Concrete Playground

Alice Springs is not what it seems. For a start, it’s not the actual centre of Australia. It’s also not a sleepy, dusty, desert town — there’s a pulse and underlying ferocity that you can find only in the middle of something.

What’s beneath the surface is what’s addressed in Alex Kershaw’s One of Several Centres. Filmed over a number of visits to the red centre, the work is a series of vignettes on unlikely characters, representing Alice through personality, encounter and landscape. He first visited Alice Springs years ago as a photographic assistant and, after subsequent returns, was struck by the gap between his experience of the place and familiar representations of it. One of Several Centres is a reimagining of the town; the stories are authored, but the characters’ reactions within them spontaneous. They raise more questions than they answer, making Kershaw’s tale unique, surprising and provocative.

Hear about it from the artist himself, this Saturday 6 March at 2pm.