Imagine That: Art Day..."Dark Heart" - Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 2014

Saturday 1st of March was opening day for "Dark Heart", an exhibition I've been looking forward to for some months. I always attend exhibitions with high expectations. Sometimes I'm disappointed (Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, 2013), sometimes I'm ambivalent (Saatchi Gallery in Adelaide, 2011) and sometimes I'm giddy with happiness (Ron Mueck, Melbourne, 2011).
Wonderfully for me, "Dark Heart" fell into this last category.
First stop was the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, where Patricia Piccinini's "Skywhale" was hovering for a few hours on that day only. As we made our way through the gardens, the giant hot-air balloon sculpture could be seen peeking through the trees, and when in full view it was an amazing sight. I was surprised at how "fleshy" it appeared, especially when I looked back at the photos I took.
From the gardens we moved to the Art Gallery of South Australia, where our first experience of "Dark Heart" was a house that appeared to have either fallen from the sky or emerged from under the earth - for me it was wonderfully disconcerting and the concept and blackness of the building had a Wizard of Oz feeling about it.
Happily, photography was permitted inside the exhibition, and the photos below are only a tiny sample of the artwork on show. These were two of my favourite works. The first is a piece by Alex Seton called "Someone died trying to have a life like mine". When I entered the room and saw the mass of empty life-jackets strewn across the gallery floor, there was an immediate emotional reaction...then I realised that each and every life-jacket was in fact a perfect replica carved from marble. It was extraordinary.
The last group of photos are of Julia deVille's installation, "Phantasmagoria", a menagerie of taxidermied animals presented as children's toys in a Victorian-style child's bedroom. I guess this is the kind of artwork that really divides opinion. The reactions to the work in the small amount of time that I was there ranged from wonder and fascination to horror and bewilderment. I really enjoy deVille's work, so my reaction was the former. I won't go on here, but you can check out Julia's website and I should point out that all of these animals died of natural causes and to my knowledge Julia is in fact a vegan.
Like I said, this is a very small part of the "Dark Heart" exhibition and it's well worth a visit (or two) if you're in or near Adelaide. I will definitely be going back at least once.
We concluded our "Art Day" with a visit to the Adelaide Convention Centre to see Emma Hack's exhibition of her incredible body painting. You can see more of her work here. A great day overall, this is definitely the time of year when Adelaide shines.