On the wall of the Samstag Museum there's a defiant statement in red neon light:
"GOOGLE TRANSLATION IS WRONG AND I AM RIGHT"
In Mandarin Chinese and English, it's part of a 2022 artwork by Melbourne artist Chunxiao Qu.
The latest exhibition at Adelaide's Samstag Museum is Direct, Directed, Directly, and it's concerned with communication - especially the various ways in which we fail to get the message across.
Curator Gillian Brown won't exactly admit to nailing the zeitgeist, but allows that communication collapse is something audiences are willing to think about right now.
"We already had a feeling people weren't able to talk to each other, but it feels like at the moment, that really is at the forefront of things," she told AAP.
The exhibition is predominantly composed of video works, such as Broken English is my mother tongue, a 2020 artwork by Polish-born Kuba Dorabialski.
The artist sits in a bubble bath, smoking, and speaks straight to the camera: as a child, he thought he could speak perfect English, but discovered he was speaking Broken English instead.
This is a language all its own, he explained, like music is a language, or smoking cigarettes is a language - and it operates through a global solidarity of Broken English speakers.
The artwork sits near Aboriginal artist and activist Richard Bell's 2011 video, also titled Broken English - but this artwork has a more overtly political message.
Bell has some uncomfortable conversations about colonisation with people around Australia, and during a game of chess, Bell's friend and collaborator Gary Foley explains in the simplest terms what Aboriginal people want:
"Land rights, self determination, economic independence. It's as simple as that!" says Foley.
Unlike other artworks in the show, this is a work that says exactly what it means, says Brown: "It's meant to be provocative, direct and confronting for people."
The Samstag was established in 2007 with its spaces especially designed to accommodate video art, but even so, group shows can be tricky to install.
Selecting older videos for the exhibition was a deliberate choice for the curator, who says institutions will often commission new work from artists, before considering what they have already made.
"We don't necessarily ask painters to do that or sculptors, but video can fall into that trap," says Brown.
The most recent video in the exhibition is The Sauce of All Order by Adelaide-born Madison Bycroft.
Filmed during the artist's residency at Villa Medici in Rome, it asks how we communicate with those who have superior status, and how much we should trust what they say.
One scene is a feast at a long table, with participants wearing sumptuous costumes, among them Roman augurs.
When these venerated figures talk on hamburger phones and demonstrate interrupted flight by dropping an egg, it's pretty hard to tell whether they should be feared or ridiculed.
Another artist Danielle Freakley has a conversation technique to suggest in her 2021 video Please Say - which even comes with take-home instructions.
When the Samstag museum flooded in 2023 and the building was forced to close for a year, the exhibition had to be postponed.
But during this time, various failures of communication only became more evident across society, said Brown.
"By the time the show came around, actually, we were seeing the effects of that in our every day," she said.
The exhibition runs until May 30 at the Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia.
AAP travelled with the assistance of the Adelaide Festival.
