Lee Salomone: Fragments; a widening vision. Entities: The Concepts and Post-Object Exhibitions. ACE Open (Adelaide Contemporary Experimental) Gallery. 23 Jul 2024
As the fourth recipient of the Porter Street Commission, Lee Salomone’s Fragments; a widening vision — currently on display at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE) —is the artist’s first major institutional show in more than a decade. Awarded annually, the commission was established to support South Australian artists in the development and presentation of ambitious new work.
Concerned with acknowledging the impacts of colonisation alongside family histories of migration and intergenerational learning, Salomone’s exhibition is accompanied by an essay written by James Tylor, which describes the arrival of Kaurna people in the region and provides important context for situating the installation in Kaurna Country.
In keeping with the spirit of independent initiative and the energy of exploratory practice, visitors to Salomone’s solo exhibition are also presented with a rich collection of archival materials documenting the development and history of local institutions that were to become the foundation for ACE as we know it today. Named after the location of the permanent space secured by the Contemporary Art Society of South Australia (CAS (SA)) in 1964, the Porter Street Commission aims to carry the legacy of experimental contemporary arts practice in Adelaide forward. It is significant that Salomone has exhibited his work at both CAS and the Experimental Art Foundation (EAF) throughout his career. This smaller exhibition in the front gallery space further enriches time spent with Salomone’s exhibition, by providing visitors with important historical context.
Lee Salomone, Fragments; a widening vision, installation shot, photo © Peter Fong
Curated by Alexandra Nitschke in collaboration with archivist-in-residence, Cameron Fleming, Entities: The Concepts and Post-Object Exhibitions presents an accessible overview of experimental arts practice in Adelaide during the 1970s and 1980s. Carefully arranged beneath sheets of glass across two tables, typewritten documents and black-and-white photographs provide direct insight into the energy and activity of this exciting time in the Adelaide art scene. Visitors learn how the aims and objectives of the 1974 Concepts exhibition held at CAS brought a three-week schedule of performances, installations, film screenings and lectures to Adelaide, underpinning the groundswell of experimental and conceptual arts practice developing at this time.
Entities: The Concepts and Post-Object Exhibitions, installation shot, photo © Peter Fong
The gestation of the EAF during this period culminated in the presentation of its first exhibition, Australian and New Zealand Post-Object Show – A Survey in 1976 and set the course for contemporary practice in Australia. Significant names appear throughout documents capturing the dynamism of this time – Mike Parr, Ron Rowe, Ian North, and Mary Osborne among many others. Art theorist Donald Brook’s The Social Role of Art is there as a manifesto for post-object and conceptual art, and letters in application for funding underscore the financial hardship endured by arts organisations and the reorganisation of the Australian Arts Council during the time of the Whitlam Labor Government. Wall captions accompanying images describe mixed public responses to performance and conceptual art, and details of Pam Gilbert’s opening performance for the EAF’s first exhibition highlight the lack of inclusion of women and minority groups. In short, Entities presents an insightful snapshot of Adelaide’s important contribution to broader contemporary practice and ideas moving art beyond the aesthetic, while highlighting key oversights that researchers and writers continue to address.
On a long stretch of wall, an illustrated timeline pinpoints key dates in the trajectory of the establishment, development and important contributions made by the CAS and EAF. As the 2024 recipient of the Porter Street Commission, Lee Salomone’s Fragments; a widening vision occupies its own position in this history above a line of red thread connecting these moments and events together.
Lee Salomone, Fragments; a widening vision, installation shot, photo © Peter Fong
Presented on the floor of the gallery space, Salomone’s installation of found objects and bronze-cast sculptures compels the viewer to wander through and around the work, as one would meander through a garden. Attending the space each Saturday, Salomone greets each visitor to the space and engages those stopping to spend time in conversation with a warm welcome. Salomone’s commitment to this allocated time and space within the work each weekend feels like a radical practice — an offering of memories and stories of place shared offline and in real time. Moving through multiple pathways, each viewer brings a range of individual experiences, so that, as Salomone confirms, we are each complicit in the work of his installation — just as we are complicit in the ongoing impacts of settler culture on Indigenous Country.
Reflecting on the experiences of first- and second-generation Italian migrants, Salomone is interested in intergenerational histories, but he is also deeply connected to his own awareness of cultures, places and histories that are not always his own. As we travel the spaces of his garden together, Salomone tells me that he listens to found objects that are collected compulsively – sometimes without knowing immediately what the material is asking for. Often these things just “… flip out of the sea.” Objects call out to Salomone with the secrets of their own histories resolutely locked within their forms, but there seems to be a serendipity to the manner in which they find their way into his hands.
Salomone honours his paternal and maternal grandparents in the Ancestor stools, which once held the frame of the body and continue to carry the material of garden soil in their wooden grooves. Paternal garden soil is also an important part of the Sub Species sculptures combining the material of place with table legs crowned with the bronze forms of xanthorrhoeas. As a combination of forms, the work makes a visual reference to domestic tables and interior settings imposed upon the natural forms of grass trees indigenous to Australia. As the bronze xanthorrhoea reappears alongside multiple found tabletops and bases, visual references to the imposition of colonisation and its dire consequences for nature also signal a place of gathering, learning and sharing culture. Fragments of garden hose are also repeated elements throughout the installation, suggestive of the forced cultivation and tending of gardens — and again, the imposition of colonial structures on natural and Indigenous spaces.
In this way, the complexity of Salomone’s installation lies in its duality of meanings, the darkness and light of known and unknowable histories of places, objects and the individuals who may have owned them. Certainly, and in Salomone’s own words, the sprawling vista of Fragments; a widening vision is filled with the vastness of time and history.
Stop and listen.
Melanie Cooper
When: 1 Jun to 10 Aug
Where: ACE Gallery, Lion Arts Centre, Adelaide
More info: https://www.ace.gallery
Lee Salomone will give an artist talk at 2pm on 27 July at the gallery.
Lee Salomone
Fragments; a widening vision
installation shot, detail
photo © Peter Fong
