SALA Festival 2025 Program Unveiled
The 28th edition of the festival is a statewide celebration of visual art featuring more than 700 exhibitions and events, with over 10,500 artists involved.
Image Sam Roberts
August once again plays host to the South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival. Running from August 1-31, the 28th edition of the festival is a statewide celebration of visual art featuring more than 700 exhibitions and events, with over 10,500 artists involved.
The full 2025 program is available to view online at salafestival.com, with physical copies available from Saturday 19 July at Foodland supermarkets, SALA venues, civic centres, and visitor information centres across the state.
SALA prides itself on being Australia’s largest open-access visual arts event, encouraging artists of all ages to share their creativity. This year’s festival is focusing on local stories and unique characters, with exhibitions held at galleries, cafes, libraries, schools and more.
SALA CEO Bridget Alfred said, “SALA Festival 2025 is quite literally bursting with artists, exhibitions, events and tours. There is a great sense of momentum this year as we are seeing a deepening of visual arts practices and connections right across the state. This August, SALA Festival claims South Australia as the nation’s centre for creativity and is there for everyone to participate and enjoy.”
This year’s featured artist is multidisciplinary visual artist Sue Kneebone, whose career spans more than two decades. Kneebone’s work centres around troubling aspects of Australia’s colonial history, characterised by a distinctively Australian gothic aesthetic. Kneebone, along with the writers of her new monograph, Elle Freak, James Tylor, Andrew Purvis and Nicole Clift, will be attending the SALA Forum Unnatural Causes at Adelaide Central School of Art, Lecture Theatre on 16 August.
The SALA Hub can be found at ILA Light Square in the West End and is hosting two SALA exhibitions, Nature: A SALA Roving Exhibition, featuring the work of four artists inspired by the natural world working across printmaking, moving image, painting, ceramics and textiles, and Coffee, Turps & Devotion, which brings together artists Robert Hannaford and Alison Mitchell Hannaford, with the duo displaying drawings, paintings and sculptures inspired by the outdoors.
READ MORE: Adelaide Town Hall Hosts the South Australian Music Hall of Fame
Other highlights of the program that take place at Room Gallery at ILA include the SALA Forum Arts in Health – The Gut Feelings Project (22 August), which will explore the connection between gut health and the environment, Dan Withey’s It Takes Two workshop (21 August), and the SALA Slide Night (14 August), an event hosted by Christina Peek and featuring artists Dameeli Coates, Brenton Drechsler, Toni Hassan, Mark Valenzuela, Frida Las Vegas, Jeffrey Brown, Alyssa Powell-Ascura, Jo Fife, Swapna Namboodiri,
There will also be several walking tours, combining nature and art, held across the state. Recommended walks include the Street Art Walking Tour with artist Nicole Black, where you will explore the work of South Australia’s street artists and the painted walls of the Adelaide CBD (10 August), The Barossa Light Art Tour that visits Lyndoch Lavendar Farm, the arts of Angaston and Tanunda and delights of Seppeltsfield JamFactory and Wonderground (30 August), and the Art Tour Listening (to) Architecture, a guided tour through the CBD with Tom Borgas, who will take you to some of his favourite acousitc spaces in the city (23 August).
SALA Festival 2025 runs from August 1-31. View the entire program at salafestival.com.
