Diner Club at 'Rewriting Landscapes'

For one night only, Emma McCaskill and Daniel Motlop will collaborate to present a special dinner service inspired by Rewriting Landscapes – an exhibition at ACE that brings together leading contemporary Aboriginal artists who reclaim and reframe the genre of landscape through photography and video.

Diner Club brings together contemporary artists with the best chefs, restaurants and South Australian wines to host a once-off dinner service curated specifically to the themes and ideas behind the exhibition.

Seated within Rewriting Landscapes, Emma McCaskill, one of South Australia’s most acclaimed chefs, will lead the kitchen with her highly innovative and creative approach, developing a menu that showcases native ingredients sourced by Daniel Motlop, a Larrakia man and co-founder of Indigenous-owned, Something Wild. Daniel brings extensive knowledge of native Australian produce – from magpie goose and kangaroo to bush fruits, native greens, herbs and spices.

Diner Club sponsors Festival Hire and Studio Botanic will help transform the gallery space into a unique dining experience. The drinks menu features the great wines of ACE sponsor, Alpha Box and Dice.

About the exhibition:
Rewriting Landscapes brings together leading contemporary Aboriginal artists who reclaim and reframe the genre of landscape through photography and video.

For much of Australia’s colonial history, the idea of “landscape” has been bound up with possession, extraction and the erasure of First Nations presence. Our visual traditions often reinforced the colonial gaze, which frames Country as empty, picturesque, and available for possession. This exhibition confronts those legacies of Country as backdrop or object, reimagining it as living, storied and sovereign.

The artists in Rewriting Landscapes use the camera to destabilise inherited ways of seeing, offering instead works that are at once deeply personal and political. Their images articulate connections to place that resist surface aesthetics, positioning Country as an active participant in narrative and identity. Ranging from conceptual and critical, to playful and experimental, and defiantly self-determined, these practices dismantle canonical representations while carving out new visual pathways rooted in cultural continuity.

Rather than a reaction to colonial landscape traditions, Rewriting Landscapes is an affirmation: of presence, of perspective, of ongoing cultural dynamism. It celebrates photography and video as contemporary tools for expressing ancestral knowledge, kinship, and lived experience, underscoring how First Nations artists continue to experiment while remaining grounded in Country.

Rewriting Landscapes offers a collective act of rewriting, reshaping and reimagining of visual language.

Artists:
Troy-Anthony Baylis (Jawoyn)
Patrick William Carter (Noongar)
Dylan Crismani (Wiradjuri)
Adam-Troy Francis (Kaurna, Ngarrindjeri, and Wirangu) in collaboration with Colleen Strangways (Arabana, Mudburra)
Libby Harward (Ngugi)
r e a (Gamilaraay, Wailwan and Biripi)
Darren Siwes (Ngalkbun)

Curator: Danni Zuvela

Thank you to our sponsors

Diner Club is made possible with the generosity of excellent people and businesses. 

A sincere thank you to Mark Kamleh, Anton Andreacchio, Mia Gambranis, chef Emma McCaskill, Daniel Motlop of Something Wild. Shane Pope of Festival Hire, Dylan Fairweather of Alpha Box & Dice and Nadia Travaglini of Studio Botanic.

Groups

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Dietary requirements

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