FELTspace is an Artist Run Initiative established in 2008. With its exhibition space in Compton Street at the heart of Adelaide’s Central Market district, FELTspace has quickly become a centre for the emerging contemporary visual arts community and an important site for the development, exhibition and discussion of new work by emerging and recognised visual artists in South Australia. FELTspace is unique as the only ARI with a permanent site in Adelaide’s CBD dedicated to the promotion of contemporary visual arts practices. FELTspace has a focus on promoting emerging and early career artists, with opportunities for more established artists to show in a non-commercial and non-institutional space.
Current FELTspace committee:
Ray Harris
Ray Harris is not a middle-aged man but an emerging Adelaide artist. Her work focuses on the psychological struggles and complexities of self-concept, focussing on prevailing everyday fantasies, created to cope with the complexities of repressed desires, feelings, anxieties and psychological pain accompanied by the facilitation of unawareness. Fascinated by mental spaces, she explores these issues through subjective interpretations of universal conditions in the dual creation of sculptural spaces and perfomative video embodying inner and outer experience. Ray has exhibited at the AEAF, SASA Gallery; CACSA and Hugo Michell Gallery. As well as Sawtooth (Launceston), Boxcopy (Brisbane), InFlight (Hobart) Next Wave (Melbourne) Supermarket Art Fair (Sweden) and Gil and Moti Homegallery, (Netherlands) Pirimid Sanat (Turkey). Her work is held in The Borusan Collection and Project 4L- Elgiz Museum Collection, Turkey and private collections in Australia.
Sundari Carmody
Sundari Carmody graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours) at the South Australian School of Art in 2011. Majoring in photography, Carmody uses alternative photographic processes to explore the depths of loss, absence and desire. Inspired by the transient nature of memory, time and photography, her work embraces the unpredictable and imperfect results produced by pinhole and Polaroid cameras. Carmody spent her formative years in Indonesia before returning to Australia to attend art school. Carmody has exhibited locally at Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibitions, SASA Gallery, FELTspace, and the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, as well as nationally and internationally at Spectrum Project Space (Western Australia), Pingyao International Photography Festival (China), and Mint: The Impossible Project (Hong Kong).
Meg Wilson
After graduating from the South Australian School of Art with a Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours) in 2006, Wilson went on to obtain a Diploma in Interior Decoration and Design(2010), and has subsequently worked as a designer for a local furniture company. This, and recent involvement with prop design projects for theatre companies, influences her artistic practice. Wilson tends to respond to texts such as classic horror/thriller/mystery themed films, play scripts and/or novels in her work. Transference between mediums, misinterpretation, human behaviour, and the point of view of the outsider, are common themes explored. Wilson is interested in the use of out-of-the-ordinary set designs and plots which comment on ordinary human existence when set within unrealistic environments. Processes used by the artist include unconventional painting and repetitive textile techniques – leaning toward actions of absurdity. Wilson has consistently exhibited in various locations around Adelaide, including Format and Magazine galleries in 2012.
Steph English
Steph English graduated from University of South Australia with a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) in 2011. Exploring themes of melancholia and the burning voids left behind, she employs the use of textiles and sculpture to help quieten these feelings. Steph has exhibited in various places around Adelaide including Format, Magazine Gallery and SASA gallery
Eleanor Scicchitano
After completing a Bachelor of Film and Television in Queensland, Eleanor moved back to Adelaide where she studied photography, exhibited a few times and then became a gallery assistant. Not long after this she fell in love with curating and writing. In 2012 she graduated with a Masters in Curatorial and Museum Studies and since 2011 she has worked at Tandanya – NACI, first as a Visual Arts Officer and now as the Visual Arts Curator. This year Eleanor received her first professional writing gig, for Artlink. One day she will write her PhD (when her fiancé forgets how horrible she was when she was doing her masters!), curate exhibitions all over the world and establish a sculpture park in the centre of the city
Derek Sargent
Derek Sargent is an emerging artist form Adelaide who is currently undergoing his Honours in visual arts at the South Australian School of Art. Through the medium of sculpture and installation, he explores the themes of sexuality, gender and identity, with the use of humour and satire he reacts to the heteronormative structures that are prevalent in popular culture. Derek has twice been awarded the Chancellor’s Letters of Commendation and in February of 2013 became a co-director at FELTspace.
Former committee members: Polly Dance, Riley O’Keeffe, Patrick Rees, James L Marshall, Matt Huppatz, Sam Howie, Jessie Lumb, Celeste Aldahn, Brigid Noone (founding member), Rayleen Forester (founding member), Annika Evans (founding member), Monte Masi (founding member), Logan Macdonald (founding member).
