Lee Salomone: Fragments; a widening vision – Opening Night

Celebrate the opening night of Fragments; a widening vision by Lee Salomone – the recipient of the 2024 Porter Street Commission.

Welcome to Country and speeches start at 4:45pm.

This event is Auslan interpreted.

Our bar will be stocked by our sponsors Charlotte Dalton Wines and Bowden Brewing.

Artist: Lee Salomone
Curator: Rayleen Forester

About the Exhibition:
Fragments; a widening vision, poetically weaves together form and image interlacing memory with personal and ancestral histories. Speaking to the pathways of experience altered by immigration and assimilation, Lee Salomone’s exhibition is grounded in intergenerational learning, an acknowledgment of First Nations country, and deepening our understanding of settler colonial experience. Fragments; a widening vision is the first major institutional exhibition by Lee Salomone in over a decade.

Envisaged as an expansive metaphorical garden, fostered and cared for by elders, family, and educators Fragments; a widening vision proposes a site for growth. Through a process of bronze casting and a recalibration of found objects and natural materials, Salomone embeds allegory and narrative into his sculptures. By sowing new seeds of connectivity between migrant histories and the enduring cultural practices sustained by First Nations peoples, Salomone’s 2024 Porter Street Commission is an example of allyship and nurturing story-telling.

Fragments; a widening vision interrelates Salomone’s own familial connections to gardening and caring for Country, documenting his ongoing journey of self-education and consultation with Kaurna Elders and community. Rooted in the gallery space, Fragments; a widening vision is a passage for both story and memory, fostering growth and understanding between people and homelands.

About the artist:
Since 1991 Lee Salomone has been expanding his visual literacy in installation, photography, sculpture, and works on paper.

Lee has presented over thirty solo shows and exhibited in more than seventy group exhibitions.

Lee has been a recent finalist in the Wyndham Art Prize (2023), Gallery M Contemporary Art Prize, (2023, 2022), The Tatiara Prize (2021), The Heysen Prize for Landscape (2020, 2016), Prospect Portrait Prize (2019, 2011), and the Whyalla Art Prize (2017, 2015).

In 2023 Lee was the winner of the Gallery M Contemporary Art Prize and recipient of the 2024 Porter Street Commission.

Lee is represented by Gallerysmith, Melbourne.

Image: Lee Salomone's studio (2024). Photography by Peter Fong.

Lee Salomone is the 2024 recipient of the Porter Street Commission – ACE’s annual award supporting new artwork commissions by South Australian artists.
ACE is supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body and by the Government of South Australia through the Department of the Premier and Cabinet

Presented as part of the South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival.