Adelaide comes alive with art this weekend with the Coriole Music Festival, Penola Coonawarra Arts Festival and exhibition launches. Plus, plenty of opportunities to indulge in the Clare Valley.

Words Elisabeth Marie

Gourmet goodness

Top South Australian chefs have paired with renowned Clare Valley wineries to create bespoke food experiences as part of this month’s 2023 Clare Valley SCA Gourmet Week. From May 19 to 28, the event includes an opening festival weekend of music, food and wine, followed by a week-long program of masterclasses, tours, exhibitions and tastings. Events include a Gourmet Long Lunch at Taylors featuring Callum Hann, a degustation with Watervale Hotel’s Nicola Palmer and a Jim Barry Wines lunch featuring chef Jake Kellie. Meanwhile, cellar doors will open special back vintage wines as part of a week-long series of events.

Alive with art

The Penola Coonawarra Arts Festival will bring the South-East to life with arts, music, food and wine from May 18 to 21. The festival opens at Penola High School with the announcement of the winners of the 2023 John Shaw Neilson Acquisitive Art Prize, Local Art Prize and Design Prize. Festivities kick off on Friday with exhibitions and workshops on everything from photography to painting and welding to fashion illustration. Cafe 43 will be reimagined as a live music venue over the weekend with entertainment and an art exhibition by local students. On Sunday, families are invited to head down Petticoat Lane and enjoy activities, music, food and wine – all while wearing the colour green to embrace the “recycle, reuse and repurpose” theme of this year’s festival.

Music in the vineyard

Embrace a weekend of fine food, wine and music on May 20 and 21 at the Coriole Music Festival. Hosted at the Coriole Vineyard in McLaren Vale, the event encompasses two days of chamber music concerts, followed by decadent meals in the Coriole courtyard where performers and audience members can mingle. This year’s theme is “isolation and reunion” reflecting on the world’s re-emergence after lockdowns and the ability to come together and enjoy music once more.

Feminine touch

Denmark-born, Adelaide-based photographer Diana Brandt’s debut exhibition Woman as Art – Above, Below and Beyond The Fleurieu is currently showing at Collective Haunt Incorporated on The Parade. The series of photographs have been taken around the Fleurieu Peninsula and seek to capture the essence of women as an art form alongside elements of nature. The exhibition will be on display until Saturday, June 10.

Going bold

A new group exhibition opens at the BMGART Gallery on Friday, May 19 featuring work by Stephen Glassborow and Margie Sheppard. Stephen Glassborow’s Clay to Bronze features a series of sculptures designed through sketch, developed through clay and finished in bronze. A series of recent paintings by Margie Sheppard feature elemental geometric forms intersected by linear elements and bold colour-shape relationships. The exhibition will run until Saturday, June 10 and the artworks on display are available for purchase through BMGART.

Through the eyes of a healer

Currently showing at the Nexus Arts Gallery, the exhibition Nura Rupert: Mamu and Mischief features paintings and prints by traditional Anangu healer Nura Rupert. Curated by Elizabeth Close, the exhibition provides a glimpse through the eyes of a ‘Ngangkari’ who could see more than most. The works explore the bad spirits Nura Rupert could see and how camp dogs would protect the Anangu people from them. The exhibition will be on display until Friday, May 26.

For more of what’s on around South Australia this month, pick up the May issue of SALIFE, which is on sale now.