Apart, we are together
Image credit: Raeda Saadeh, Untitled, (2010), Performance Courtesy the artist
Victoria Lynn, ‘Apart, we are together’, Adelaide International: Apart, we are together, Adelaide Festival, 2010, pp 6-11
The apparent paradox in the title of this exhibition – that even though we may be apart, we can also be together – is, at one level, the perfect expression of the process of collaboration that went into curating an exhibition featuring 11 international artists and collaborations at five contemporary arts organisations in Adelaide. Apart, we are together is also an expression of the ways in which the artists follow the journey of the heart – the symbol for the 2010 Adelaide Festival. The heart can take us in many directions: to memory, secrets, longing and emotional thresholds. It is with the heart that we form connections with others. What does it take to communicate? What forms of resistance and resilience do we find? Together – and apart – the varied body of work in this inaugural Adelaide International provides a beating force that invites us to bond with seemingly ungraspable horizons, even if the connections are tentative, temporary and replete with contradiction.