Green Room: Carclew’s goals, music criticism and awards
SA arts & culture news in brief: Carclew plan outlines ambitious goals for growth, a discussion on the changes and challenges facing music critics, new films added to AFF line-up, Chihuly-adjacent glass art and live music events, top shows heading to the regions, music awards finalists announced, plus more.
What’s next for Carclew
Carclew has launched a four-year strategic plan that it says heralds “an ambitious period of growth” for the youth arts organisation and will also see a focus on activating the historic North Adelaide house that has been its home since 1971.
Carclew’s stated core purpose is to “have the greatest impact on the greatest number”. A media release accompanying the plan’s launch said that to achieve this, Carclew “will return its focus to supporting those working with children and young people through an expansion of its funding and schools’ programs”.
“This plan will reignite our role as a public authority, maximising our government support to ensure that every child in the state has access to opportunities that will improve their lives,” said CEO Mimi Crowe. “It also outlines our goals for partnerships with businesses, communities, and philanthropists to amplify our work for those who need it most.”
To see what this might mean in practice, you can read the strategic plan on the Carclew website. It lists specific goals for the next four years, including growing grants and funding programs, empowering First Nations leadership, influencing national policy to amplify youth arts, undertaking an early-career artists pathways review, diversifying income streams, and enhancing Carclew house and grounds.
The plan acknowledges the challenges facing the arts sector and not-for-profits, including those related to funding pressures, infrastructure and rapidly changing technology.
Its launch was accompanied by the announcement that Megan Antcliff – director of Cities and Places with global professional services company Turner & Townsend and former deputy chief executive of SA’s Department for Trade and Investment – has been appointed Carclew’s new chair. Former chair Rachel Healy (also a former AD of the Adelaide Festival) stepped down recently to take up a new role as chief executive of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.
“Megan’s unique skill set, coupled with her commitment to addressing crucial societal issues, makes her an ideal chair to guide Carclew during this transformative period,” Crowe said of the appointment.
2025 Carclew Fellowships across visual arts, literature and performing arts were also awarded to the following recipients: Abbey Murdoch, Charlee Watt, Grace Bosward, Joshua Barbaro, Mischa Reilley, Nina Wilcock and Sophie Horvat.
Five more films for AFF
South Australian director Justin Kurzel’s new movie The Order is one of five films added to the Adelaide Film Festival’s 2024 program.
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Starring Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult and based on a true story, The Order is set in the 1980s and follows a series of increasingly violent bank robberies and car heists by a group of domestic terrorists in the US Pacific Northwest. Kurzel, whose previous fims include Snowtown, Macbeth and Nitram, describes it as “a foreshadowing of a divided time, a warning shot of what has been and what could come”.
The music for The Order was composed by his brother, Jed Kurzel, and both will take part in a Q&A at the film’s first screening on October 30.
A still image from crime thriller The Order.
The other films added to the AFF program are Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door (starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore), Maria (with Angelina Jolie as opera singer Maria Callas), The Brutalist (Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce), and Pavements (a documentary about American indie band Pavement).
Read InReview’s previous story about the festival’s program launch here, and see the full schedule here.
The art of criticism
Changes and Challenges is the title of an upcoming Adelaide panel discussion on music criticism – which seems timely given how many media outlets nationally have curtailed their coverage of the arts, especially reviews.
The public event – at 7.30pm on October 29 at the University of Adelaide’s Hartley Concert Room – is being presented by the Adelaide Critics Circle and the SA chapter of the Musicological Society of Australia. Panellists will include both experienced and emerging critics – among them InReview reviewers Graham Strahle, Shannon Pearce and Edmund Black – and although it is free, capacity will be limited (tickets can be booked here).
They will discuss the role and purpose of music criticism, including the principles to which critics hold and the challenges they face.
“In former times, criticism may have held the lofty position of guiding public opinion and directly influencing the course of the arts,” says the event notice. “However, a variety of forces may have changed all that, and today’s vastly different media landscape may just be part of it.”
(Here at InReview, of course, we still put the highest value on both arts journalism and criticism.)
Glass acts
The arrival of Dale Chihuly’s colourful sculptures in the Adelaide Botanic Garden is shining a spotlight on both our beautiful gardens and the fascinating alchemic art of glass, with a program of associated events adding to the exhibition’s appeal.
Throughout October, a “Wednesday Wonders” live music series is being presented at the Noel Lothian Hall in the Botanic Garden. Next week’s offering is Opera in the Garden (October 16), which promises to showcase favourite operatic moments and features singers including soprano Teresa La Rocca, tenor Mark Oates, baritone Jeremy Tatchell, and the duo Rachel and Elizabeth McCall.
Gabriella Bisetto, Under My Skin (detail).
Local singer-songwriters Jennifer Trijo and Emma Knights will present their new cabaret A Sense of Nature on October 23, while Deborah Brennan will be the “songbird and storyteller” in The Parting Glass (October 30), a show featuring the music of artists such as Van Morrison, Sinead O’Connor and Colin Hay.
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Meanwhile, JamFactory is currently presenting a solo exhibition by local glass artist and UniSA senior lecturer in contemporary art Gabriella Bisetto in conjunction with Chihuly in the Botanic Garden.
The works in first breath, last breath, everything in between reflect Bisetto’s ongoing fascination with the complexities of the human body, and in particular her recent focus on how changes to the body through ageing can be translated through glass practice.
Alongside the exhibition, the artist will present a Wednesday lunchtime talk at UniSA’s Jeffrey Smart Building on October 16 (book here), and a glass-blowing demonstration at JamFactory’s Glass Studio from 1-4pm on October 19.
If you missed them, you can read InReview’s previous stories about Chihuly in the Botanic Garden here.
Country roads
SA circus company Gravity & Other Myths’ show Ten Thousand Hours – a prize winner at this year’s Adelaide Fringe – will be one of the highlights of Country Arts SA’s 2025 season.
Arts Minister Andrea Michaels, who launched the program at Whyalla’s Middleback Arts Centre last week, said the State Government had provided extra funding to enable GOM to tour to Country Arts SA’s art centres in Whyalla, Port Pirie, Renmark and Mount Gambier.
The 2025 season encompasses a range of shows spanning the visual arts, theatre, dance and music, with other touring works including Blak Country, a showcase of First Nations country music artists curated by Barkindji songwoman Nancy Bates that recently premiered at the Adelaide Guitar Festival; Windmill Theatre’s Moss Piglet, which opens at the Adelaide Festival Centre’s Space Theatre this week and will travel to five regional centres next year; a stage adaptation of the novel Looking for Alibrandi by Brink Productions’ artistic director Stephen Nicolazzo, and SA choreographer Lewis Major’s Lien, an intimate performance involving a 10-minute encounter between a single audience member and one dancer.
You can check out the full line-up online.
Celebrating SA music
South Australian band Swapmeet.
Finalists were announced this week for the 2024 South Australian Music Awards after a record 693 nominations were received across all the categories.
Nominees for the Major Awards include indie band Swapmeet (in the running for best song, best new artist, best group and best release), electronic music producer Motez, singer aleksiah and First Nations hip-hop group DEM MOB (each with three nominations).
The SAM Awards (see all finalists here) also include Industry Awards – presented across categories such as best studio, best venue, best festival/event and best cover art – and the People’s Choice Awards, which have attracted 269 nominations. You can cast your vote for the latter on the website up until October 22.
This year’s awards night will be held at the Dom Polski Centre on November 7 during MusicSA’s Good Music Month.
Dog-Eared Readings
Victorian poet Andy Jackson – winner of the 2022 Prime Minister’s Literary Award and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for his poetry collection Human Looking – will be guest speaker at this month’s Dog-Eared Readings event at The Howling Owl.
Jackson will be conversation with Katerina Bryant at the October 23 literary event, where they will be joined by local writers Aidan Coleman and Katherine Tamiko Arguile.
Numbers are capped at 50 people, so visit the event listing to secure your place.
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]