Just Add Water is an exhibition by South Australian Artist, Fran Callen.

Media: Gesso, watercolour, graphite, eucalyptus sap, bushfire ash, campfire ash, charcoal, acacia sap, tea, coffee, wine, salt, dirt, bulldust and ochre on recycled porridge and tea sachets, cast plaster and other recycled surfaces.

Size: Variable

Date: 2018-2021

Just Add Water is a body of work created during Fran's Country Arts SA Residency in 2019 in response to observing effects of severe drought/climate change on the arid landscape surrounding Grindell’s Hut in Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park, on Adnyamathanha country. It hadn’t rained in four years. The landscape was a painful, shocking dry.

Fran created a series of watercolours daily on recycled porridge sachets from her children's breakfasts, while watching the sun rise and set across the ranges. Materials incorporate tea, coffee, wine, tree sap, local dirt, and ochre gifted by traditional custodians,the Coulthard family, from the Yalmarralpana Ochre Pit on Adnyamathanha Land.

The complete body of work has been exhibited at Yarta Purtli Cultural Centre in Port Augusta and Collective Haunt in SALA 2020, and at Hahndorf Academy in SALA 2021.

Fran Callen exhibits prolifically. Her work is regularly shortlisted in national art prizes, recently including the Waterhouse Science Art Prize in 2022, Tatiara, Center of Creative Health and Heysen Art Prizes in 2022 and the Paul Guest Prize for Drawing 2019. She currently works from her studio in Adelaide and teaches drawing and painting at Adelaide College of the Arts and Central School of Art. Fran's current work documents observations of my family’s relationship with the natural world. Motherhood provides an ambient background.

The Joinery Gallery is open Monday to Friday from 9am - 5pm. Free entry.

Exhibition dates are from 8 September - 2 November 2023.

Associated program:

Grindells Hut Artist Residency Panel
Drawing on Nature Workshop: experimental drawing and collage with found objects and recycled materials with Fran Callen

Photo: Just Add Water (extract), 2018-21. Fran Callen. Recycled packaging, watercolour and mixed media.

A Conservation SA project in collaboration with Country Arts SA, the Department for Energy and Water and National Parks and Wildlife Service, SA