SASA Gallery

John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense is a celebration of the great architect's work and its global impact. Andrews’s designs are a shining example of how architecture can be used to address urgent environmental and urban concerns.

Exhibited previously at Harvard University’s Druker Design Gallery, Architect of Uncommon Sense showcases formerly inaccessible Australian archival holdings from the State Library of New South Wales, with a special focus on Andrews's Adelaide Station and Environs Redevelopment (ASER) which includes the Adelaide Convention Centre and Exhibition Centre (both demolished), the Intercontinental Hotel (formerly the Hyatt Regency) and the Riverside Centre.

Beyond Andrews’s work, the exhibition highlights Australia's late modern architectural heritage and the evolution of environmental sensibilities in Australian design culture, while investigating the challenges entailed in the conservation of this work.

Organised through themes including Geography, Urbanism and Sustainability, the exhibition features period drawings, images and documents, with new photography by Noritaka Minami.

Curated by Paul Walker & Kevin Liu

Sewing Place to Time is a Farsi (Persian) expression meaning “trying hard to do something quite impossible”.

This exhibition sews together the past, present, future, elsewhen, here, there, and elsewhere, to respond to Bhabha’s (2012) unrepresentable Third Space. In doing so, through capturing the fleeting, mundane moments of everyday life, the naïve and whimsical illustrations, try hard to represent the unrepresentable.

Mahsa, is a visual practitioner-researcher whose work explores the interconnections between illustration, identity, culture, and everyday life. This exhibition forms part of her PhD project, an autoethnographic practice-based enquiry into the lived experience of a migration journey.

Bhabha, H. K. (2012). The location of culture. Routledge.

Image: Mahsa Makki Alamdari, Floating on Uncertainty, 2022-2025, Collage, 295 mm x 210 mm.

The Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition is South Australia’s ultimate celebration of emerging creative talent.

Showcasing the bold works of the standout graduates from Flinders University and the University of South Australia, this must-see exhibition is on at SASA Gallery from 14 February until Saturday 22 March 2025.

18 visual artists from Flinders University and the University of South Australia will showcase their graduate works, across a range of disciplines, including ceramics, glass, moving image, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, fashion, costume design, and textiles.

The Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition has long history of being a launch pad for the next generation of artistic talent in our state. This is your chance to view and celebrate the next generation of South Australian artists and see new works from emerging creatives on the rise.

12 awards valued at over $53,000 will be presented on the opening night of the exhibition. We’re thrilled to introduce new awards in 2025: the Mount Horrocks Wines Award from Stephanie Toole, valued at $5,000, and the South Australian Industry Award, proudly supported by JamFactory, SALA Festival and Guildhouse, and valued at $3,430 (including $1,800 cash).

Featured Artists

• Angela De Palma
  
• Antoni Phillips
• Charlotte Treloar
• Chin Ton (Naomi) Tang
• Claire Marsh
• Hana Alison
• Jels
• Joshua Sleep
• Leanne Rowett
• Maddie Stevens
• Mads Conte
• Martin Brine
• Pippini Niamh
• Oak
• Silki Wong
• Tara Rowhani-Farid
• Thu Huong (Abigail) Nguyen
• Tieyuan Zhou

Graduate Exhibition Project Curator: 
Stephanie Doddridge

Listen to an audio description of the exhibition here

Image:  Martin Brine, Untitled #7. Glass sheet, slip-cast porcelain, distressed steel rod, Myponga stone. Photo by Sam Roberts.

The Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition is an annual celebration of the strongest creative voices emerging from South Australia’s contemporary art scene.

Each year visual artists from Flinders University and the University of South Australia showcase their graduate works at this prominent arts event. In 2024 we will be moving to a new student-focused space, at SASA Gallery, University of South Australia.

A range of disciplines are displayed at the event, including ceramics, glass, installation, jewellery, moving image, painting, photo media, photography, printmaking, sculpture and textiles.

The Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition remains one of the most significant opportunities for emerging creatives in the country, thanks to the generosity of our award donors. This event has a long-standing history of providing a launch pad for the next generation of South Australian creatives, while also providing a snapshot of the future of contemporary art in our state.

Image: HaiZzy, Danse Macabre. Photo by Sam Roberts.

An evolving exhibition and series of performances on transformation, movement, projection, and translation.

When Parna, the bright star that Arab astronomers named Fom-al-haut or ‘mouth of the whale’, appears on the south-eastern horizon just before sunrise, it announces the start of Parnati, a season of transition. Gentle breezes move to the west bringing with them a sharpness, the arc of the sun sinks lower, and cold nights come quicker, but there is a clarity and melancholy sweetness when the days are fine before the rains begin to fall.

In April|May as autumn shifts to winter, please join Contemporary Art staff and students for an evolving exhibition and series of performances on transformation, movement, projection, and translation.

Foundation Studio builds conceptual thinking and creative making skills, developing a personal, ethical and philosophical foundation
to underpin Masters study.

In 2024 Students conducted an open-ended exploration of regenerative design and art.

Experimenting cross a variety of media and interests, students are asked to question their perceptions of materials, their creative processes and the contextual landscape their work inhabits, resulting in concepts for an artefact, artwork or design with potential to act as a catalyst or provocation for change.

Emergent themes in this exhibition include childhood, light, plants, wellbeing, consumption, and modular design.

Image: Allyssa Ding, Stop and Smell the Roses, collage, 2024.

This exhibition draws from the archive of Japanese architect Shoei Yoh to showcase for the first time in Australia a selection of his early interior architecture projects, and explorations of light as matter. Yoh studied abroad in the United States and returned to Japan in 1964. After gaining experience as an interior designer in Tokyo and Fukuoka, he established Yoh Design Office in Fukuoka City in 1970.

Thank you to our partners at Kyushu University, collaborators at UniSA Architecture Museum, and our exhibition funder: the Australian-Japan Foundation for their support in putting together this exhibition.

An exploration of craft, place & migration through sensory ways of knowing 

The Garden of Un/Belonging offers insights into how an engagement with art and craft making practices can be critical to conceptual constructions of belonging and identity in the context of migration. By examining the creative process as a form of place making, this practice-led research acknowledges the agency of objects and their role in our physical, perceptual, emotional, social and aesthetic development. 

In seeking an understanding of the migrant-maker, the making process and outcomes, it presents a body of artefacts that prompt questioning around how sensory and culturally generated ways of knowing can shape ideas of the self and the social. 

Image: Sahr BASHIR, Pieces of my Heart II, 2023, Bronze, cotton, silk thread

L>M>S is an Installation Art Lab that explores Light, Movement, and Sound as materials to transform space.  Students enrolled in Installation Art (B. Contemporary Art) will take over SASA Gallery for a one month site-specific residency.