If you walk from one end of North Terrace to the other, you’ll take in modern Adelaide’s most vaunted sites of cultural and political influence; from Parliament House to the Art Gallery of South Australia, they’re all lined up in a row, where they’ve sat for over a century.

“I’ve always been struck by the fact that just within a few blocks there is this configuration of cultural and civic institutions,” explains Jasmin Stephens, a Sydney-based curator and frequent visitor to the city over three decades.

Stephens has also learnt that the legacies of this celebrated ‘cultural boulevard’ are far from straightforward.

In her 2014 poem ‘Cultural Precinct’, Narungga poet and activist Natalie Harkin laid bare those tensions; how “these limestone walls” also serve to impose “symbols of colonialism”, a “racialised hierarchy”, and a “fantasy monolith-archive” on the landscape of unceded Kaurna Yarta.

Harkin’s words are foregrounded in North Terrace: worlds in relief, a group exhibition curated by Stephens for Samstag Museum of Art—yet another North Terrace cultural institution. From Adelaide-based sculptor Louise Haselton to Sydney duo the ArtHitects (Gary Carsley and Renjie Teoh), Stephens invited the artists to draw on the collections of the University of South Australia Architecture Museum and spend time with Harkin’s words.

Some works, like that of Cambodian-Australian filmmaker Allison Chhorn, resist the precinct’s ‘monumentality’ entirely by focusing on the nearby Karrawirra Parri—the ancient water source that became an anchor for colonial settlement and the reason for North Terrace’s existence.

“What I’m hoping to do as a curator,” notes Stephens, “is to not only encourage people to spend time and to linger in the exhibition, but also from that vantage point to actually think about North Terrace.” And, perhaps, take a walk.

North Terrace: worlds in relief
Samstag Museum of Art
Until 26 September

This article was originally published in the July/August 2025 print edition of Art Guide Australia.