In thinking about the repercussions of the recession for artists and galleries, I am worried that our dismay at the present hardship and heartbreak may blind us to the fundamental recession related changes to the artist-gallery system which tend to the detriment of artists and forever endanger the quality and excitement of the Australian art scene.
In Englishwe use the word 'country' in two main senses: to refer to nation states, and to speak about rural lands beyond the big cities and their suburbs. In Australia there is historically a third zone out past the country; the now quickly shrinking Outback.
Our sports stars are successful because they are not burdened by funding programs which dribble a meagre supply to an army of unknown novices....the arts need radical strategies to help them survive the recession and achieve greater audience participation. (this article is responded to by Norm Austin, the Deputy Director of the Art Gallery of NSW).
The notion of the arts as an industry dates in Australia from about 10 years ago with the beginnings of statistical data measuring the economic impact of artistic activity. ... (Response to this article by Anna Ward, Director of the National Association of Visual Arts also in this issue of Artlink.)
This paper is almost all stories. Each one is part of much larger ones about cultures changing and moving to occupy the same geographies. We can speak of the conflicts and possibilities that seem to ignite by spontaneous combustion in these sites. But there is a series of sites from which I wish to speak: spaces of crisis that seem to lie within my person. B/w photographs of ritual and shrine.