In 2007 the South Australian Museum will once again host Inside SAM's Place. This fruitful collaboration between Craftsouth and the museum is now in its third instalment and since 2002 has continued to forge links between visual art and craft and the scientific disciplines residing within the museum.

To the viewing public, the project manifests as an exhibition program, but for the artists involved the project's real substance is arguably the creative development opportunity it provides. This developmental process unfolds over a number of months. Participating artists identify some aspect of the South Australian Museum that will serve as a catalyst for a new body of work. This catalyst might be a particular site within the museum, a body of objects in the collection or some aspect of museological practice itself.

Artists then have a period of access to the museum's collection, staff and resources, during which they delve deep into the archive, bolstering and informing the development of their work in the process. The work is then exhibited in the museum itself, frequently in context with the site or artefacts that inspired it. In this way the museum becomes the gallery and its archives become, in a sense, the studio: a site of research, play and creative development. Each exhibition is also augmented by some educational component, such as a floor talk or practical workshop, usually aimed at primary or secondary school students. This activity is designed and facilitated by the artist and serves to enrich the work as well as highlighting links between the work and the museum's collection.

The 2007 program comprises the work of three artists, all of whom break the mould somewhat in their approach to the project. Where past participants have for the most part concerned themselves with a particular body of objects within the collection, Niki Sperou, Sarah crowEST and John Hayward each bring a broader scope to their engagement with the museum. View images

Niki Sperou's investigation focuses not on the museum's artefacts but on the modes and conventions of their display. Identifying issues of placement, conservation and lighting as decisive yet often overlooked factors in the viewer's encounter with a museum or gallery, Sperou embarks on an ambitious examination of the museum context itself. Inside SAM's Place provides a fitting framework for an artist who is no stranger to the intersections of art and science. For some years, Sperou's work has made poetic allusions, if not overt reference, to the natural sciences and has consistently managed to tease remarkably visceral qualities from textile- and found object-based works. Closely following her recent residency at Flinders University's Department of Biotechnology, Sperou's stint at the Museum will see the artist further honing her hybrid sensibility.

Although working from a slightly more personal and subjective premise, Sarah crowEST undertakes an equally expansive project. Under the working title 'Random Encounters with SAM', crowEST is creating a new, thirty-strong posse of the vaguely humanoid 'creatures' that are now a familiar feature of the artist's oeuvre. Formed from textiles, found objects and even human remains, the creatures (which are by turns bawdy, cute and occasionally repellent) have become a vehicle for the artist's evolving concerns. In this instance, the proposed works will act as a tangible outcome of crowEST's penchant for 'random' and intuitive wandering in museums. In the course of these wanderings, the artist busily collects possibilities - forms, colours, textures, processes and potential material languages - that eventually manifest in the creation of new creatures. Thus, in crowEST's practice, the delightfully vague act of browsing becomes a fluid and fertile form of research, engaging a broad cross-section of the museum's collection. When placed back into the context of the museum, one imagines the beasties drawing the viewer into a subtle game of hide and seek. Visitors will be invited to indulge in some crowEST-esque roaming of their own to discover the various links between the collection and the creatures that have come to inhabit it.

Finally, in Tooling Up, John Hayward indicates a similar breadth of scope by undertaking an investigation into the definitively human practice of making tools. The artist's research centres on the museum's collection of tools, spanning Melanesian, Aboriginal, Inuit, Egyptian and western cultures, with a particular emphasis on how need, circumstance and the availability of materials have informed the tools' development. For Hayward, the tool is a profound distillation of human ingenuity as well as being a thing of beauty. In terms of the work in development, it is certainly the aesthetic qualities of tools that are motivating the artist. Hayward is proposing a number of new implements, designed for a range of specific, and indeed absurd, tasks. In one prototype for the project 'Cut & Paste' a Y-shaped branch is tipped with both scalpel and brush. This curious object is fraught with contradictions. Its use of a raw branch speaks of ancient cultures, but the business end of the thing is unmistakeably contemporary. On one hand, it almost conveys a sense of usefulness, but on the other, reveals itself to ultimately belong to a world of whimsy rather than utility. By displaying these fanciful items alongside the actual tools in the collection, the artist is sure to bring new and unexpected complexity to the relationship of form and function.

The 2007 program promises to assert Inside SAM's Place as an exciting and exemplary model for cross-institutional and, importantly, cross-disciplinary collaboration. The project continues to create a space where the ostensibly 'subjective' and 'objective' disciplines of art and science are given an equal footing. While we might immediately look to a scientific discipline to attach meaning and context to a historical artefact or natural phenomenon, Inside SAM's Place reminds us that there are other voices and other practices that give meaning to the world around us.

Roy Ananda
March 2007

Roy Ananda is a South Australian artist and writer.

Program Dates

Reviews of Inside SAM's Place 2006 by Roy Ananda

Inside Sam's Place 2007 is sponsored by Health promotions through the Arts, a program of Arts SA. For further information on Inside SAM's Place 2007 visit www.craftsouth.org.au