Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. SALA Festival. 17 Aug 2025
Filipino-Australian artist Mark Valenzuela appears dressed as a Filipino labourer at the opening of his expansive exhibition at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE), an exhibition that combines live performance, installation, recorded sound and video to create an immersive environment that draws on his Filipino heritage.
Valenzuela is the recipient of the 2025 Porter Street Commission, which is awarded annually by ACE. Valued at $20,000, it’s one of Australia’s most significant visual art awards.
Bantay-Salakay installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental
Photo: Sam Roberts @samrophoto
The installation fills the entire ACE gallery and its reception area, creating an environment with innumerable references to daily life in the Philippines. The exhibition title, Bantay-Salakay, literally means “guard-attack” and in this context the term refers to a guard who cannot be trusted, an individual who is expected to protect people but does the opposite. This use of the term raises the issue of political leaders who fail or exploit their constituents or misuse their power.
The gallery states that,
“In Bantay-Salakay, Valenzuela explores the offensive and defensive strategies embedded in our environments, and the role of power in determining whether these strategies represent resistance or oppression."
The exhibition is steeped in traditional, pre-colonial Filipino culture and the legacy of Spanish and subsequent American colonisation. In the reception area there is a frame resembling a Filipino kariton, a cart used by street vendors, or a sari-sari, a goods stall. It is laden with all kinds of objects, such as ceramic fish heads, referring to the use of fish heads in fish soup; a ceramic car tyre half covered with pencil marks; and an electric fan whose blades have been replaced with strips of soft plastic to keep flies away from food without injuring people.
Bantay-Salakay installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental
Photo: Sam Roberts. @samrophoto
On the opening night the kariton is moved about from time to time, as if being moved along a street, and it becomes a site where people congregate, just as they would in a Filipino street.
On the floor of the main gallery lie large chunks of broken concrete paving suggesting the demolition of a road. But the steel reinforcing protruding from the concrete has been replaced by ceramic facsimiles — concrete turns out to be fragile. Ceramics are central to Valenzuela’s visual language.
Hanging on wooden frames are car tyres — ceramic, rather than rubber, and painted black. Numerous ceramic forms are dotted around the space, some resembling gigantically enlarged three-corner jacks, the seeds of the invasive weed that punctures tyres, and there is a video of a man mending a punctured motorcycle tyre. The three-corner jacks may be seen as a metaphor for colonisation, and a banner bears images of police caps shaped to resemble three-cornered jacks. Flour bags represent the introduction of bread, a foreign food.
On the opening night on 1 August, Valenzuela conducted a performance in which he smashed small ceramic cups and cemented the resulting shards onto the top of a low brick wall, referring to the common practice of putting sharp materials on top of walls to deter intruders. Such defensive walls separate the wealthy from the poor and refer to the significant social inequality found in the Philippines.
Meanwhile, another performer, Clai Pasion, dances a traditional dance around the space while playing a small gong, and later gives a performance on a kulintang, a traditional instrument comprising a set of tuned brass gongs. Evidently, some kulintangs have been manufactured from spent cartridge casings left over from violent conflicts during the period of American colonisation.
Opening Night: Bantay-Salakay, 2025, event documentation,
Adelaide Contemporary Experimental. Photo: Lana Adams @lanaadams
In another part of the gallery, large, low-fired ceramic vessels fitted with loudspeakers sit on shelves and emit sounds typical of a busy Filipino street. Transducers attached to a wall project sound into the wall cavity so that the wall becomes a loudspeaker, providing low frequency rumbling sounds complementing the sounds emitted by the ceramic forms on the shelves. Visible behind the shelves of ceramic vessels is a video of a man tending to a fighting cock, referencing the popular Filipino practice of cock-fighting.
Bantay-Salakay installation view, 2025, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental
Photo Sam Roberts. @samrophoto
Having lived in Australia for several years, Valenzuela sees the Philippines from a distance and has developed a unique visual language to convey his ideas. The installation and performances plunge the audience into the cacophonous world of the Philippines of his memory. Valenzuela’s work prompts viewers to think about their own cultural background and the effects of colonisation, both in Australia and the Philippines.
Additional performances by a team of artists, including Valenzuela, took place at a Filipino community day on 16 August, with pottery-making, clay sculpture, screen printing and live musical performances. Additional items had been added to the kariton, including glazed ceramics by Edwin Harris-Faull and amulets by Mikoo Cataylo. There were projections by Miles Dunne and a dramatic performance on flute and electronics by sound artist Amamanita Axaxaxanax Glass Seer.
As on the opening night, the community day involved several artists and assistants and actively engaged the audience. Filipino coffee and cuisine were provided, audience members moulded clay, children made drawings, chess games could be played, and merchandise was for sale. Most of all, there was conversation, and Valenzuela and his associates happily discussed the work with the audience. Such relational activity is the beating heart of this unique exhibition — audience members are not merely passive observers but participants in friendly and creative cross-cultural exchange.
Valenzuela was the featured artist in the 2022 South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival, and this absorbing exhibition builds on his previous work by engaging a team of contributors and involving the audience directly. Valenzuela is thus creating a compelling oeuvre in which he is a team leader rather than the sole creator.
This outstanding exhibition also extends the approach of Adelaide Contemporary Experimental in featuring exhibitions that draw disparate communities together and actively engage audiences.
An evening of live performances and activities including bread-making is scheduled for 30 August.
Chris Reid
When: 2 Aug to 20 Sep
Where: Adelaide Contemporary Experimental
More info: ace.gallery/whats-on/exhibitions/2025-porter-street-mark-valenzuela
Bantay-Salakay, 2025, event documentation
Adelaide Contemporary Experimental
Photo: Lana Adams @lanaadams
