Sunset Rock engages with SALA

Posted in News

Rev Marty Rosenberg reflects on Sunset Rock Uniting Church’s SALA (South Australian Living Artists) exhibition, which was held in August this year.

Over two weekends in August, Sunset Rock Uniting Church put on a display of works of art as a registered SALA exhibition. This was our first attempt at this, and the idea stemmed from a series we did for nine weeks leading up to Easter earlier this year.

In this earlier series, artists from the congregation were asked to depict one of the Beatitudes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount – a different artist was chosen to do this each week. Prior to the service, I interviewed the artists as their work was featured and asked for an explanation of their painting, including any scripture passage that had helped or inspired them. Each Sunday, we displayed a different painting and I spoke about it on behalf of the artist, adding some of my own thoughts to make up the sermon. I created a booklet with these notes as an explanation of the paintings.

After the series was completed, our congregation realised we were sitting on something that needed further display. We made the decision to enrol as a SALA establishment for August using only the artists from Sunset Rock and our contacts.

Denis Noble, a local professional artist, opened the exhibition amid the sipping of local wines and the indulging of exotic cheeses.

We exhibited nearly 400 pieces of artwork at our SALA exhibition. Approximately half of these works were paintings, but there was also a photographic exhibit of about 60 photos, over 120 pieces of craft, mosaics and jewellery, and a small exhibit of ceramics, glass and woodwork.

The special exhibits were the nine Beatitudes from our previous series, and 17 paintings from prisoners at Mobilong Prison. The visitor’s choice award for the best painting went to one of the Mobilong Prison paintings titled “Jesus came to me in a suit” (pictured).

During our Sunday worship time, while the SALA exhibition was still on display, one of the members of Sunset Rock, Trevor Wright, spoke about Vincent Van Gogh, tying in the music of Don McLean’s American Pie to the art works of Van Gogh.

There were also live demonstrations of art being produced by various artists and a puppet display. The upstairs area of the church was dedicated to children producing their own art, which was displayed in the church over the following weeks.

The entire display was all planned out, set up and taken down by the members of the Sunset Rock community who did an awesome job over many days of hard work – and it was much appreciated by the local community!

We received comments like: “I have been to many SALA events but nothing as big as this” and “the standard was so high”. The amount and diversity of our displays made it almost impossible to appreciate it all on only one visit – many came back a second time to try to capture the full scope of all that was on offer.

We estimate over 500 people wandered through the doors to visit over the five opening times, raising approximately $3,000 was raised for the work of Teen Challenge.

Well done, Sunset Rockers!


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