On Friday 25th October at 10 am, we have planned a visit to the David Roche Museum to see the Salon des Refuses 2024. Limited parking is available at the site, 241 Melbourne Street, North Adelaide, but you can often find a park in the streets nearby. You can park in Finniss Street and walk through to Melbourne Street via Newlands Lane. Contact me at harveyat059@gmail.com if you can attend.

The Salon des Refusés was initiated by the S.H. Ervin Gallery in 1992 in response to the large number of works entered into the prestigious Archibald Prize which were not selected for display in the exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The S.H. Ervin Gallery’s ‘alternative’ selection is now a much-anticipated feature in its own right.

Each year the S.H. Ervin panel is invited to go behind the scenes of the judging process for the annual Archibald Prize for portraiture and Wynne Prize for landscape at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, to select an exhibition from those not chosen for the official award exhibition. The Salon des Refusés exhibition has established an excellent reputation that rivals the selections in the ‘official’ exhibition, with works selected for quality, diversity, humour and experimentation, and which examine contemporary art practices, different approaches to portraiture and responses to the landscape.

In 2024, 60 works were selected for the ‘alternative’ exhibition, with 38 from the Archibald Prize & 22 from the Wynne Prize by selectors Brad Hammond director, Orange Regional Gallery & Jane Watters, director, S.H. Ervin Gallery.