A groundbreaking art exhibition currently on display at the Samstag Museum of Art is transforming how visitors experience one of Adelaide's most significant cultural corridors. "North Terrace: worlds in relief" brings together contemporary artists from South Australia, New South Wales, and Singapore to offer fresh perspectives on the North Terrace cultural precinct, challenging traditional narratives of colonial civic, cultural, and military buildings that line this historic street.
Curator Jasmin Stephens has assembled the exhibition in conversation with the work of Narungga poet and researcher Natalie Harkin, whose 2014 poem "Cultural Precinct" serves as the centerpiece of the show. Harkin's powerful writing reframes North Terrace as a Kaurna campsite, making visible the violence against Aboriginal people that occurred at the Armory through its cells, morgue, and gallows. Her work also illuminates the South Australian Museum's role as a keeper of racialized hierarchies and human remains, offering a stark contrast to the imperial progress narrative for which these buildings were originally constructed.
The exhibition draws inspiration from philosopher and activist Maria Lugones' concept of "world-travelling," which emphasizes the importance of stepping beyond one's own cultural and social perspectives. Lugones advocated for approaching new experiences with loving intentions, openness to surprise, and willingness to change. This spirit of respectful exchange is evident throughout the artists' approaches, which invite visitors to experience the cultural precinct through listening, thinking with plants and animals, and sitting with difficult truths.
Entering the Samstag's upper galleries, visitors encounter the disorienting work "gatedremuneratedobliterated" by the ArtHitects, a collaboration between artist Gary Carsley and architect Renjie Teoh. Their monumental street art style paste-up remixes the North Terrace environment, creating an experience that leaves viewers uncertain whether they're traveling into a more cosmopolitan future or stumbling into an AI-generated mistranslation of the present. Pieces of Teoh's "!MingMing!" plywood furniture are casually placed beside the print, offering visitors the chance to linger within this unsettling world.
Through an opening in the ArtHitects' façade, visitors discover Allison Chhorn's "Dissolve the Walls," where video follows North Terrace building surfaces in intimate detail. Filmed close to the stones, the tactile images dissolve into colors reminiscent of the red inside a closed eyelid. The accompanying dreamlike soundscape blends passing cars with echoes of what seem to be past or future lives, offering listening as an immersive way to reshape understanding of this complex place.
Louise Haselton's series of works takes viewers into the exclusively male zone of The Adelaide Club, starting with her examination of the few statues of women in the vicinity of North Terrace. Her drawings, created using rubbings of the statues' toes, amplify both their presence and their tentative gestures. Turning her attention to a menu from a lavish 1913 dinner, Haselton arranges cast-bronze asparagus spears as if a rebellious child had pushed them around a plate into the shape of a house. The historically royal food proves the perfect medium for highlighting the arrogance of men shaping culture while devouring luxurious meals.
Andrew Burrell contributes "Miners Journey," an open work that includes video and an anarchic online collection following Miner, a bird character, and their friends Pelican, Wind, and River. Burrell employs a wild form of storytelling fueled by chance through tarot cards and prompted by a noisy miner bird searching for a lost perch. In this work, humans take a back seat to stones, plants, and environmental forces, offering an alternative to the more ordered archives typically found along the cultural precinct.
After spending time immersed in the thoughtful travels offered by the exhibition, visitors step directly from the gallery onto North Terrace itself, creating a powerful transition from artistic interpretation to lived reality. This project demonstrates art's capacity to unsettle dominant histories from within the very cultural precinct being questioned. "North Terrace: worlds in relief" continues at the Samstag Museum in Adelaide through September 26, inviting ongoing dialogue about place, history, and perspective.
