Green Room: Feast on this, Limitless art, Weekend of Words
SA arts & culture news in brief: Feast Festival launches its line-up – with a new hub and queer film festival, a fundraising exhibition offering limitless opportunities, what’s in store at OzAsia’s Weekend of Words, and entries open for $100,000 art prize.
Get set for ‘Pridevember’
A queer film festival and headline acts including RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under season-two winner Spankie Jackzon are among highlights of the 2024 Feast Festival program released this week.
Running from November 9-24, the LGBTQIA+ arts and culture festival will feature an expanded program of more than 80 events, ranging from the family-friendly Picnic in the Park to talks by queer thinkers.
Lissy Elliot’s cover art for this year’s Feast FestivalFeast will present its biggest-ever line-up of films, including the premieres of two Australian gay rom-coms, a queer horror double feature, the iconic 1994 lesbian movie Go Fish and the 1990 chronicle of New York’s ball culture Paris is Burning.
North Adelaide’s Piccadilly Cinema will act as a festival hub from November 22-24, hosting live music, comedy and spoken-word events with performers such as drag artists Spankie Jackzon and comedians Frankie McNair and Scout Boxall. Feminist and author Clementine Ford is also part of the line-up with a session titled Spinster.
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“We’re so excited to see the Feast Hub activated this year, especially as queer spaces in Adelaide have been closing,” says Feast CEO Tish Naughton. “It’s more important than ever to have places where we can gather, make new friends, and connect with others.”
The theme for the 2024 festival, Transformation, is embodied in cover art by local artist Lissy Elliot, who says she used old pieces of dried paint to reflect how some members of the queer community might feel discarded or rejected but “make something beautiful and new” when they come together for community events such as Feast.
Limitless
Dozens of small artworks in myriad mediums and styles will be for sale in a fundraising exhibition at The Mill next month – with each priced at exactly $100.
The exhibition, titled Limitless, will feature A5-sized works from more than 150 South Australian artists – including visual arts students and graduates, and resident artists at the multi-arts hub. However, the artists will remain anonymous until a buyer takes home their work.
“We love that folks coming to view the exhibition will really be able to follow their heart and find an artwork that speaks to them,” says The Mill visual arts curator Adele Sliuzas. “It could be a work by a newly emerging artist, or by someone who has an established practice. What is important is feeling a connection to the artwork. That is really special.”
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Limitless will be at 154 Angas Street from October 7 to 11 (details here). Half the proceeds of each sale will go to the artist and half to The Mill, which houses creative studios and offers professional development opportunities for creatives, as well as presenting exhibitions.
Weekend of Words
Lawrence Leung will join a panel of comedians sharing stories and smashing stereotypes in the event Asians Are Funny.Novelists, journalists, poets, playwrights, performers, and screenwriters from across Australia and Asia will converge on Adelaide for OzAsia Festival’s Weekend of Words from November 8-10.
The program released this week was curated by writer and comedian Sami Shah, who says it will explore themes of “identity, power, culture, community, gender, sexuality, and more”.
International guests across the weekend include Benjamin Chee and Wayne Rée (Singapore), Vajra Chandrasekera (Sri Lanka), and Bora Chung and Anton Hur (South Korea), while Lawrence Leung and Benjamin Law are among the Australian participants.
Weekend of Words (see the full program here) also features free workshops – including one in writing rap and hip-hop with L-FRESH the LION, and another in crafting comedy with Jennifer Wong – and will culminate with a closing-night debate on the spicy topic Chinese Food vs Indian Food.
Ramsay art prize
Entries have opened for the 2025 Ramsay Art Prize, with Australian artists under 40 working in any medium invited to submit works for consideration.
The winner of the biennial prize, presented by the Art Gallery of South Australia and supported by the James & Diana Ramsay Foundation, receives $100,000 and will have their work acquired into the gallery’s collection. All finalist works will be shown in an exhibition at AGSA, with members of the public able to vote for the $15,000 People’s Choice Prize.
The gallery says the Ramsay Art Prize “aims to support and encourage contemporary Australian artists to make their best work at a pivotal moment in their career”. South Australian artist Ida Sophia won the prize in 2023 with her performance-based video work Witness, which was inspired by her childhood experience of observing her father’s baptism and was filmed at the Pool of Siloam in Beachport.
Entries (here) for the 2025 prize will close at 5pm on December 13.
Green Room is a regular column for InReview, providing quick news for people interested, or involved, in South Australian arts and culture. Get in touch by emailing us at [email protected]