9-22 October 2023
SASA Gallery
Open 10am - 4pm, Monday - Fridays and 11am - 3pm Sunday
Free and everyone is welcome
University of South Australia, City West Campus
Address: Kaurna Building, Level 2, Fenn Pl, Adelaide SA 5000
Chthonic is a satellite exhibition associated with the AILA (Australian Institute of Landscape Architects) National Festival UN/EARTH to be held at the Wine Centre on 19-22, October 2023. The exhibition is an opportunity to link students from a variety of disciplines (architecture, urban design, sustainability, ceramics, and textile art) with the conference
The underground is often associated with anxiety and claustrophobia but there is also a modernist optimism in the exploration and revealing of sub-surface space and its potential, especially connected with the promises of transport infrastructure, other piped services, and tunnelling. The underground is also a term to describe alternative cultures or resistance movements.
The physical and metaphoric soil horizons upon which landscape architecture practice is founded will be considered: The eroding, geologic, cavernous, mineral, and organic processes that have shaped our planet's crust. Critical and creative spaces for investigation include a focus on varied landscape domains, soil fertility, geological strata, subterranean infrastructure, mineral excavations, fossil records, enduring practices for living on Country, and archaeology.
Importantly, the exhibition will draw heavily on the Architecture Museum archive. This will be organised thematically, and include antique prints of the imagined underworld, South Australian maps of mining deposits and geology, and underground infrastructure of the city including footings, basements, and tunnels. Finally reports, plans and photos of cemeteries and burials will be exhibited.
To view the exhibition's catalogue and essays, please click on the clicks below:
- Catalogue
- Essays
Image credit: Tom Carment 2020 'Weed on John Taylor's Grave, Adelaide West Terrace Cemetery' pencil on paper 30 x 21cm.