Relaxed Day: Fresh Hell
Enjoy a quieter gallery experience at our Relaxed Day.
Adelaide Contemporary Experimental
15 October 2022
2:00pm to 4:00pm
Relaxed Days at ACE welcome visitors who prefer a quieter gallery experience with fewer people and reduced sensory stimuli. Everyone is welcome, especially people with autism, mental health, chronic illness conditions, and those who are differently abled.
The work in this exhibition is colourful and is brightly lit, and the gallery features smaller viewing spaces. For the Relaxed Day, TV screen in the front room and all sound will be turned off.
There will also be a designated low sensory space in the front room.
Extra gallery attendants will be present to answer queries about the artwork and to guide people for unscheduled tours.
To best protect any vulnerable visitors to our Relaxed Day, we ask that visitors consider wearing a mask.
For further information on our accessibility, visit our Accessibility page.
Feature Image: Ryan Presley, 'Aeronautics (what goes up must come down)' (2020), oil, synthetic gold and 23k gold leaf on poly-cotton, 182 x 152 cm. Collection of Artbank, Sydney/Melbourne. Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.
Fresh Hell brings together a suite if paintings that Brisbane-based artist Ryan Presley has been steadily developing over the past eight years, for the first time in a major solo exhibition.
Presley’s practice wrestles with themes of power and dominion—in particular, how religion and economic control served colonialism and empire building over time, and the representation of its customs and edifices in our everyday lives.
Fresh Hell is informed by Presley’s own Catholic upbringing and experience, having been baptised in a desert township; Alice Springs. Large-scale oil paintings are detailed and layered with meaning, often referencing the canon of Western religious works that span from the Icon schools, Middle Ages, Renaissance periods through to the current day. These historical referents are, however, re-interpreted by casting young Aboriginal people as the key protagonists in recent pasts and foreseeable futures.
‘Fresh hell’ is a sardonic term used to describe when things go from bad to worse very quickly and inexplicably. Over the last ten years Presley has built a reputation for re-appraising difficult histories and, in the context of this new body of work, the exhibition title tells us something of the admonition the artist wishes to make against the ongoing treatment of Aboriginal people in Australia.
Following the premiere of Fresh Hell at ACE, the exhibition will be presented at Gertrude, Melbourne, in early 2023.
Fresh Hell is a co-commission by Adelaide Contemporary Experimental and Gertrude, Melbourne.
This project is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
