The fifth Myriad Art Exhibition presented 120 works by 68 South Australian artists living with disability during the 2023 SALA Festival.
Organised by Community Living Australia with the State Library of South Australia, the exhibition included ten featured artists from several regions.
Artists defining their own work
Each description was written by the artist or with a trusted person.
This allowed the work to be encountered through the maker’s own words rather than through an external explanation focused on disability.
Many pieces were offered for sale, with all proceeds going directly to the artists at prices they had selected themselves.
The exhibition also hung works lower than usual to improve access for wheelchair users.
Ability, culture and personal history
The previous year’s Artist of the Exhibition, Mia Qua, described painting and writing as ways of sharing her history, beliefs and emotions as a proud Indigenous artist.
Her account reflected the wider purpose of Myriad: to give individual practices a serious public platform while preserving the different cultures and stories behind them.
The display brought together artists from the Murraylands, Riverland, Fleurieu Peninsula, Adelaide Hills and other parts of the state.
Awards recognised the Artist of the Exhibition and three honorary artists, but the event’s scale ensured that recognition extended beyond prize winners.
Myriad treated accessibility as part of exhibition design, economic fairness and authorship.
The artists controlled the descriptions and prices of their work, while the State Library provided a highly visible civic setting in which audiences were asked to encounter a diverse group of practices without reducing them to a single account of disability.