About Us

Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE) is South Australia’s leading independent contemporary visual arts organisation.

Located in Adelaide’s iconic Lion Arts Centre precinct, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE) is South Australia’s leading independent contemporary visual arts organisation, proudly supporting artists to develop and present work on Kaurna Yarta (Kaurna Country).  

Established through the merger of Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA) and the  Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF) in 2017, ACE builds upon the legacy of over 100 years of innovative experimental arts practice in South Australia.

Through exhibitions, studios, public programs, education,  professional development opportunities and publications, ACE expands the edges of contemporary visual art practice, embraces diversity and provides a space for artists to take risks. 

Our Approach To Programming

Since its inception, ACE’s program has explored many timely issues, driven by the question: what is urgent to discuss today and who should be telling these stories? We recognise that contemporary art takes many forms, and have built a reputation for presenting new and important processes and methodologies for artistic practice.

A wide photograph of the gallery space, in which inhabits Rockamora's head, feet and hands. The space is lit with blue light.
A wide photograph of the gallery space, in which inhabits Rockamora's head, feet and hands. The space is lit with blue light.
Kaspar Schmidt Mumm, 'ROCKAMORA' (2023), installation view, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photography by Sam Roberts.

Exhibition program

ACE presents a yearly program of free exhibitions, with focus on commissioning and curating new work from local, national and international artists across all stages of their careers. We regularly work with external curators, collaborators and partners to expand the diversity of voices and perspectives in our program. Our exhibitions are complex, contemplative and ever-changing.

Public programs

ACE presents an annual program of talks, performances, film screenings, accessibility tours and other events that accompany and contextualise our exhibitions. We also invest in stand-alone activities, such as public discussions and workshops, to connect our audiences with contemporary art practice and ideas. Our public programs are expansive, stimulating and open to all.

Studio Program

ACE is home to five fully-supported, rent-free CBD-based studios for South Australian artists. 

The ACE Studio Program provides professional development opportunities, including studio visits with Australian and international curators; participation in public programs; mentorship by ACE staff; and prominent profiling and promotional opportunities.  

It is the only program of its kind in the state and is an invaluable pathway for artists to gain national recognition. Working as part of a cohort of fellow  artists, the Studio Program gives residents the space to experiment with their practice and grow their professional careers.

Education programs

ACE engages secondary and tertiary students and educators in dialogue with contemporary art and artists, providing access to minority perspectives, powerful models for creative and critical thinking, and viable career pathways. The program caters to secondary and tertiary education, extending to professional learning for recent graduates and art educators.

A person sits at a table in the front space. Their arms are outstretched. Audience watches.
A person sits at a table in the front space. Their arms are outstretched. Audience watches.
Follow That Feeling (2021), ACE Open. Photography by Thomas McCammon.

Our Audiences

ACE believes everyone has a right to access artistic expression and take part in South Australia’s cultural life. We invite audiences to experience contemporary art in an environment that is simultaneously engaging, challenging and welcoming. ACE is committed to ensuring our programs and activities are as accessible as possible, for as many people as possible.

Our Role In The Sector

ACE plays a vital role within the South Australian arts sector and cultural ecology, championing best practice in a wide range of arts activities. We serve as a scaffold for building local artists’ careers and are quickly growing a legacy of new work commissions which continue to circulate in galleries and collections across Australia. We believe that, by strongly supporting local artists and communities, and connecting them to our national and international peers, we can create greater opportunities and more expansive contexts for a diversity of art practitioners in South Australia.

Carly Tarkari Dodd stands with materials in her hand, leading her workshop in the ACE Studios.
Carly Tarkari Dodd stands with materials in her hand, leading her workshop in the ACE Studios.
Carly Tarkari Dodd (2020), Weaving with natural fibres workshop, ACE, Adelaide. Photography by Thomas McCammon.

Vision

To understand, expand and transform our world through contemporary art.

Mission

To be South Australia’s leading contemporary art space, nationally renowned for supporting artists, promoting artistic excellence and enriching audience experience.

Annual Report

Staff

Louise Dunn

Danielle Zuvela

Rayleen Forester

Harriet Culbertson

Grace Marlow

Sally Francis

Ava Viscariello

Louise Dunn
Executive Director

Louise Dunn is a veteran to the South Australian arts scene, most recently leading Nexus Arts as Executive Director for seven years (2012-2019), where she focused on rebuilding the organisation to become a leader in contemporary culturally diverse arts practice. At Nexus Arts, Louise devised and delivered the Ruby Award winning Barngarla: Stories of Resilience project, initiated new artist development programs benefiting over 40 South Australian artists, increased audiences and stakeholder engagement, and more than tripled funding levels. Louise has held multiple Board and committee positions in the arts sector locally and nationally, most notable as Deputy Chair (2014 -2016) and Chair (2016- 2017) at Diversity Arts Australia (formerly Kultour).

Danielle Zuvela
Artistic Director

Zuvela is the co-director of Gold Coast Rainbow Communities, and co-founded Gold Coast Pride Festival in 2020. Prior to this, she was Artistic Co-Director of Liquid Architecture (2013-2019), Australia’s leading organisation for artists working with sound, and has curated hundreds of programs of experimental art, performance and music. She has worked extensively in the Australian experimental arts sector, presenting academic research, publishing art criticism and contributing expertise as a peer at Creative Australia.

Zuvela has worked on major projects for the National Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Opera House, Institute of Modern Art, North Norwegian Art Centre and the Tate Britain. Through research, critical writing, residencies, exhibitions, discursive public programs and publications, Zuvela engages with artists and non-artists in the production of relationships and the exchange of knowledge. With a background in experimental music and performance, her practice uses research and ideas to fuel experiences and encounters where the natural world is often a protagonist.

Following on from the research project WHY LISTEN TO ANIMALS, co-curated with Joel Stern for Liquid Architecture, in the 2018 research project WHY LISTEN TO PLANTS, Zuvela curated a series of talks, walks, food, music and kayak performances in Berlin, Gold Coast, Daylesford, and exhibitions at DesignHub gallery, Melbourne, and at Nordnorsk Kunstnersenter, Svolvaer.

In 2021, Zuvela curated WATER RITES for ACE as part of the Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, exploring the subjectivity of water as a non-human actor, featuring an exhibition, screen program performances, a seaweed forage and custom ferment.

Zuvela has participated in a number of residencies in Norway, Germany and the Gold Coast. Her ongoing artist research explores conditions of the endangered Southern Swamp Orchid through collaborations with botanists, queer ecologists and orchid growers in installations and sound works.

Rayleen Forester
Associate Curator

ACE Associate Curator Rayleen Forester is a Tartanya-Adelaide based arts worker and writer. Rayleen’s curatorial interests focus on cross-cultural engagement and outcomes through experimental curation and programming, performance and writing. Rayleen has worked for major international biennales and art galleries in both Europe and Asia including MANIFESTA9 (Belgium) and MEM (Japan). She co-curated the long-established Artists’ Week symposium with Lars Bang Larsen (Denmark) and Richard Grayson (UK) for the 2014 Adelaide Festival. She has written for publications such as UNmagazine, Artlink, Art Guide and Broadsheet and is a founding member of South Australian initiatives FELTspace and fine print

Harriet Culbertson
Marketing & Communications Manager
Grace Marlow
Public Programs Coordinator

Grace Marlow studied a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) at Adelaide Central School, and has since practiced and collaborated  as an artist across performance, poetry and writing. Grace was the Gallery Manager at Sister Gallery in Adelaide from 2017-2019.

Sally Francis
Administrator

Sally has worked in the arts for over 30 years. As Manager of the Arts in Health at FMC program at Flinders Medical Centre (SA) for 20 years, she lobbied for state-based and national support for arts and health through program delivery and policy development. Sally has a Graduate Diploma in Management (Arts) from Uni SA, and in addition to her role as Administrator with ACE, she curates a gallery space at The Joinery, which focuses on creative responses to issues of climate change and conservation.

Ava Viscariello
Marketing & Communications Assistant

Board

Amanda Pepe (Chair)

Gemma Harris (Treasurer)

Anton Andreacchio

Hannah Andreyev

Bridget Currie

Becci Love

Louise Rigoni

Fiona Salmon

Yhonnie Scarce

Established through the merger of Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA) and the Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF) in 2017, ACE builds upon the legacy of over 100 years of innovative experimental arts practice in South Australia.

A large single-storey suburban house in a garden setting, framed by a white wall with a sign reading: CACSA
A large single-storey suburban house in a garden setting, framed by a white wall with a sign reading: CACSA
Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA), Porter Street, Parkside.

The Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia

The Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA) was established as the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) in 1942, when a breakaway group of young artists from the Royal Society of Arts sought greater opportunities to exhibit their work. What followed was almost 75 years of pioneering activity dedicated to the promotion and exhibition of contemporary visual art.

In 1964 the CAS acquired an iconic bluestone bungalow in the leafy Adelaide suburb of Parkside in which to exhibit work. Until its closure in 2016, the Porter Street property was the longest running contemporary art space in Australia. Adventurism and risk-taking defined the CAS, with its exhibitions and programs propelling the careers of many iconic South Australian artists.

The Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia incorporated in 1986, and the organisation transformed from a volunteer-run gallery established for the exhibition of members’ work, into a publicly funded organisation with an exhibition program of national and international significance, and a revered publishing arm led by Broadsheet Journal.

Exterior of the Australian Experimental Art Foundation Building, a two-level red-brick space in the Lion Arts Centre. A banner labelled AEAF hangs from its second storey.
Exterior of the Australian Experimental Art Foundation Building, a two-level red-brick space in the Lion Arts Centre. A banner labelled AEAF hangs from its second storey.
Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF).

The Australian Experimental Art Foundation

The Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF) was established as the Experimental Art Foundation (EAF) in 1974 by a small group of Adelaide artists and theorists, in order to both encourage new approaches to the visual arts and to promote the idea of art as ‘radical and only incidentally aesthetic’.

For more than 40 years the organisation presented exhibitions and events that continuously pushed the boundaries of art practice. Exhibitions celebrated local, national and international experimental artists, and were seminal in presenting Australian and international performance art.

In 1992 Adelaide’s Lion Arts Centre became home to the AEAF’s purpose-built gallery and facilities, including artist studios, offices and the Dark Horsey Bookshop. The AEAF supported critical dialogue through publications, artist monographs, talks and critical writing. Its artist studios and residency program supported some of South Australia’s leading artists of the 1990s-2010s.

Exterior view of the ACE gallery from the Lion Arts Centre courtyard.
Exterior view of the ACE gallery from the Lion Arts Centre courtyard.
Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (2022). Photography by Jonathan van der Knaap.

Constitution

ACE tampinthi, ngadlu Kaurna yartangka panpapanpalyarninthi (inparrinthi). Kaurna miyurna yaitya mathanya Wama Tarntanyaku. Parnaku yailtya, parnaku tapa purruna, parnaku yarta ngadlu tampnthi. Yalaka Kaurna miyurna itu yailtya, tapa purruna, yarta kuma puru martinthi, puru warri-apinthi, puru tangka martulayinthi.

ACE respectfully acknowledges the traditional Country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and pays respect to Elders past and present. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land. We acknowledge that they are of continuing importance to the Kaurna people living today.