21 October - 21 November
Mediating Immediacy
Alycia Bennett
Monte Masi
Marian Sandberg
Sybella Schumacher
mononym
Curated By
Suzanne Close
Exhibition statement
We are caught in an immersive, overwhelming present where the rapid dissemination of digital media flattens nuance, reducing everything to momentary fragments. In this distracted state of screen dependency, how can we tend to the complex challenges that demand our urgent attention?
Suzanne Close
is an arts educator and independent curator based in Tarntanya/Adelaide. She holds a Master of Art in Curatorial and Museum Studies, along with degrees in Art History, Visual Arts, and Education. Suzanne was the guest curator at Flinders University Art Museum (FUMA) for the 2024 Guildhouse Collections Project with FUMA: The Disquiet. Her previous curatorial projects include Unravelling Encounters (2023) at Light Square Gallery and Counting Days: Frank Grauso at the Barossa Regional Gallery and The Adelaide Festival Centre (2022-2023). Suzanne was the 2022 Adelaide City Library Emerging Curator and in 2021 she curated ‘Adelaide X’ at Post Office Projects that examined local collaborative practices. Notable accolades include the 2020 SALA City of Onkaparinga Contemporary Curator Award and the 2020 recipient of the AHCAN & Floating Goose Early Career Curator program.
Suzanne is the Public Programs Coordinator at Adelaide Central School of Art and has been actively engaged with the arts sector as a Helpmann Academy Creative Innovator Mentor and as a previous Codirector of FELTspace. Her written contributions have been featured in Artlink, fineprint magazine and the Wakefield publication, ‘If you don’t fight … you lose’: Politics, Posters, and PAM.
Alycia Bennett
'Clam Slam'
'Clam Slam' by Alycia Bennett (Aka; Anoname) is a new experimental sound/video performance and installation. The performance uses live tabbing in YouTube to highlight ideas surrounding liquid surveillance and the body. Online and video game tropes are used to digest a late-stage capitalist internet, through the eyes of a monstrous femme. Clam Slam is a French-tipped middle finger to Meta and acts to reclaim agency through disassociation.
Bio
Alycia Bennett is a multi-displinary artist based on Kaurna Land. Bennett is a graduate of Adelaide Central School of Art with Honours 2017. Their works spans across social practice, relational performance, tapestries, installation, sculpture, video and sound. Bennett’s practice investigates ideas surrounding commodification of bodies, surveillance, public and private space, and re-distribution of class and power. Their practice is informed by ideas of autonomy, self-sustaining communities and non-institutional learning.
Bennett has exhibited locally/internationally; Guildhouse ARTWORKS, Art Informal (Philippines), Sister Gallery, Holy Rollers, FELTSpace, Format, Floating Goose, Incinerator Gallery, Watch This Space, and co-directed/facilitated a number of activities in non-traditional spaces, including upcoming ARI/Concept store Sharehouse.
Marian Sandberg
Dopamine Merrygoround
3D Printed PLA, the artist's pill container, roadside foraged hard rubbish chairs and veneer, embroidery thread, found bean-chopper handle, custom 'Baby Elephant Walk' music box, Dexamfetamine.
2026
60 x 60 x 75cm
Video still: George Graetz
Bio
Marian Sandberg is a multidisciplinary artist seeking to understand what it means to be human in this age of technology. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Art from the Adelaide Central School of Art and a Master of Information Systems from the University of South Australia. She was Stelarc’s first mentee, an ACE Studio resident, ANAT Critical Light and PICA Hatched alumni, recipient of the SALA festival UnitCare Services Digital Media Award and FELTspace Graduate Award. She is the 2025 Emerging Artist of the Year as voted by the Adelaide Critics circle. She is never quite sure where her keys are, and wonders if Siri gets tired of finding them.
Sybella Schumacher
Access to pornography has never been so easy, and the content itself, never so intensely vivid and stimulating. This convenience could be argued to have risen out of necessity from our lives becoming increasingly fragmented and mechanised. No country is perhaps a better example of this ruthless efficiency as Japan, and consequently, we can see an output of some of the most potent sexual media, at some of the greatest volumes. Countless hours go into producing each hand-drawn frame for the fleeting gratification of millions, only to be consumed in seconds, then
mindlessly replaced and largely forgotten. My growing fascination with the culture surrounding pornography and the way in which it has become such an integrated part of the lives of many sparked this exploration. I spent hours searching online, reviewing hundreds of gifs, many taken from explicit hentai films. My intention, however, was not to merely replicate such graphic material, but to identify suggestive moments that convey erotic activity while maintaining an elusive quality that invites the viewer to wonder
what might follow. Reconstructing these three gifs through the cross-stitching of every individual frame reframes the originals not as sexual products, but as animated works, that themselves required significant time and labour to produce. By manually rendering each pixel as a cross-stitch, the work bridges and contrasts traditional textile practice with the digital frameworks that mediate mass contemporary viewing. It additionally references the officially conservative attitude regarding sexual content in Japan, the illegality of spreading sexual content, and the common use of mosaic-type pixelation
filters to loophole such regulations. This work can be read as a critique of how such content is consumed primarily for instant gratification, raising questions about whether these animated films should be regarded as art or merely as functional material that may also influence impressionable viewers. The figures within these films are designed solely to satisfy particular fantasies, yet by painstakingly recreating them, I am able to grant them a new existence; one that extends beyond the digital realm and becomes materially embodied.
Bio
Sybella Schumacher is currently studying Contemporary Art at Uni SA and has a degree in film from Flinders University. Her practice explores the culture of digital pornography and its relationship to time, labour, and consumption. Drawing from Japanese hentai animation, Schumacher sources fleeting, suggestive moments rather than explicit imagery, reconstructing them through painstaking cross-stitch, one pixel at a time. This slow, manual process reframes mass-produced erotic media as materially embodied images, bridging traditional textile practice with digital visual cultures. Her work reflects on censorship, desire, and instant gratification, questioning whether these animated forms function purely as consumable material or can be regarded as artworks shaped by significant human labour.
Tayer
numbmaxxing (self portrait)
Last September, following the sudden death of a friend, I stopped engaging with any serious media. I didn't intend to, but what used to be a politically driven algorithm had now become a pool of absurd memes and self-help content. Switching between the endless scroll, comfort shows and cheesy romantasy novels let me escape into a realm of constant preoccupation. This pattern only reinforced itself with each acquired loss since her passing: the death of a peer, the breakdown of a relationship and losses of friendship. Our brains are wired to create the easiest path forward and in the face of grief, mine was persuaded to fill itself up.
numbmaxxing (self portrait) is an installation that uses technological clutter and video records of my overconsumption of media as a form of self portraiture following profound loss. Instead of moralising this coping strategy, the work critiques the predatory nature of engagement-based tech companies by emphasising that the highest driver of engagement with them, in my case, is pain.
Bio
mononym is an emerging visual artist, arts worker and writer located on Kaurna Yarta. They completed their Bachelor of Visual Arts in 2024 from the Adelaide Central School of Art. Stead has been a co-director at FELTspace since 2023, starting as Access and Inclusion Officer before moving into the Co-Chair position in mid 2024. Their artistic practice often utilises textiles, video, sound, performance and installation to create immersive works that contemplate the roles of embodiment, sensory processing and community wellbeing in the face of technocapitalism. Stead exhibited their year-long socially-engaged project Play ground at the Adelaide Central School of Art 2024 Graduate Exhibition, where they received the NAVA Ignition Award for excellence in Professional Studies. Since graduating, they have been a recipient of the Adelaide Central School of Art Graduate Kickstart Award and are a finalist in the Prospect Portrait Prize. Their writing has been published in Fine Print magazine and by Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. They are currently participating in the studio program at Post Office Projects in Port Adelaide.