Motional – Objects by Association

Karl Meyer with Exhibition Studios

Motional – Objects by Association, is a series of three public artworks that also operate as an outdoor art gallery. Created by Karl Meyer and Exhibition Studios the custom cabinets feature periodic exhibitions of small-scale artworks by SA based creatives.

The cabinets take their formal qualities from Modernism – think of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase and their thematic inspiration from the corridor’s historical usage as a centre for trade and exchange. The stacked and moving boxes refer to the movement of packages through the space over time.

Feature Exhibition 2026:

'$afety Deposit Box' by Good New$ Bank (Cassie Thring and Nicholas Hanisch), is a playful, layered installation created for the Bentham Street Gallery.

Riffing on the Bentham Street Gallery as safety deposit boxes, Good New$ Bank uses familiar signifiers of wealth—fat stacks of cash, diamond rings—a dose of humour, and hidden symbols to ask, "What does our community value?" These artworks highlight the tension between outward displays of wealth and the poignancy of sentimental, treasured objects.

Visitors are encouraged to scan the QR code by the Gallery to contribute to the growing Good New$ database, a participatory archive of what people choose to value and why.

Nicholas Hanisch and Cassie Thring's collaborative practice, Good New$ Bank, is a hopeful resistance to cynicism: bored with widespread nihilism, they imagine communities where good news is valued above all. Their work explores how society measures success and wealth and proposes an alternative through art.

The Bentham Street outdoor gallery is the latest instalment of the Market to Riverbank (M2RB) link project, a $14.6 million joint investment project between the City of Adelaide and the State Government (through Renewal SA).

Previous artworks commissioned for the M2RB project include Jason Sims’ Golden Rhombohedron (Obtuse) installed on Grote Street outside the Central Markets in and its companion Golden Rhombohedron (Acute) on the corner of North Terrace and Bank Street, opposite Adelaide Railway Station. The Riverbank is a Kaurna Market by Paul Herzich and Geode (integrated granite seating and drainage grates) by Amy Joy Watson were installed in Topham Mall.