Poverty can look remarkably ordinary. It can exist in a family home filled with books and imagination. It can sit alongside employment, creativity, parenthood and ambition. It can be present in a household managing illness or disability, in the insecurity of housing, or in the choices quietly made when there is simply not enough money to meet every need.
This is the central provocation of Hidden in Plain Sight, a new exhibition at Adelaide Airport that brings together twelve South Australian visual artists whose lived experiences offer different perspectives on financial hardship. Presented by Guildhouse in partnership with Adelaide Airport and supported by The Wyatt Trust, the exhibition opens for Anti-Poverty Week and will remain on display until 29 January 2027.
The participating artists are Abbey Murdoch, Bianca Joanna Buliga, Catherine Fitz-Gerald, Chloe Noble, Emiko Artemis, Gus Clutterbuck, Katherine Grocott, Makeda Duong, Meg Mader, Tabitha Lean, Tieyuan (Vivian) Zhou and Tom Phillips. Each brings their own artistic practice and perspective to an exhibition that resists stereotypes and centres lived experience.
Art that challenges assumptions
Developed through a Community Arts and Cultural Development approach, the exhibition was shaped collaboratively by the artists through conversation, reflection and shared creative development. Experienced facilitator and curator Maz McGann worked with the group to build skills and create space for discussion, rather than asking them to illustrate a predetermined message.
“Poverty is not only hidden, it is also widely misunderstood,” McGann says. “We think we know what poverty looks like, who experiences it and why, but the reality is far more complex. Hidden in Plain Sight is as much a social provocation as it is an art exhibition. It challenges us to look beyond our assumptions, question our biases and reconsider how we understand poverty and the people who experience it.”
Across the exhibition, visitors encounter domestic rooms and suburban landscapes, birds, sticks, water and drought, childhood memories, family relationships, uncertainty, confinement, humour, displacement and imagination. Some works speak explicitly about poverty or disadvantage. In others, the connection sits around or behind the work, in the circumstances in which it was made or the story the artist chooses to tell alongside it.
The artists and their work
Abbey Murdoch’s work Shared Paths references aerial views of Elizabeth Downs and Salisbury, two northern suburbs she holds a deep connection with after growing up there. Her paintings transform these familiar suburban landscapes into colourful, abstracted grids. “It creates a different way of looking at places that are often represented through statistics, stereotypes and disadvantage,” she says.
Chloe Noble’s practice explores memory, domestic spaces, experiences of disability, housing instability and experiences of safety. Through digital painting and poetry, they examine how ordinary spaces can hold uncertainty, grief and belonging, drawing from lived experience of financial and housing insecurity.
Tom Phillips, recipient of the prestigious Guildhouse Fellowship, is a contemporary figure painter whose work explores the emotional and psychological dimensions of urban life. His paintings invite viewers to find themselves in the figures, fostering a sense of shared humanity and genuine connection.
A fitting location
There is something particularly fitting about encountering these works at Adelaide Airport. Airports are places of movement and transition, filled with people whose circumstances we know almost nothing about. We pass one another carrying luggage, expectations, responsibilities, worries, histories and plans. Someone may be travelling for work, returning home, visiting family or leaving somewhere they can no longer stay. We cannot know simply by looking.
Beth Neate, CEO of Guildhouse, says the exhibition demonstrates the unique power of artists to deepen our understanding of complex social issues. “Artists have a remarkable ability to reveal what is often overlooked in everyday life. The works in Hidden in Plain Sight are infused with empathy and authenticity. They have been shared with honesty, dignity and generosity by these twelve artists, encouraging audiences to move beyond assumptions and engage more deeply with the realities of poverty in our community.”
Located within one of South Australia’s busiest public spaces, the exhibition will reach hundreds of thousands of visitors and travellers. In addition to the artworks on display, each artist has written their own response, and McGann has produced an accompanying essay.
Hidden in Plain Sight is on display at Adelaide Airport from 13 October 2026 to 29 January 2027. For more information, visit guildhouse.org.au.
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