The late Peter Maloney and Heather B. Swann are both fixated on death, albeit in different ways. Maloney’s Depth of My Soul (2022), made shortly before his death, is a genuinely scary picture. An “amoeba”-shaped face, in black and yellow, displays a row of sharp teeth and two large, misshapen eyes. It’s set against a white, misty backdrop where one may discern the words: “Father I feel nothingness invade me”. The line comes from Mallarme via Paul Auster. In this instance, it’s a cri de coeur from an artist who feels the advance of the illness that would shortly remove him from the world. File it alongside Picasso’s last self-portrait, where he stares death in the face, the skull visible beneath his skin.

In Swann’s extensive body of work, which comprises paintings, sculptures and works on paper, the artist is an observer, feeling the looming presence of death while trying to find a point of philosophical accommodation. Feelings of grief and anger may be discerned in these sombre works that feel like the artefacts of a mystery cult. The works on paper are far more expressive, particularly the ones using words.

One of the surprises of the show is George Cooley of Coober Pedy (Umoona), who paints numerous variations on that region’s dramatic ridges and escarpments in a confident expressionistic style in which thick swaths of paint are balanced by a clear, flat sky. These most recent pictures are on an unprecedented scale and serve as signature works for the show. The largest, a triptych, is set over the desk in the entrance; smaller ones are being used in the children’s education studio. For Cooley, it’s a big, impressive step up.

By including relatively few artists, Da Silva allows each of them to be seen in depth. This works well for an artist such as Teelah George, whose wall hangings defy classification, being part-tapestry, part-sculpture, with a pronounced painterly dimension. They are not exactly abstract, being based on views of the sky. They are highly structured, as any embroidery must be, but with an utterly informal appearance.

Clara Adolphs also benefits from a generous allotment of exhibition space, as her low-toned paintings based on antique photos are far more engaging when seen as an ensemble rather than as one-offs. As with all paintings in which a style or technique overshadows the subject, the eye is instantly captured but not so easily convinced.

For sheer, bloody-minded determination, nobody can match Jacobus Capone, who in 2022 travelled from his hometown of Perth to the Paulabreen Glacier in Svalbard, Norway, to trace a single line on a vast wall of ice with a hunting knife. The multichannel video that shows Capone edging his way unsteadily across this remote, dangerous wilderness is as spectacular as his gesture is futile. The futility is really the point, as this glacier is rapidly melting, bringing the climate catastrophe closer, drip by drip. By now, that hard-won line on the ice will have already disappeared.

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One of the aspects of this exhibition that is most to be admired is the way Da Silva has managed to include all the issues so beloved of contemporary curators, but never in a doctrinaire manner. Indigenous artists are able to tell their stories, but so are their non-Indigenous peers. So-called “queer” love is love, pure and simple. By stressing the subjective, intimate side of each artist’s work, we get the impression that individual expression is far more important than having the right political credentials. In realising this, the curator has shown it’s possible to escape the dead weight of political correctness that is driving audiences out the doors of art museums, while still giving ample scope to each artist’s sacred core of identity.

Inner Sanctum: 18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art is at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide, until June 2. John McDonald flew to Adelaide courtesy of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

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