JULIA ROBINSON SPLIT BY THE SPADE, ACSA

30 July - 6 September 2024

Split by the Spade

Julia Robinson’s ambitious new installation 'Split by the Spade' is the latest entry in her ongoing series of odes to the folk horror genre. This exhibition promises to be a finely crafted, immersive experience by Robinson, highly esteemed graduate and staff member of Adelaide Central School of Art and the 2024 SALA feature artist.

Robinson’s long-standing themes of death, decay and renewal are explored through her signature blend of historical costuming techniques and archaic found objects. This body of work takes inspiration from Andrew Michael Hurley’s 2019 novel Starve Acre, a text that is emblematic of folk horror with its bleak narrative and sinister pseudo-folklore that challenges the concept of the rural idyll. Motifs from the novel – a gallows tree, a fallow field, and a burial site – are conjured by the artist to haunt the gallery as a series of textile apparitions.

'Split by the Spade' was presented at Adelaide Central Gallery from 30 July - 6 September 2024, launched in tandem with the 2024 South Australia Living Artist Publication (SALA Monograph). 

The project has been supported by Arts South Australia. 


Hugo Michell Gallery acknowledges the Kaurna people as the traditional custodians of the Adelaide region, and that their cultural and heritage beliefs are still as important to the living Kaurna people today.