Alice McCool

on-site at No.9 Karaoke No.9 卡拉OK karaoke Bar Shop 5/36-48 Wright St, Adelaide SA 5000 “There’s no chinatown in China” - helium 📷 Sia Duff

on-site is a series of site-specific experiences of art that will present unexpected encounters in non-traditional exhibition spaces. As collaborators, Alice McCool, Kim Munro and Yusuf Ali Hayat consider how places (re)member – how they are used, storied and shaped – retaining remnants of layered histories in the collective residual memory. The series interrupts the day-to-day function of specific public sites to unsettle audiences’ expectations and renew familiar perceptions of how those locations are used, narrativised, and co-opted. on-site’s curatorial premise critiques conceptions of place and notions of who is considered to be ‘of-the-place’ ‘in-place’ and who is perennially ‘out-of-place’. Our first presentation in Chinatown will transform No. 9 Karaoke Bar into a space where new rhythms of cultural expression can unfold. Artists working across various art forms have created unique experiences shaped by this distinct location and its local community. Karaoke bars are not dedicated exhibition spaces and therefore present invited artists with the challenge of reimagining and repurposing the venue, opening up new and unfamiliar forms of cultural expression. For on-site at No.9 Karaoke we are thrilled to present the works of: Jesse Budel Saluhan Collective Ellen Steele, Astrid Pill & Jason Sweeney Valerie Berry & Ben-Hur Winter Jazmine Deng & Helium Documentary Film Society Image credit: @aidapplebaum

Join us for a preview of our new collaborative project COUNTER. ‘Art is a state of encounter’ - Nicholas Bourriaud Counter is a project propelled by its movability—an insistence that escape is possible. Gathering outside of the gallery where people already are, forming temporary constellations that allow new intimacies to emerge in familiarity and friendship. The aesthetic encounter offers a vantage point to imagine alternatives to hegemonic frameworks that have been known to be sexist, racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-poor. Counter is a proposition towards creativity, curiosity, wonder, fascination, hospitality, hope, and openness. Opening this Friday 20 March, 6-8pm. fab Workshop and Studio Loading Bay (back entrance) 12 Little Rundle St, Kent Town SA 5067 This project has been supported through our @fab_workshop x @adlfringe studio residency

“Sun in Pisces people are frequently pegged as wishy-washy, but this is all a matter of opinion. What you will find behind a vaguely directionless, spacey manner is a deep person with real dreams. Their dreams are more than getting that picket fence or making it up the corporate ladder. Pisces are tuned in to a higher purpose, and their dreams transcend the individual.” In Western astrology your star sign is determined by the position of the Sun at the time of birth. Official documents provided by adoption agencies to many Korean adoptees are now known to be deliberately falsified. Sun in Pisces, 2026, steel and thread, @feltspace ‘Housewarming’.

@alicemccool presents her new works ‘Bimil 비밀’ and ‘Initial Social History’ currently on view at @futurejuice.xyz part of the ISSUING AUTHORITY/ AS PER ID group show

"A lock is a psychological threshold," Gaston Bachelard. Secrets rely on the interplay of privilege and exclusion to conceal (or reveal) what is known, to whom and the circumstances in which they might be revealed. They are ethical decisions. The politics of secrecy in South Korean adoption received coverage across international news outlets following the finding of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2025. The sculptural work, Bimil 비밀, offers an aesthetics of secrecy. The solid steel sculpture recalls Korean locks found on cabinets and wardrobes. It's imposing presence stands for the absence of information that is withheld by South Korean adoption agencies. In the video work Initial Social History, Alice Woo Hwa McCool @alicemccool shows a series of television advertisements from 1986 overlaid with an audio montage of news reports in English. The images and narratives of Initial Social History + Bimil 비밀 point to the commodification of Korean babies to meet international demand, suggesting the complicity of Western nations, and the administrative obstacles surrounding the seemingly impenetrable secrecy adoptees face in accessing accurate personal records that can confirm birth and beginnings. Words from Alice below Before K-Pop, K-Beauty and K-Dramas, one of Korea’s most popular exports to the West was K-Babies. In the decades following the Korean War over 200,000 children were sent abroad through fraudulent orphan registrations, identity tampering and the fabrication of records, including false reports of abandonment and illegal separation. In 2025, following a three-year investigation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission confirmed the South Korean government’s complicity in violating the fundamental human rights of children sent overseas for adoption. Initial Social History and Bimil 비밀 call attention to the epistemic and institutional barriers faced by Korean adoptees–including language, culture and legal rights–to access our own records. These works attend to Korean inter-country adoption as a state sanctioned industry that produced loss through physical displacement, fragmentation and the denial of personal and collective history.

Top 20 sunsets/sunrises of 2025 🌅🌄 Ready to clutch 2026… we’re locked in… all about that aura 🤪

Final day to see ‘Friend/free (to love)‘, an exhibition curated by Alice McCool and Ena Grozdanić, featuring Yusuf Ali Hayat and Dominic Guerrera, Astrid Lorange and Andrew Brooks (Snacks Syndicate), Sanja Grozdanić and Jelena Louise, and Hen Vaughan and Georgia Oakley.  Opening hrs: 12-5 Thursday-Friday, 10-2 Saturday or by appointment. More info on our website.  — Installation view. ‘Friend/free (to love)’, exhibition at Bus Projects, 2025. Photography by Sebastian Kainey. Bus Projects is assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts funding and advisory body. This exhibition is supported by the Independent Arts Foundation. @yusufalihayat , @dominiceliseo , @sanjagrozdanic , @jellyluise ,@flaneuxe , @georgia.oatley , @ena_groz , @alicemccool ,@creative.australia , @independentartsfoundation

Visit ‘Friend/free (to love)’, an exhibition curated by Alice McCool and Ena Grozdanić, featuring Yusuf Ali Hayat and Dominic Guerrera, Astrid Lorange and Andrew Brooks (Snack Syndicate), Sanja Grozdanić and Jelena Luise, and Hen Vaughan and Georgia Oatley. On show until the 18th of October. Opening hrs: 12-5 Thursday-Friday, 10-2 Saturday or by appointment. More info on our website. — Installation view. ‘Friend/free (to love)’, exhibition at Bus Projects, 2025. Photography by Sebastian Kainey. Bus Projects is assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts funding and advisory body. This exhibition is supported by the Independent Arts Foundation. @yusufalihayat , @dominiceliseo , @sanjagrozdanic , @jellyluise , @flaneuxe , @georgia.oatley , @ena_groz , @alicemccool , @creative.australia , @independentartsfoundation

Opening tonight Wednesday 10 September 6-8pm. This month across both galleries is ‘Friend/free (to love)’, an exhibition curated by Alice McCool and Ena Grozdanić, featuring Yusuf Ali Hayat and Dominic Guerrera, Astrid Lorange and Andrew Brooks (Snack Syndicate), Sanja Grozdanić and Jelena Luise, and Hen Vaughan and Georgia Oatley. ‘Friend/free (to love)’ brings together eight artistic comrades to ask: how do works created by friends speak to one another? Can friendship trouble the connection between art and property? Can friends redefine and renegotiate conventions of aesthetic autonomy through the process of reciprocal creative labour?  10 Sept - 18 Oct. More info on our website. — Image credit: ‘Monument to Diplomatic Language’ (still) 2025, Sanja Grozdanić and Jelena Luise, 07:44 min, 4K UHD video Drinks: @rockyridgebrunswick ,  @littlebrunswickco & @heapsnormal Bus Projects is assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts funding and advisory body. This exhibition is supported by the Independent Arts Foundation. @yusufalihayat , @dominiceliseo , @sanjagrozdanic , @jellyluise , @flaneuxe , @georgia.oatley , @ena_groz , @alicemccool , @creative.australia , @independentartsfoundation

Palestinian writer and poet Mohammed el-Kurd reminds us “To be irreverent at the podium is to possess a powerful weapon against dehumanization… Contrary to popular belief, irreverence can shatter taboos and help others raise their ceiling. It expands the boundaries of what is permissible.“ Maradona’s irreverent “Hand of God” goal for Argentina in the 1986 World Cup against England, is viewed by many across the Global South as an act of humiliation against a colonial power. Maradona called himself the number one fan of the Palestinian people. “I support their cause since I grew up on struggle and standing against injustice. What Israel is doing to the Palestinians is shameful... I support Palestine without any fear... In my heart, I am Palestinian.” This collaborative work with @yusufalihayat is currently showing in PROSOPON at The Little Machine alongside: Gerwyn Davies Deborah Paauwe Polixeni Papapetrou Brianna Speight Kasia Töns Image credit: @samrophoto

Yesterday after a two and a half year investigation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Korea confirmed that for decades following the Korean War the government had continually violated the fundamental human rights of children sent overseas for adoption through fraudulent orphan registrations, identity tampering and the fabrication of records, including false reports of abandonment. “…during the adoption process, their identities were altered, and they were collectively registered as “orphans,” often through forged documentation that misrepresented their status as abandoned children. As a result, their “right to know their identity” was severely infringed upon.” For me - as a Korean intercountry adoptee - ‘debut’ reckons with this stripping of identity, alongside Korea’s history of systemically and socially neglecting the welfare of women. For close to 50 years Korea was the world’s biggest baby exporter… before it gave us K-pop. Kollaboration with @chelseafarquhar_ ‘debut’, 2025, @suitesevena Curated by @jemi.gale