Feature Artist
Every year, an established South Australian artist is celebrated as the SALA Feature Artist.
This artist’s work features on the SALA poster and printed program, and will be exhibited during the SALA Festival.
2025 Feature Artist
Sue Kneebone
Sue Kneebone is an interdisciplinary visual artist with an exhibition practice spanning more than twenty years. Her creative practice encompasses the processes of assemblage and montage to evoke new associations and contexts about memory, history and place.
Informed by in-depth research, Sue’s art works seek to to stir up the spectre of what has been overlooked or suppressed in Australian historical memory. Sue has been known to describe her haunting aesthetic as a kind of ‘Feral Aussie Gothic’.
Celebrating the work
Sue’s work will feature on the 2025 SALA Poster and Program, and will be the subject of a book by Wakefield Press (South Australian Living Artist Publication).
About the artwork
Sue Kneebone, Hardboiled, 2018, photograph on metallic paper
The official 2025 SALA Festival Poster features an artwork by Sue Kneebone. This will also feature on the cover of the 2025 SALA Festival Program.
About The Book
As the recipient of the Arts South Australia South Australian Living Artist Publication grant, Sue’s art practice will be the subject of a high quality book published by Wakefield Press and to be written by Elle Freak (Associate Curator, Australian Paintings & Sculpture, Art Gallery of South Australia), James Tylor (Kaurna & Māori multi-disciplinary visual artist), Andrew Purvis (curator at Adelaide Central School of Art gallery) and emerging artist and writer Nicole Clift.
Sue Kneebone – Unnatural Causes
Elle Freak, Andrew Purvis, James Tylor, Nicole Clift
This monograph is the first publication dedicated to tracing the breadth and diversity of Kneebone’s research and practice. Through their respective lenses, curators Elle Freak and Andrew Purvis, and artists James Tylor and Nicole Clift, deftly explore different aspects of her artistic approach. Elle Freak examines notions of the homely and unhomely in Kneebone’s oeuvre, while James Tylor focuses on the photomontages in which the artist acknowledges her family’s – and her own – complicity in settler colonisation and its consequences. Andrew Purvis considers the ocean worlds present in Kneebone’s more recent work – an expansion of her colonial critique that interrogates empire – while Nicole Clift’s Qa&A and timeline illuminate the different stages and influences in the artist’s practice.
Available from Wakefield Press
Where to see Sue Kneebone's work
In SALA Festival 2025, Sue Kneebone’s work will be on display at Adelaide Central School of Art and the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Adelaide Central School of Art
The Last Tide Waiter
SALA in Lights: Sue Kneebone's Flight of Souls
SALA in Lights: Sue Kneebone's Flight of Souls
The Studio: Art Gallery of South Australia
The Studio: Way Too Wild
Art Gallery of South Australia
Way Too Wild with Sue Kneebone
SALA Monograph Writers Panel
Join Sue Kneebone and writers of her new monograph. Sue Kneebone’s new exhibition, The Last Tidewaiter, will also be open for viewing at Adelaide Central Gallery.
- Saturday 16 August, 2025
- Adelaide Central School of Art, Lecture Room
The selection of this artist is tied to the outcome of the South Australian Living Artist Publication – the successful recipient becomes the SALA Feature Artist. The publication is produced by Wakefield Press and is intended to profile the work of an established South Australian visual artist with a track record of achievement in their area of practice. Applications for this opportunity are facilitated by Create SA.
PAST Feature artists
Past SALA feature artists include: Julia Robinson (2024), Helen Fuller, (2023), Mark Valenzuela (2022), Roy Ananda (2021), Kirsten Coelho (2020), Louise Haselton (2019), Clare Belfrage (2018), Christopher Orchard (2017), Catherine Truman (2016), Giles Bettison (2015), Nicholas Folland (2014) and many more.
Discover more by exploring our Feature Artist Archive.
Banner Image: SALA Festival Finissage at the The Lab, 2024. Photo by Sam Roberts
