded the Wilson Wine Label Commission through the Helpmann Academy. This year she was a finalist in both the Don Dunstan Award and the Adelaide City Incubator Award during the 2020 SALA Festival. Corletto is currently working out of Collective Haunt Studios and has recently been awarded a Diderot Scholarship towards a residency in France that will be taken up after the lifting of travel restrictions.
Unravel is a first stage development of multi-disciplinary work exploring identity and connection to place that is enabled through embodied movement and text.
This project builds upon a collaboration between dance practitioner Adrianne Semmens and writer Jennifer Eadie and the publication created together, Unravel, facilitated by The Mill’s Writer in Residence program, and commissioned by Delving into Dance in partnership with Critical Path as part of the 2019/20 Digital Interchange Festival.
The project explores what it means to acknowledge a sense of disconnection-connection to place, exploring through memories, agitations and the calling for deeper connections to ancestral country.
About the artists:
Adrianne Semmens is a dance practitioner with experience working across the arts, education and community sectors. Adrianne is a descendant of the Barkindji People of NSW and a graduate of NAISDA Dance College and Adelaide College of the Arts.
Identity and place continue to be reoccurring themes within Adrianne’s practice, investigated throughout her own choreographic explorations and community based projects to embody place and memory, and interrogate social constructs.
Choreographic highlights include Thread (2020), created for The World’s Smallest Stage, in collaboration with Australian Dance Theatre, and engagement in Dance Epidemic (2018), creating a site specific work on a group of international youth dancers as part Creative Gatherings for Panpapanalya, Joint Dance Congress.
Adrianne’s professional experience also includes her role as a Dance Presenter for The Australian Ballet’s Dance Education Ensemble, as a performer for Gina Rings, Jo Clancy, Jade Erlandsen, Cathy Adamek and recent performances for Dance Rites, choreographed by Kaine Sultan-Babij. Passionate about dance education and the role of dance in maintaining wellbeing, Adrianne has worked on many youth focused initiatives, including projects for Kurruru Arts and Culture Hub, Carclew, University of South Australia, Department for Education and Ausdance SA.
Jennifer Eadie is a writer and artist living and working on Kaurna Yerta in South Australia. She is a graduate of UNSW Art & Design. Currently, an academic at UniSA and PhD candidate in the Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders University. Her creative practice is primarily text and installation based: combining word, image, video, and found objects.
Her writing and art has been published in CORDITE Poetry Review, criticalpath, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Borderlands e-journal, Extempore and Frankie Magazine.
Her artwork was included in the third Mill Showcase.
