tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/biennale-of-sydney-7764/articles
Biennale of Sydney – The Conversation
2024-03-11T00:57:40Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/223721
2024-03-11T00:57:40Z
2024-03-11T00:57:40Z
Sydney Biennale invites us to celebrate our collective resistance in dark times
<p>The 24th edition of the Biennale of Sydney, titled Ten Thousand Suns, is an explosion of joy and creative energy across seven venues, including the sails of the Opera House and White Bay Power Station. </p>
<p>This iteration, led by co-artistic directors Inti Guerrero and Cosmin Costinas, includes the work of 96 artists from 45 countries. Guerrero and Costinas proposed an overarching theme of “celebration” for this edition: celebration not only as an event or social practice, but a method of creative and collective resistance in dark times. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-a-biennale-26516">Explainer: what is a biennale?</a>
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<h2>The post-industrial sublime</h2>
<p>The debut of White Bay Power Station as the Biennale’s new venue and a site for ongoing cultural production is certainly worth celebrating. The Biennale is the first test event at White Bay, Sydney’s newest arts and culture precinct. </p>
<p>The imposing internal spaces provide space for ambitious, celebratory and experiential works. There is Dylan Mooney’s portrait of dancer and activist Malcolm Cole dressed as Captain Cook for Mardi Gras in 1988, and Kaylene Whiskey’s Kaylene TV, an interactive work in the form of a giant television set. </p>
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<span class="caption">Kaylene TV , 2023 mixed media installation. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain with generous assistance from the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body. Courtesy the artist, Iwantja Arts and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns , White Bay Power Station. Photo by Daniel Boud.</span>
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<p>The building’s history as a site of extractive industries is addressed in some works, such as Monira Al Qadiri’s video work, Crude Eye. </p>
<p>Others connect more closely to the curatorial themes of resistance, cultural hybridity and joy, like Andrew Thomas Huang’s suspended sculpture, The Beast of Jade Mountain: Queen Mother of the West, a powerful depiction of the Chinese deity Xiwangmu. </p>
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<span class="caption">Andrew Thomas Huang, The Beast of Jade Mountain: Queen Mother of the West ( 西王母 ), 2023 – 2024. Polymer, steel, automotive paint. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from Terra Foundation for American Art. Courtesy the artist. 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns , White Bay Power Station. Photo by Daniel Boud.</span>
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<p>The challenge for artworks displayed in sites such as White Bay is in the dialogue with the architecture itself. Here, artworks must compete with the visual impact of these spaces and their <a href="https://architectureau.com/articles/dormant-power-station-in-Sydney-to-reopen-as-an-arts-hub-following-restoration-works/">heritage machinery</a>. This produces an overwhelming sense of the <a href="https://powerstations.omeka.net/exhibits/show/scott/industrial-sublime">post-industrial sublime</a>: a feeling of awe experienced in the huge and now-defunct “cathedrals of power”.</p>
<p>Curators working in post-industrial spaces often deal with this issue by programming large-scale, immersive installations or works responding directly to the building’s architecture. </p>
<p>Darrell Sibosabo’s Galalen at Gumiri is an illuminated reframing of traditional <em>riji</em> (pearl shell) designs from Bard Country in Western Australia. These shells have been ceremonially carved and worn for thousands of years. Through his large-scale light works, Sibosabo reiterates Aboriginal culture is alive, pulsing with energy and adaptive to change.</p>
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<span class="caption">Darrell Sibosado Galalen at Gumiri, 2023 LED light installation. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. Courtesy the artist and N.Smith Gallery, Sydney. 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, White Bay Power Station. Photo by Daniel Boud.</span>
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<p>This work simultaneously responds to the building’s scale and connects to the curatorial premise of celebrating cultural practices maintained and reimagined by artists around the world.</p>
<h2>Conversations across works and venues</h2>
<p>Celebrating multiple perspectives and worldviews, the curators’ expanded notion of art encompasses works by unknown makers, such as the delicate work on <em>amate</em> (tree bark) paper by unrecorded Mexican artists, on display at UNSW Galleries. </p>
<p>The artists have used traditional paper-making practices originating in Mayan and Aztec cultures, banned by Spanish colonisers. This practice continued in secret among at Indigenous communities such as the Otomi, who now create these depictions of cut-out spirits for a commercial market.</p>
<p>Resilience is felt clearly in these works, dissolving the boundaries between collection items collected or stolen as part of colonial museum practices, and artworks continuing cultural practices. </p>
<p>Sibosabo’s work engages across venues in dialogue with the <a href="https://rp.sydney.edu.au/museums/collections_search/#search-results&view=details&modules=ecatalogue%3Benarratives%3Beevents%3Beparties&keywords=riji&offset=14&id=2124">pearl shell collection items</a> at Chau Chak Wing Museum, highlighting the unbroken connections between contemporary art and traditional Indigenous practices.</p>
<p>Also at Chau Chak Wing are enduring celebrations of queer communities and their resistance. Martin Wong’s enigmatic and dreamy visions of urban erotica and William Yang’s candid photographs of young Indigenous dancers celebrate the survival of queer creativity and strength.</p>
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<span class="caption">Serwah Attafuah, Between this World & the Next, 2023 – 24, installation view. 24th Biennale of Sydney: Ten Thousand Suns, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2024. Digital 3D render , e-waste, wood, enamel, image courtesy and © the artist. Photograph: Hamish McIntosh.</span>
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<p>Feminist world-making is a joyful focus across multiple venues. VNS Matrix at White Bay celebrate their anarchic, collective and anti-capitalist practice. Kubra Khademi at UNSW Galleries creates a feminist universe that refutes the patriarchal order with humour and subversion. Serwah Attafuah at the Museum of Contemporary Art draws us into a surreal cyberscape, extending the curatorial themes of celebration and resistance into the future.</p>
<h2>Joy and imagination</h2>
<p>The risk in curating so many works in one show, under such a broad theme, is that individual artworks can be contorted to fit within a generalised framework. </p>
<p>The Biennale falls into this trap at times, particularly in venues such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where the sheer amount of artwork on display makes viewing challenging and the curation occasionally feel heavy-handed and didactic. </p>
<p>Another issue is the de-politicisation of individual works, which, when placed together with artworks from other parts of the world, can lose their contextual power of protest. Individual issues and social injustices can become neutralised as they are combined under one broad theme.</p>
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<span class="caption">Installation view, Ten thousand suns, 24th Biennale of Sydney 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales, featuring art by Pacific Sisters (foreground ) and Robert Gabris (wall) photo. © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Christopher Snee.</span>
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<p>There is occasionally a failure to acknowledge the complexity of artistic responses to trauma and the violent interruption of cultural practices. However, the fact that we are now facing a dark future – with climate chaos well underway and colonialism carrying on in many parts of the world – means we are desperately in need of inspiration and continuing hope. </p>
<p>The artists of the Sydney Biennale provide many strategies for communal strength, joy and imagination to carry us through the dark times ahead, and audiences are sure to join the carnival. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bundanons-tales-of-land-and-sea-three-exhibitions-working-in-harmony-to-discuss-loss-migration-and-colonisation-222499">Bundanon’s Tales of Land & Sea: three exhibitions working in harmony to discuss loss, migration and colonisation</a>
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<p><em>Correction: this article originally misstated the name of Darrell Sibosabo’s artwork. It is Galalen at Gumiri.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christiane Keys-Statham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The 24th edition of the Biennale of Sydney, titled Ten Thousand Suns, is an explosion of joy and creative energy across seven venues.
Christiane Keys-Statham, PhD Candidate, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/26516
2014-05-30T01:07:48Z
2014-05-30T01:07:48Z
Explainer: what is a biennale?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48558/original/sz6tzd2c-1400118467.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Bang' composed of 886-three legged wooden by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei at the German during the 55th International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy, 2013.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/ Andrea Merola</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Chances are you’ve heard of an art biennale, even if you haven’t visited one. This year’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/biennale-of-sydney">Biennale of Sydney</a> hit the headlines with a controversy over <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/sydney-biennale-boycott">sponsor Transfield’s links</a> to off-shore refugee detention centres.</p>
<p>And if you haven’t visited a biennale, it’s probably by design rather than accident. With at least 98 biennales (and triennales) staged worldwide, it can be difficult to avoid them. According to the <a href="http://www.iaa-europe.eu/">International Association of Art</a>, biennales are staged in 46 different countries. So almost a quarter of the world’s sovereign states offer one. </p>
<p>There are currently four on offer in Australia: the <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/">Biennale of Sydney</a>, founded 1973 and currently running until June 9; the <a href="http://adelaidebiennial.com.au/">Adelaide Biennale</a> (1990) – which just finished and was <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-2014-adelaide-biennial-contemporary-art-as-it-was-meant-to-be-23033">highly praised</a>; Brisbane’s <a href="http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/apt">Asia-Pacific Triennial</a> (1993); the <a href="http://twma.com.au/static/files/assets/cfaf4aed/Curators_2014_Biennial.pdf">Tarrawarra Biennial</a> (2008). The City of Melbourne staged one biennale in 1999.</p>
<p>The Italian word “biennale” acknowledges the original art biennale; the <a href="http://www.labiennale.org/en/Home.html">Biennale di Venezia</a>, staged since 1895. </p>
<p>Biennales are large-scale exhibitions of contemporary art, named for their host city and typically managed by a combinations of public art museums, government agencies and philanthropic supporters. As for the two- or three-year cycle, that’s simply a reflection of the time required to organise a large exhibition.</p>
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<span class="caption">‘Drive In’ by Dutch artist Erik van Lieshout, 55th International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy, 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/ Andrea Merola</span></span>
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<p>Originally more of a specialised, art-world affair, biennales now figure in the cultural menu supported by state and local government tourism agencies. A successful biennale will draw tens, even hundreds of thousands of visitors. </p>
<p>A biennale is also a promotional platform for participating nations; this year’s Biennale of Sydney, for example, lists 27 different national cultural agencies among its partners.</p>
<p>A biennale operates on a grand scale, gathering artists from around the globe and presenting their work across multiple venues. The art works are often room-filling, theatrical environments, heavy with high definition video technology. </p>
<p>Add the forums, performances, opening night parties and semi-official parallel exhibitions hovering around the margins and a biennale becomes an immersive, weeks-long arts festival.</p>
<p>Because each biennale is a brief, one-off event (usually of about 12 week’s duration), visitation is driven by an intensive promotional “call to action”. Increasingly marketing strategies focus on emotive effects, emphasising the biennale as an “experience” rather than as a formal cultural affair. </p>
<p>The titles of the 2014 Adelaide Biennial — “Dark Heart” — and Biennale of Sydney – “You Imagine What You Desire” – evoke emotional states. The curator of the first <a href="http://adelaidebiennial.com.au/the-exhibition/">promises</a> “a moving experience” and <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/19bos/visit-biennale/">the second</a>, “splendor and rapture”.</p>
<p>Canny organisers amplify these emotional effects with unusual venues (abandoned factories are a favourite), hands-on and interactive art works, and the placement of striking sculptures or installations in familiar public spaces. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48238/original/97rq5bx3-1399866789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48238/original/97rq5bx3-1399866789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48238/original/97rq5bx3-1399866789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48238/original/97rq5bx3-1399866789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48238/original/97rq5bx3-1399866789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48238/original/97rq5bx3-1399866789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48238/original/97rq5bx3-1399866789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48238/original/97rq5bx3-1399866789.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artwork on display at the 19th Biennale of Sydney on March 22, 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Thompson/Newzulu</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A smartly orchestrated biennale is a combination of magical mystery tour and high-brow theme park. Today’s biennale visitor traverses the city, map (<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-venice-architecture-biennale-by-phone-whats-app-25269">or app</a>) in hand, adding the thrill of discovery to the experience of the art works themselves.</p>
<p>The promotional “call to action” is often supported by the open declaration of an artistic agenda or the linking of artists within a shared theme. Often, the organisers of a biennale will make a grand statement about pressing social and aesthetic issues, or even that old chestnut, the human condition. </p>
<p>An evocative subheading can gussy up the bald, numerical title of a biennale, as in the case of the 52nd Biennale di Venezia, 2007: Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48242/original/5m2xxzph-1399869045.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48242/original/5m2xxzph-1399869045.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48242/original/5m2xxzph-1399869045.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48242/original/5m2xxzph-1399869045.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48242/original/5m2xxzph-1399869045.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48242/original/5m2xxzph-1399869045.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48242/original/5m2xxzph-1399869045.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48242/original/5m2xxzph-1399869045.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘I am the River’ by Eva Koch in the Turbine Hall on Cockatoo Island in Sydney, March 18, 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Quentin Jones</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An aesthetic agenda promises signposts to the visitor, the past few years of global art activity will be distilled into a manageable event. Themes represent the pulse of the contemporary art world, flagging issues that will shape museum exhibitions and art market movements in subsequent years. A cultural experience (the event itself) is coupled with cultural capital (information that a visitor can trade on).</p>
<p>The roots of the modern biennale lie in the annual academy exhibitions of the 18th and 19th centuries. In its heyday, the <a href="http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/15">Royal Academy’s summer exhibition</a> (established 1769) made reputations and established markets. The [Paris Salon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_(Paris) (established 1725) did the same and its offshoots, such as the <a href="http://www.salon-automne.com/">Salon d’Automne</a> (established 1903), introduced <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-modernism-24534">modern art movements</a> such as fauvism and cubism. </p>
<p>The grand-daddy of them all, Biennale di Venezia, was a variation of the 19th-century international expositions, where art was displayed in national categories alongside the products of primary and secondary industry, with merit recognised by the awarding of medals. This fusion of national, commercial and cultural promotion continues to haunt the contemporary biennale. </p>
<p>Like a 19th-century exposition or world’s fair, an art biennale puts a city on the global map. In 21st-century terms, a biennale declares a city part of the creative economy, with art acting as a metaphor for innovation and entrepreneurship. Today the logos in biennale catalogues belong to trade and innovation agencies, as well as the arts.</p>
<p>Like the international expositions, biennales are nationally competitive. They compete with each other for audiences, participating artists, premieres and exclusive presentations. The major biennales host national pavilions (Venice has 50), encouraging visitors to compare national endeavours. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nzwhYYPXoTc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Biennales can be a source of great joy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Critics measure success by the length of the queue at the pavilion door. Offering a range of awards – lifetime achievement, best national pavilion, best artist, best young artist – the Biennale di Venezia makes national and generational competition overt (as well as hinting at its capacity to shape reputations and future trends).</p>
<p>All of these factors – national cultural agendas, marketing strategies, promotional spectacle, the experience economy – have lead some critics to complain of what they call “biennial art”. The risk is that biennales have become something of a circuit, an endless roadshow for a globalised art world in which, as American critic <a href="http://meanjin.com.au/articles/post/living-the-dream-the-contemporary-australian-artist-abroad">Barry Schwabsky suggested</a>, artists speak a <em>lingua franca</em> of “atmosphere” and “themes” supported by the showmanship of high-definition video and sideshow-scaled installation.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48240/original/fc6235n4-1399868820.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48240/original/fc6235n4-1399868820.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48240/original/fc6235n4-1399868820.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48240/original/fc6235n4-1399868820.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48240/original/fc6235n4-1399868820.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48240/original/fc6235n4-1399868820.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48240/original/fc6235n4-1399868820.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48240/original/fc6235n4-1399868820.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Luminale festival in Frankfurt, Germany, 30 March 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Boris Roessler</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps the greatest challenge to the biennale is art itself, as it should be. In his 1997 book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/After-End-Art-Arthur-Danto/dp/0691002991">After the end of art</a>, critic Arthur Danto argued that with the collapse of modernism’s single-minded pursuit of abstraction, there was: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>no special way a work of art had to be … artists were liberated to do whatever they wanted to do.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As artists now enjoy that freedom, the biennale curator’s ability to comprehensively and convincingly map the territory of art has evaporated. And as for handing out medals, that looks all the more arbitrary. </p>
<p>If all that remains for the biennale is themes and moods, the takeover of art exhibitions by the experience economy will be complete.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48244/original/xzdvtk8y-1399869317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48244/original/xzdvtk8y-1399869317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48244/original/xzdvtk8y-1399869317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48244/original/xzdvtk8y-1399869317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48244/original/xzdvtk8y-1399869317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48244/original/xzdvtk8y-1399869317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48244/original/xzdvtk8y-1399869317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48244/original/xzdvtk8y-1399869317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Venetians’ by artist Polish Pawel Althamer at the 55th International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy, 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/ Andrea Merola</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26516/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris McAuliffe receives funding from the Australian Research Council (2014-16 multi-partner research grant).</span></em></p>
Chances are you’ve heard of an art biennale, even if you haven’t visited one. This year’s Biennale of Sydney hit the headlines with a controversy over sponsor Transfield’s links to off-shore refugee detention…
Chris McAuliffe, Independent art historian and Honorary Fellow at the Australian Centre, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/19341
2014-04-07T02:21:39Z
2014-04-07T02:21:39Z
Yingmei Duan and the feminists giving contemporary art a makeover
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44772/original/qknjnbx7-1395807508.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Yingmei Duan is performing Happy Yingmei at this year's Sydney Biennale. It's a sign feminist performance art is thriving.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AGNSW</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Until the end of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-first-look-at-the-19th-biennale-of-sydney-23184">2014 Biennale of Sydney</a> in June, Chinese performance artist <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/19bos/artists/duan-yingmei/">Yingmei Duan</a> will live in a small forest built inside the Art Gallery of NSW. </p>
<p>Visitors – as they have since the start of the Biennale – will have the chance to meet Duan and interact with her as she dispenses wishes and prophecies written on small pieces of paper. </p>
<p>And this is only the latest example of renewed interest in performance art that draws on the rich history of feminist art. Indeed, it’s part of a resurgence in performance art that looks a lot like a backlash against the ascendancy of the digital in the 21st century – and like a revitalisation of feminist concerns in contemporary art. </p>
<p>You may have been among the thousands who queued for hours to get a peek of public art project <a href="http://kaldorartprojects.org.au/13rooms/">13 Rooms</a> at Sydney’s Pier 2/3 last year. </p>
<p>13 Rooms featured 13 live acts, many of which re-staged well-known works from the canon of performance art that were first performed decades ago. Free to the public, 13 Rooms was the latest international visual arts event promoted by arts philanthropist <a href="http://kaldorartprojects.org.au/about/john-kaldor">John Kaldor</a>. It proved a resounding success, especially given the reputation of performance art as a “difficult” medium. </p>
<p>Despite the fact two of the main draw-cards, Belgrade-born performance artist <a href="http://www.marinaabramovicinstitute.org/mai/mai/4">Marina Abramovic</a> and American video artist <a href="http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=2930">Joan Jonas</a>, pioneered performance and video art driven by feminist concerns in the 1970s, we were not told about the contribution of feminism to the history of these vital contemporary media.</p>
<p>This blindness to feminism’s role in shaping the issues and approaches current in art practice today stretches beyond performance. </p>
<p>Questioning the hierarchies between high art and lowly craft; challenging the boundaries between disciplines; insisting on the centrality of the body and subjective experience in all social formations and ideas; highlighting the importance of social connections and working through community: these are some of the key themes of contemporary art that owe a debt to feminism.</p>
<p>The good news is that, even though institutions may have been failing to acknowledge feminist art practice, it is now well in the sights of a groundswell of Australian artists, writers and curators. Over the last couple of years, as debate about the status of women in Australian society has intensified online and elsewhere, initiatives devoted to re-claiming the tools and insights of feminism for the hard work of producing and analysing critical visual culture have grown rapidly. </p>
<p>In 2010, the artist-run feminist collective and gallery <a href="http://levelari.org/">LEVEL</a> was established in Brisbane, to “level the playing field”. </p>
<p>In 2012, <a href="http://westspace.org.au/calendar/event/a-dinner-party-setting-the-table/">A Dinner Party: setting the table</a>, a collaborative series of events exploring feminist art, got off the ground in Melbourne. That same year, the <a href="http://www.lwgallery.uwa.edu.au/collections/ccwa">Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art</a>, the result of a major private bequest to the University of Western Australia, held its first major exhibition and symposium on the contribution of women artists to Australian life and culture, while the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane exhibited the all-woman show, <a href="http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/past/2012/contemporary_australia_women">Contemporary Australia: Women</a>. </p>
<p>In Sydney, in the same period, The Performance Space staged <a href="http://www.performancespace.com.au/2012/exhibition-sexes/">Sexes</a>, a month-long program of feminist and queer inspired work. </p>
<p>And last year, the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) gallery shone the light on feminist humour, Sydney’s Artspace held a <a href="http://www.artspace.org.au/public_lectures.php?i=32">feminist art symposium</a> and gave its galleries over to a pulsating installation by international feminist troupe <a href="http://www.artspace.org.au/gallery_project.php?i=177">Chicks on Speed</a>. </p>
<p>Kelly Doley collaboratively curated two exhibitions as part of the broader feminist project <a href="http://kellydoley.com/2013/01/03/janis-2013/">Janis</a> (named after the rock goddess). And all this time, artist Elvis Richardson’s <a href="http://www.guerrillagirls.com/">Guerilla Girls</a> inspired <a href="http://countesses.blogspot.com.au/">CoUNTess</a> blog kept track of the statistics that demonstrate the devastating reality of gender inequality in the Australian art-world.</p>
<p>These projects are just the beginning of a long list. </p>
<p>Ranging from exhibitions to symposiums to long-running platforms for collaboration and research, they are instrumental to reclaiming the enormous impact of feminist ideas and practices on the visual arts, and to incubating the most vital contemporary art of the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19341/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacqueline Millner has previously received funding from the Australia Council for the Arts.</span></em></p>
Until the end of the 2014 Biennale of Sydney in June, Chinese performance artist Yingmei Duan will live in a small forest built inside the Art Gallery of NSW. Visitors – as they have since the start of…
Jacqueline Millner, Senior Lecturer in contemporary art, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/24408
2014-04-01T19:48:09Z
2014-04-01T19:48:09Z
Glory be! Inside Deborah Kelly’s No Human Being Is Illegal
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/45264/original/3ms7cqky-1396327130.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, one of many collaborators in Deborah Kelly's most recent creation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">N.E. Skinner</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You may have heard of <a href="https://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/19bos/artists/kelly/">Deborah Kelly</a>, the well-known Sydney-based artist with a work in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-first-look-at-the-19th-biennale-of-sydney-23184">2014 Biennale of Sydney</a> entitled No Human Being Is Illegal (In All Our Glory).</p>
<p>The work features a suite of life-size collaged portraits and is the product of Kelly collaborating with about 70 other people. Over the course of six months, collaborators, including me, worked with Kelly – and I would like to offer some reflections on the experience. </p>
<h2>Deborah Kelly’s provocations</h2>
<p>Kelly is both a sensitive and a politically staunch person. She has been making art that upends comfortable notions of white Australia, unpacking gender and media representations and exploring elusive questions of community, for many years.</p>
<p>Kelly works with subtle and subversive provocation. Drawing on the legacies of German Dada (<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jan/09/hannah-hoch-art-punk-whitechapel">Hannah Höch</a>) and American feminists of the 1970s (<a href="http://www.martharosler.net/">Martha Rosler</a>), with the science-fictional utopias of <a href="http://www.ursulakleguin.com/">Ursula K. Le Guin</a>, Deborah is first and foremost a collage artist. A collector and re-combiner of images, she re-presents the world in surprising ways. </p>
<p>The artist has amassed a collection of imagery from opshops, garage sales and libraries, material discarded in the waste streams of history and memory. She has affectionate humour toward unlikely things – strange protozoa in a 1970s science almanac or the long limbs of a 1950s noir comic femme fatale – all grist for the mill. Refreshing as a low-tech art form, in Kelly’s hands collage engages the imagination and destabilises the media universe.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44971/original/tf4tw4x2-1395968720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44971/original/tf4tw4x2-1395968720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44971/original/tf4tw4x2-1395968720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44971/original/tf4tw4x2-1395968720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44971/original/tf4tw4x2-1395968720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44971/original/tf4tw4x2-1395968720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44971/original/tf4tw4x2-1395968720.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Unborn collages.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">N.E. Skinner</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The art of collaboration</h2>
<p>I began contributing to her workshops late last year. </p>
<p>As with other artists working in participatory ways, Kelly’s new project attempts to make the creation of art a more social experience, and the institutions of art more porous civic spaces. </p>
<p>The figure of the Western artist as solitary genius has been thoroughly ingested by most of us. It’s the classic modernist image and the predominant legacy of the 20th century. But there are other legacies worth remembering. The experiments of artists such as <a href="http://allankaprow.com/">Allan Kaprow</a> and <a href="http://www.artistrobertmorris.com/">Robert Morris</a> forged art as an experience to be shared, bringing people into contact with each other in revealing ways. </p>
<p>These artists questioned their isolation, the production of luxury objects, the hermetic domain of art institutions and the separations between art and life.</p>
<h2>On display at the Sydney Biennale</h2>
<p>As mentioned already, No Human Being Is Illegal (In All Our Glory) is a suite of life-size photographic portraits. Twenty people were selected out of 230 volunteers. They have been “collaged” in workshop sessions which will continue throughout the Biennale period.</p>
<p>The workshops are set up with materials primed for hours of freely-given manual labour. We have been coming in two or three times a week to talk, listen, discuss and to “cut and paste”. The atmosphere is always relaxed, focused and creative. </p>
<p>Kelly moves around the workshops in her own way, suggesting rather than directing the flow of activity. She has relinquished most of her control to a democratic process that appears to delight her and everyone else involved.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44973/original/7dwd23dg-1395968861.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44973/original/7dwd23dg-1395968861.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44973/original/7dwd23dg-1395968861.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44973/original/7dwd23dg-1395968861.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44973/original/7dwd23dg-1395968861.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44973/original/7dwd23dg-1395968861.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44973/original/7dwd23dg-1395968861.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artist Latai Funaki Taumoepeau with her portrait in progress.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">N.E. Skinner</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The workshops are a space of learning and exchange. The brave and sometimes nervous subjects come in to meet and share ideas while their collage-portraits are developed. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.performancespace.com.au/2012/latai-taumoepeau/">Latai Funaki Taumoepeau</a>, a Sydney-based Tongan artist, offered powerful reflections from her Island Exile Workbook, a collation of information about the realities of climate change, particularly the impacts on vulnerable Pacific Island communities, including her relatives in Tonga. </p>
<p>The people of her community are facing a future displaced from their ancestral islands and they are already living with the devastating impacts of king tides, contaminated water tables, degraded reef systems, tsunamis and hurricanes. Latai’s own creative practice gives voice to these communities’ struggle to come to terms with their loss. </p>
<p>It engages with a grieving process she believes is essential in considering the psychological dimensions of climate change.</p>
<h2>Making art through creative exchange</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44974/original/jmht2nft-1395969035.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44974/original/jmht2nft-1395969035.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44974/original/jmht2nft-1395969035.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44974/original/jmht2nft-1395969035.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44974/original/jmht2nft-1395969035.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44974/original/jmht2nft-1395969035.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44974/original/jmht2nft-1395969035.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Deborah Kelly conducting an early workshop.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">N.E. Skinner</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kelly places political value on participatory process. When I asked her what motivates her to work collaboratively, she told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To zoom out from this question, I guess I’d have to say it is the atomisation of our era, the fragmentation of communities of interest, that we see played out in, for instance, the brilliant slow-motion destruction of organised labour by the forces of capital. </p>
<p>To zoom in, I’d have to say that the experience of collective genius is absolutely intoxicating to me. I’m keen to reproduce that feeling, and especially to disseminate it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Developing skills in cooperation is not necessarily easy or therapeutic, but in order to be good at it, it needs to be practised, worked like a muscle. You need to be strong but flexible to collaborate, especially where formal structures don’t exist. Providing this kind of opportunity is an artistic gesture toward living and working in more co-operative ways.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44975/original/p5mfhf6t-1395969510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44975/original/p5mfhf6t-1395969510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44975/original/p5mfhf6t-1395969510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44975/original/p5mfhf6t-1395969510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44975/original/p5mfhf6t-1395969510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44975/original/p5mfhf6t-1395969510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44975/original/p5mfhf6t-1395969510.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The work installed at the Art Gallery of NSW.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: N.E. Skinner</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Leading up to the Biennale, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/sydney-biennale-boycott">calls for artists to boycott the event</a> in response to major sponsor Transfield’s contracts on Manus Island led to lively discussion of what our response should be. No-one wanted our work linked to the “anti-refugee” regime – but also, no-one wanted to withdraw. Originally called “In all our glory” the show’s title expanded and conversations now continue about how to use the works to raise funds for useful initiatives, including the Refugee Art Project, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and the KM Wellness Project.</p>
<p>There are many contemporary artists who have become smart cultural workers. It takes a certain kind of charisma and confidence for an artist to engage with the social world as a material of its own. </p>
<p>The space Kelly has created enables us to listen, talk and create, and for our labour to have value in the exchange. It is all relatively modest but powerful in its modesty, banging the drum with collage, provisional democracy, chocolate and conversation.</p>
<p><br>
<em>No Human Being Is Illegal (In All Our Glory) is on display at the Art Gallery of NSW as part of the 2014 Biennale of Sydney until June 9 2014. Details <a href="https://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/19bos/artists/kelly/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24408/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tania Leimbach does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
You may have heard of Deborah Kelly, the well-known Sydney-based artist with a work in the 2014 Biennale of Sydney entitled No Human Being Is Illegal (In All Our Glory). The work features a suite of life-size…
Tania Leimbach, PhD researcher, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/24101
2014-03-20T04:23:22Z
2014-03-20T04:23:22Z
Biennales are politics by other means – don’t dismiss them
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44237/original/rp8mznp7-1395189268.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Large media coverage and biennales tend to go hand in hand.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Quentin Jones</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Although some doubted the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-first-look-at-the-19th-biennale-of-sydney-23184">19th Biennale of Sydney</a> would proceed after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-victory-over-transfield-misses-the-bigger-picture-24131">split from founding sponsor Transfield</a>, the country’s biggest contemporary art event opens this week in Sydney. <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/sydney-biennale-boycott">Debate continues</a> about the ethics of arts funding and the social responsibilities of artists, with Guido Belgiorno-Nettis (the brother of Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, the former chair of the Sydney Biennale) this week <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/guido-belgiornonettis-launches-scathing-attack-on-artists-who-protested-biennale-20140318-hvk62.html">criticising</a> the artists involved in the boycott of the event. </p>
<p>This year is the 19th Biennale since the event’s inception in 1973; since then works by more than 1,500 artists from more than 100 countries have been exhibited.</p>
<p>This year, it’s been a media spectacle – but large media coverage and biennales tend to go hand in hand, albeit for a variety of reasons. Why?</p>
<p>To answer that, we need to look at the history of biennales in the contemporary art world.</p>
<p>An art biennale – Italian for “every other year” – was first hosted in Venice in 1985. Its aim was ambitious – to draw the aesthetic and sensory world into a solitary, didactic space. This first <a href="http://www.labiennale.org/en/biennale/index.html">Venice Biennale</a> served as a model and there are now [more than 150 biennales](http://www.biennialfoundation.org/biennial-map/](http://www.biennialfoundation.org/biennial-map/) internationally.</p>
<p>Although these art events do tend to take place every two years, the contemporary use of the term “biennale” is more conceptual than literal. Rather the term indicates a major, recurrent art exhibition identified with the city or state. Contemporary art historians have further distinguished the term from its initial meaning as one that includes spatial and perspectival features, or a “<a href="http://www.seismopolite.com/connecting-metaphorical-spaces">space-theoretic typology</a>” to acknowledge the discursive features characteristic of contemporary biennales.</p>
<p>The development of the biennale in national terms has prompted a new interdisciplinary science of “bienniology”. The <a href="http://www.biennialfoundation.org">Biennial Foundation</a> was established in 2009 and the first <a href="http://www.worldbiennialforum.org/">World Biennial Forum</a> took place in 2012. A journal, <a href="http://www.seismopolite.com/about-us">Seismopolite</a> was established in 2011 and takes as <a href="http://www.seismopolite.com/turning-the-tide-the-oppositional-past-and-uncertain-future-of-the-contemporary-b">its focus</a> biennales in the developing world.</p>
<h2>There’s no biennale without politics</h2>
<p>The art director of the Sydney Biennale’s 19th installment, Juliana Engberg, has maintained a travel blog, <a href="http://engbergontheroad.com">Engberg on the Road</a>, documenting her research for the Sydney event. In September 2013, Engberg attended the Istanbul Biennale, <a href="http://13b.iksv.org/en">Mom, Am I Barbarian?</a>, accompanying the curator Fulya Erdemci in the weeks leading up to its unveiling amid a violent crackdown of anti-government protests in Istanbul. Members of the Turkish public were demanding a dismantling of the Biennale. </p>
<p>Showing she is no stranger to political tumult around art, Engberg <a href="http://engbergontheroad.com/2013/09/24/mom-am-i-barbarian-13th-istanbul-biennial/">described</a> the moments leading up to the opening:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fulya [Erdemci] had already started to formulate her thoughts around Istanbul and its sites of territorial, political, economic and social contest. Her plan – as she described it to me at the time – was to … interrogate the shifting status of ownership and occupation. This was extending out to questions about citizenship, language, shared futures and solutions rather than divided pasts; while of course, acknowledging differences and accepting otherness. </p>
<p>Both of us feel strongly that art has a purposeful language, and a role to play in providing metaphoric dreams and aspirations for a future positive, even if describing the unsettled present and the haunted, dispiriting past. The language of art might include protest, but it is often better nuanced than bluntly didactic or documentary … </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Julian Meyrick, writing on The Conversation this week about the response of federal Minister for the Arts George Brandis’ response to the Biennale boycott, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-australia-council-must-hold-firm-on-arms-length-funding-24460">issued four directives</a> to arts ministers. One of them resonates here: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[w]hatever happens in politics ends up in the arts. That’s because it’s artists’ job to be socially responsive. So no Fake Shock when art ends up a battleground for the issues of the day. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This socially responsive role for artists is the one envisaged by Engberg in Istanbul. A nation’s political climate <em>ought</em> to be mirrored in an event such as the Sydney Biennale.</p>
<h2>Something more than an Art Olympics</h2>
<p>The Sydney Biennale is a kind of art “superevent”, akin to what New Yorker’s art critic Peter Schjeldahl contemptuously <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1999/07/05/1999_07_05_085_TNY_LIBRY_000018558">termed</a> “Festivalism”. These events are often the target of scepticism both for their commercial motivations and the way that might complicate a notion of “authentic” national culture. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.hatjecantz.de/files/9783775726108_06.pdf">theorised</a> by Indian cultural scholar <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranjit_Hoskote">Ranjit Hoskote</a>, a biennale is not just a set of surfaces but rather:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a discursive environment: a theatre that allows for the staging of arguments, speculations, and investigations concerning the nature of our shared, diversely veined, and demanding contemporary condition.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Biennales do have shortcomings, but to dismiss the events as a whole, he argues “would be to fail to take into account a platform that has undeniably given rise to some of the most engaged debates and thought-provoking artworks of our time”.</p>
<p>That’s why the Sydney Biennale retains its relevance in the Australian cultural canon. It’s also why debate about the political implications of the Biennale and scrutiny of its sponsorship arrangements are essential.</p>
<p><br>
<em>The 19th Biennale of Sydney opens this weekend. Details <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><br>
<em>Are you an academic or researcher working on contemporary art? Contact the <a href="mailto:paul.dalgarno@theconversation.edu.au">Arts + Culture editor.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24101/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Birkett does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.</span></em></p>
Although some doubted the 19th Biennale of Sydney would proceed after the split from founding sponsor Transfield, the country’s biggest contemporary art event opens this week in Sydney. Debate continues…
Jessica Birkett, Gallerist; Doctoral Candidate at the University of Melbourne; Teaching Associate, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/23184
2014-03-19T19:36:05Z
2014-03-19T19:36:05Z
A first look at the 19th Biennale of Sydney
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44260/original/jwsy99ch-1395199157.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Audiences are invited to hop aboard Callum Morton's Google Ghost Train as part of this year's Biennale of Sydney.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Quentin Jones</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over its 41-year history the recipe for a successful Biennale of Sydney has remained remarkably consistent. There are three ingredients and all three need to work in harmony for the exhibition to properly succeed.</p>
<p>The first is to include works or artists who have been prominent at recent major arts events in other distant parts of the world. </p>
<p>When the Biennale started, international air travel was about 10-times more expensive than it is today and the world wide web wasn’t even a glimmer in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye. In those early years the Biennale was crucial for eliminating cultural distance. </p>
<p>But as the Biennale has evolved from an elite event into a genuinely popular art festival, many (indeed most) who attend are not the normal habitués of the Venice Biennale, the Kassel Documenta, the Whitney Biennial or the like. As many international artists travel to install their work, Biennale time has become an occasion for significant cultural exchange between artists and a development opportunity for students.</p>
<p>By this measure, the 19th Biennale of Sydney, directed by <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/exhibition/artistic-director/">curator Juliana Engberg</a>, is a success. </p>
<p>Its signature image comes from Scottish artist <a href="https://www.gagosian.com/artists/douglas-gordon">Douglas Gordon</a>’s 2011 installation Phantom, well presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which also shows fellow Scot <a href="http://www.themoderninstitute.com/artists/16/selected-solo-exhibitions">Jim Lambie</a>’s Zobop, a 2014 reworking of an idea with masking tape that saw its first outing in Glasgow in 1999. </p>
<p>The persistence of this colourful hard-edge approach to art, combined with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-artists-boycott-the-sydney-biennale-over-transfield-links-23067">political protests</a> that preceded the launch, gives the whole exhibition a sense of living in the late 1960s when hard-edge was king and protests were on the streets.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44257/original/kvvt782d-1395197864.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44257/original/kvvt782d-1395197864.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44257/original/kvvt782d-1395197864.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44257/original/kvvt782d-1395197864.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44257/original/kvvt782d-1395197864.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44257/original/kvvt782d-1395197864.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44257/original/kvvt782d-1395197864.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jim Lambie with his work Zobop.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Quentin Jones</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is a surprisingly large proportion of work from the Anglosphere this time round, but to my mind the more interesting works come from elsewhere.</p>
<p>One of the most beautiful installations is Romanian artist <a href="http://www.mirceacantor.ro/">Mircea Cantor</a>’s Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, which combines video, words written in dynamite caps and a giant double helix, made out of safety pins – all pointing to the beauty and the fragility of life.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44256/original/qxnh3wt4-1395197764.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44256/original/qxnh3wt4-1395197764.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44256/original/qxnh3wt4-1395197764.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44256/original/qxnh3wt4-1395197764.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44256/original/qxnh3wt4-1395197764.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44256/original/qxnh3wt4-1395197764.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44256/original/qxnh3wt4-1395197764.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mircea Cantor’s Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Quentin Jones</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even more compelling is Chinese artist <a href="http://www.yingmei-art.com/">Yingmei Duan</a>’s installation – Happy Yingmei, made originally in 2011 at the Lilith Performance Studio in Malmö. </p>
<p>For the duration of the Biennale, she is living in a “cave” in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Here, at the end of a leaf-strewn path, she sings and as the visitor progresses she approaches them. When I saw her, she pressed a note into my hand. It reads: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have a good friend from Zimbabwe. He and his family struggle to survive. Could you please look on the internet to see what life is like for people living in this country?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the song never stops. It is an uncannily beautiful work.</p>
<p>The outstanding piece at Cockatoo Island on Sydney Harbour is the Norwegian <a href="http://www.toriwraanes.com/">Tori Wrånes</a>’ BOBO This I can’t tell you. The combination of brass music, song, a giant stone pendulum and the artist dressed as a troll is both compelling and unnerving. The work dates from 2009 but is by itself enough to justify the ferry ride from Circular Quay.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44259/original/46t3jhhb-1395198913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44259/original/46t3jhhb-1395198913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44259/original/46t3jhhb-1395198913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44259/original/46t3jhhb-1395198913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44259/original/46t3jhhb-1395198913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44259/original/46t3jhhb-1395198913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44259/original/46t3jhhb-1395198913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tori Wrånes performs in the Turbine Hall at Cockatoo Island at the Sydney Biennale.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Quentin Jones</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other choices are less fortunate. Danish duo <a href="http://www.randiogkatrine.dk/">Randi & Katrine</a>’s The Village is described as “a parable and a representation of a community ideal”. Unfortunately placed in the rugged industrial context of the Turbine Hall it looks like a tryout for a department store’s Christmas installation. All it needs is fake snow and Santa Claus. </p>
<h2>The local element</h2>
<p>The second element for Biennale success is that the exhibition includes works by local artists – both the edgy next generation and well-established stars. </p>
<p>Putting our art in context is central to developing a visual conversation. Engberg’s is a curiously unadventurous selection. Most of the artists have exhibited in many earlier major survey exhibitions – in the case of the Melburnian <a href="http://www.annaschwartzgallery.com/works/works?artist=8">Callum Morton</a> even at the Venice Biennale. </p>
<p>One of the few works to reach beyond the slick is <a href="http://www.angelicamesiti.com/">Angelica Mesiti</a>’s In the Ear of the Tyrant, a traditional lament for impending doom, sung in a cave in Sicily. <a href="http://www.michaelcook.net.au/">Michael Cook</a>’s digitally manipulated photographs play tricks that work, so intelligence and humour aren’t the problem. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44264/original/39qnwhft-1395199557.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44264/original/39qnwhft-1395199557.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44264/original/39qnwhft-1395199557.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44264/original/39qnwhft-1395199557.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44264/original/39qnwhft-1395199557.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44264/original/39qnwhft-1395199557.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44264/original/39qnwhft-1395199557.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Michael Cook’s Majority Rule Memorial 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Quentin Jones</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hanging it all together</h2>
<p>The difference between a merely adequate exhibition and a very good one is the way the works are placed in conjunction with each other to create a coherent argument or compelling narrative.</p>
<p>While there are small sections of the Biennale that do this – such as the videos linked by the black caves of Carriageworks anchored by <a href="http://gabriellester.com/">Gabriel Lester</a>’s creepy house, and the way Danish artist <a href="http://evakoch.net/">Eva Koch</a>’s giant I am the River meets Tori Wrånes’ BOBO This I Can’t Tell You – most of the exhibition lacks a sense of any overarching curatorial direction.</p>
<p>Nathan Coley’s textual variations on the exhibition’s title, placed at the entrance of various venues just look twee. </p>
<p>There is more visual coherence in the installations at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Museum of Contemporary Art, but that is because both the spaces and staff can make anything look good. The new huge bays at Carriageworks in Redfern are brilliant for showing videos – but visitors will need to bring their own torches as a devotion to black makes navigation difficult.</p>
<p>It is perhaps unfortunate that this Biennale coincides with the <a href="http://theconversation.com/the-2014-adelaide-biennial-contemporary-art-as-it-was-meant-to-be-23033">Adelaide Biennale</a>, which shows that it is possible to create a passionate argument with art working together on many levels within a survey exhibition.</p>
<p>Sydney-dwellers should definitely spend some time at the Biennale of Sydney, and try to pick up on the public programs. Those from interstate who are planning a Sydney visit should certainly include it on their itinerary. But international lovers of the contemporary, who will be familiar with most of the Sydney art, should make sure they don’t leave the country without visiting Adelaide.</p>
<p><br>
<em>The Biennale of Sydney opens this weekend and runs until June 9. Details <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23184/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn receives funding from the ARC through a Linkage Project on the History of Exhibitions of Australian Art and a LIEF grant for Design and Art of Australia Online.</span></em></p>
Over its 41-year history the recipe for a successful Biennale of Sydney has remained remarkably consistent. There are three ingredients and all three need to work in harmony for the exhibition to properly…
Joanna Mendelssohn, Program Director, Art Administration, School of Art History and Art Education. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/24460
2014-03-17T19:37:45Z
2014-03-17T19:37:45Z
The Australia Council must hold firm on ‘arm’s length’ funding
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44047/original/3gk6vxqk-1395018596.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The history of arts funding in Australia suggests the "arm's length" principle is worth preserving.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/8688176471/sizes/o/">wallyg/ Artist: OverUnder, Brooklyn</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Things to remember if you are a federal minister for the arts:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>In arts policy, as in the arts, <em>how</em> you do things matters as much as what you do. Good ideas become bad ideas if your tone is wrong or you aim at the wrong audience.</p></li>
<li><p>Breaking news: artists are difficult to deal with. There’s no money in art, so people stick to their principles like flies to a jam tart. Trying to change those principles by <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-art-of-being-awkward-brandis-is-wrong-about-the-biennale-24336">threatening their funding</a> only makes things worse.</p></li>
<li><p>Whatever happens in politics ends up in the arts. That’s because it’s artists’ job to be socially responsive. So no Fake Shock when art ends up a battleground for the issues of the day.</p></li>
<li><p>The arts and arts policy are not in stable orbit. They don’t revolve in a genteel way, but zoom about, like Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in Gravity, trying not to kick each other’s teeth in.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>There’s more, but these are the most pertinent as Senator George Brandis, the current federal arts minister, continues to respond to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/sydney-biennale-boycott">ongoing furore</a> surrounding the 2014 Biennale of Sydney, which begins this week. </p>
<p>Brandis <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/sydney-biennale-shame-risks-funding-says-george-brandis/story-fn59niix-1226853051859">reportedly directed the Australia Council</a> to revise its sponsorship guidelines in the wake of the Biennale boycott and has since <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/george-brandis-defends-funding-moves-to-curb-political-boycotts-in-the-arts-20140314-34q4t.html">reiterated his view</a> that it is unreasonable for arts companies to refuse sponsorship on political grounds. </p>
<p>Last Thursday on The Conversation, Peter Tregear brought <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-art-of-being-awkward-brandis-is-wrong-about-the-biennale-24336">some much-needed perspective</a> to this fractious dispute. He called the relationship between the arts and politics “awkward”, and pointed out the contradictions in Brandis’ seeming determination to force arts organisations to accept sponsorship from any “commercially sound” business.</p>
<p>The dispute involves hard issues – “hard” as in “real” <em>and</em> “difficult to solve”. But it also reflects trends in the provision of arts subsidy. Considerable fur has flown concerning the right of artists to protest the involvement of Transfield Services in the Biennale. </p>
<p>What has caused less comment is the constant muddling of “public assistance” with “government funding” – and the related suggestion that if artists really want to object to the federal policy of mandatory detention, they should refuse Australia Council support on the basis that it too is <a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-victory-over-transfield-misses-the-bigger-picture-24131">tainted money</a>.</p>
<p>This is a ludicrous proposition with no basis in logic or reality. Why not refuse Medicare or educational services or military protection since the government provides those also? Except it doesn’t. They are provided by taxpayers, and the government of the day has a leading, but not a dictatorial, say on the purpose and extent of such expenditure.</p>
<h2>The arm’s length principle</h2>
<p>Brandis’ comments about Australia Council funding indicate a fresh erosion of the “arm’s length” relationship between the agency and the government that was a principle of its foundation in 1973. </p>
<p>Since then, ministers of all political hues have often pursued policy objectives without due regard for the agency’s statutory independence. The most notorious occasion was what Justin McDonnell, in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Arts-Minister-Government-Policy-Theatre/dp/0868192961/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395016001&sr=8-1&keywords=justin+macdonnell">Arts, Minister?</a> (1992), calls the “Great Redistribution Debate” of 1983-4. Back then, the Australia Council imposed a A$300,000 grant limit on all arts organisations. Going behind its back, Prime Minister Bob Hawke provided Cabinet-level funding for select companies that left the agency’s strategic plan in tatters.</p>
<p>Over time <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_for_the_Arts_(Australia)">arts ministers’</a> arms have got shorter and shorter. </p>
<p>They have front-loaded equity and access (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Cohen">Barry Cohen</a>, Hawke’s arts minister), excellence and quality (Paul Keating), cost-effectiveness and financial stability (Richard Alston, under Howard), and innovation and technology (Simon Crean, under Gillard). </p>
<p>In the 1990s, the Council was reorganised to make its art form boards more responsive to direction from above, while the federal <a href="http://arts.gov.au/">Office for the Arts</a> effectively became a rival grant body. </p>
<p>In 2012, a <a href="http://creativeaustralia.arts.gov.au/policy-development/australia-council-review/">review of the operation of the Australia Council</a> prescribed “a more formalised requirement for communication and planning with the Australian Government”. The review was the basis of a new <a href="http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2013A00071">Australia Council Act</a>, passed into law last year by the Gillard government. </p>
<p>Former arts minister Tony Burke is right <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/george-brandis-defends-funding-moves-to-curb-political-boycotts-in-the-arts-20140314-34q4t.html">to warn</a> of Senator Brandis’ interventionism in the arts – but it was his government that put in place the legislation to facilitate it.</p>
<p>It’s as if successive governments, having granted the Australia Council independence, then regretted it. Yet they have never had the courage to replace it with a ministry and take responsibility for their own actions. Or perhaps it’s convenient to have the agency do the government’s dirty work for it. Ministers can claim they aren’t interfering in the arts directly – while leaning on the Council to “tighten guidelines”.</p>
<p>At first blush, the Council’s loss of independence would be no disaster. Why shouldn’t governments determine cultural expenditure? Better than having the agency a captive of its clients.</p>
<h2>Before the Australia Council</h2>
<p>But look further back, to the Council’s predecessor, the <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/people/783793">Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust</a> (AETT), and you’ll see that what Brandis takes as an unambiguously good thing – corporate involvement in the arts – was partly what persuaded people an independent arts agency was needed in the first place.</p>
<p>The AETT, established in 1954, was a silvertail affair, narrow and inept in equal measure, controlled by Australia’s business and social elite. It gave out tax credits and guarantees against loss that proved unaccountable, inequitable and difficult to quantify on a Treasury ledger.</p>
<p>The AETT was a body that had almost no artists on it. Its decisions about which projects to support became increasingly erratic. Artists’ representation at board level was a hot topic when the AETT was replaced in 1968 by the Australian Council for the Arts, and again in 1975 when the Australia Council achieved statutory independence.</p>
<p>It is one thing to say that corporate sponsorship – which is different from corporate philanthropy (another confusion in the current debate) – is an important part of the funding mix.</p>
<p>It is another to assert it is “the heart and soul of good funding policy”. Corporate involvement in the arts brings with it problems as well as benefits, and needs as much judicious handling as direct public assistance.</p>
<h2>How will the Australia Council react?</h2>
<p>The Council’s reaction will be a crucial test of how much backbone it has left after years of political traducing. It was set up as an advocacy body for the arts to the government. More often it has been the government’s representative in the field, or got caught in the middle, talking to two sides who won’t talk to each other.</p>
<p>You only have to read Justin McDonnell’s much-underrated <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Arts-Minister-Government-Policy-Theatre/dp/0868192961/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395016001&sr=8-1&keywords=justin+macdonnell">book</a> on Australian arts funding over the decades to see how similar the Biennale dispute is to blow-ups in the past.</p>
<p>But the minister and artists must also now act with some care. It is a small step from insisting arts organisations accept corporate sponsorship when offered, to insisting they meet sponsorship targets. This would affect the <a href="http://www.ampag.com.au/">28 major performing arts companies</a> particularly – and Senator Brandis could unwittingly be paving the way for the elimination of direct subsidy to these bodies.</p>
<p>That would make them entirely non-responsive to the government’s agenda and even more socially exclusive than they currently are.</p>
<p>For artists, faced with the issue of how far to extend their protest, there is a need to ensure that, in pursuing activist goals, the agency isn’t further eviscerated.</p>
<p>The Council is more than a government piggy-bank. It is a living symbol of the accord between the Australian people and Australian artists, a guarantee of free speech in the cultural arena. From a policy point of view, this freedom is neither a right nor a privilege, but an accomplishment.</p>
<p>It relies on all parties respecting the institutional parameters in which it is enacted.</p>
<p>Like a spreading stain, the government’s policy of mandatory detention has caught the Biennale and downed its well-intentioned patron, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis. I doubt it has finished spreading yet.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>Further reading:</strong> <br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/luca-belgiorno-nettis-should-just-buy-a-yacht-24355">Luca Belgiorno-Nettis should just buy a yacht</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-art-of-being-awkward-brandis-is-wrong-about-the-biennale-24336">The art of being awkward: Brandis is wrong about the Biennale</a> <br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-there-any-clean-money-left-to-fund-the-arts-24159">Is there any clean money left to fund the arts?</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-victory-over-transfield-misses-the-bigger-picture-24131">Artists’ victory over Transfield misses the bigger picture</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-biennale-transfield-and-the-value-of-boycott-24155">The Biennale, Transfield, and the value of boycott</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-artists-boycott-the-sydney-biennale-over-transfield-links-23067">Should artists boycott the Sydney Biennale over Transfield links?</a></p>
<p><br>
<em>Are you an academic or researcher working on arts policy? Contact the <a href="mailto:paul.dalgarno@theconversation.edu.au">Arts + Culture editor</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24460/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Things to remember if you are a federal minister for the arts: In arts policy, as in the arts, how you do things matters as much as what you do. Good ideas become bad ideas if your tone is wrong or you…
Julian Meyrick, Professor of Strategic Arts, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/24355
2014-03-13T06:12:56Z
2014-03-13T06:12:56Z
Luca Belgiorno-Nettis should just buy a yacht
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43828/original/53gr962z-1394690756.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">mrtruffle</span></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43828/original/53gr962z-1394690756.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43828/original/53gr962z-1394690756.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43828/original/53gr962z-1394690756.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43828/original/53gr962z-1394690756.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43828/original/53gr962z-1394690756.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43828/original/53gr962z-1394690756.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43828/original/53gr962z-1394690756.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43828/original/53gr962z-1394690756.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">mrtruffle</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Luca Belgiorno-Nettis’s family contributed A$600,000 toward the A$10 million budget of this year’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biennale_of_Sydney">Sydney Biennale</a> (Australia’s largest outdoor arts festival), continuing a long family tradition of generous support that began with his father Franco, who was the founding governor of the Biennale in 1973. </p>
<p>Good on you, Luca, that’s a great thing to do.</p>
<p>The problem, according to nine artists who have withdrawn in protest, following from an open letter signed by 41, is that Belgiorno-Nettis’s contribution was made through the family’s company Transfield Holdings, which is a small shareholder in Transfield Services, which supplies facilities to the Manus Island detention centre, through a contract awarded and paid for by the Australian government. </p>
<p>These artists have succeeded in being so outraged at Belgiorno-Nettis for being once associated with a company that is doing what the Australian Government requires them contractually to do, that the board of the Biennale has sought and gained his <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-11/biennale-sponsor-sickened-by-concentration-camp-accusations/5313604">resignation as Chair of the board</a>. The protesters, as such, were “successful”.</p>
<p>Now this is all <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/sydney-biennale-shame-risks-funding-says-george-brandis/story-fn59niix-1226853051859">very political</a>. But that’s not what I want to talk about here. The purpose of today’s column is to look at the economics of this type of protest action from the perspective of the various parties.</p>
<p>On the surface, this looks like a win for the protesters, who were artists, and a loss for private companies, and Mr Belgiorno-Nettis in particular, who were sponsors. So in the “artists vs capitalism” narrative, this looks like a clear victory for bleeding hearts.</p>
<p>But the thing about economics is that it trains you to focus on the “things unseen”, in the language of 19th-century economist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat">Frederic Bastiat</a>. The unseen in this case are consumers (or festival-goers), and taxpayers. The question is whether they were also winners.</p>
<h2>The cost of the boycott</h2>
<p>For the artists, the boycott didn’t really cost them anything. </p>
<p>Certainly it didn’t cost the 41 petition-signers anything: there is no opportunity cost to adding their signature, and they probably gained some self-satisfaction themselves. (If the 41 had made a private donation of A$14,634 each to make up for the expected loss from their actions, then it would have been a meaningful costly action.) So technically, that was an act of consumption, not of protest. </p>
<p>Of those who withdrew, several were international artists. The loss of potential sales in Australia will presumably be more than made up for by international publicity garnered in other markets. Maybe that’s what the locals are hoping for too. </p>
<p>Artists trade on reputation and identity, and withdrawal in protest (for whatever reason, really) brings a kind of cultural cachet that is of capital value to the individual artist: they can trade on that reputation. My point is simply that this act was not much of a sacrifice for the artists themselves, and possibly a shrewd career move.</p>
<p>But for the protesters to claim success, they have to have had an impact: so where did that impact fall? </p>
<p>First, it has raised the risk premium on private philanthropy in arts festivals in general, and the Biennale in particular. The expected cost/ benefit calculation will now shift, and we can reasonably expect a reallocation of philanthropic funding away from arts festivals and onto other substitute goods. Maybe yacht sales might benefit, or alma mater, or the heirs of wealthy Sydney families.</p>
<p>The second-round effect is that local residents who themselves benefited from the (subsidised) festival, will now face either less festival, or a more costly festival for them, if say entry costs have to rise to make up the shortfall, which in turn will deter some potential festival goers. </p>
<p>In third-round effect that same group of organisers and consumers will now be motivated to seek to pass those costs wider – to the set of other Australians, who are likely not attending the Biennale, namely taxpayers. And if taxpayers do pick up that bill, then the cost is passed on to whatever other government program had to be cut or reduced at the margin to fund that. </p>
<p>The point of my ornery little rant here is that while these actions produced benefits to the protesters, they were not costless. </p>
<p>Specifically, what happened is that the costs were passed on, first to those who face a reduced Biennale experience or were priced out at the margin, then to other government programs, which will be reduced in proportion. </p>
<p>Sydney festival-goers and Australian citizens should be disappointed by the actions of the nine protesters. Wealthy families have many choices in spending their money and if public benefaction becomes more expensive then that makes yachts and other private consumption goods relatively less expensive.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>Further reading:</strong> <br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-art-of-being-awkward-brandis-is-wrong-about-the-biennale-24336">The art of being awkward: Brandis is wrong about the Biennale</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-should-value-the-biennale-protest-not-threaten-arts-funding-24333">We should value the Biennale protest, not threaten arts funding</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-there-any-clean-money-left-to-fund-the-arts-24159">Is there any clean money left to fund the arts?</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-victory-over-transfield-misses-the-bigger-picture-24131">Artists’ victory over Transfield misses the bigger picture</a><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-biennale-transfield-and-the-value-of-boycott-24155">The Biennale, Transfield, and the value of boycott</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-artists-boycott-the-sydney-biennale-over-transfield-links-23067">Should artists boycott the Sydney Biennale over Transfield links?</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24355/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Luca Belgiorno-Nettis’s family contributed A$600,000 toward the A$10 million budget of this year’s Sydney Biennale (Australia’s largest outdoor arts festival), continuing a long family tradition of generous…
Jason Potts, Professor of Economics, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/24336
2014-03-13T04:54:56Z
2014-03-13T04:54:56Z
The art of being awkward: Brandis is wrong about the Biennale
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43815/original/htghkq34-1394683483.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Politicians and artists often join together in an uncomfortable game. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alan Porritt/AAP Image</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As anyone who works in the arts business well knows, when art and politics meet (and certainly when art and politicians meet …) the result is more often than not awkward. </p>
<p>Many of us will remember the fuss around former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/05/23/1211183044543.html/">pre-emptive strike</a> in 2008 on an exhibition of Bill Henson’s photographs. It didn’t seem then, and still doesn’t seem today, to be one of Rudd’s finest political moments. If he believed he was standing up against the public display of offensive material (albeit before he’d been to the exhibition in question) he was also invoking that surely more offensive of “c” words – censorship.</p>
<p>Once again, however, a politician has publicly challenged the appropriateness of the arts community’s capacity to be awkward. A <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/sydney-biennale-shame-risks-funding-says-george-brandis/story-fn59niix-1226853051859/">report in today’s The Australian</a> notes that Federal Arts Minister George Brandis has issued a thinly-veiled threat to arts organisations that “reject private sponsorship because of political pressure”. </p>
<p>The threat came in the form of a letter to Rupert Myer, chairman of the <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/">Australia Council</a>, “demanding” – according to The Australian’s report – the body develops a policy to deal with (that is, one assumes threaten the funding of) any Australia Council-funded body that “refuses funding offered by corporate sponsors, or terminates a current funding agreement”.</p>
<p>Brandis is responding to the apparent success of <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-artists-boycott-the-sydney-biennale-over-transfield-links-23067">a campaign</a> by artists associated with this year’s <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/">Sydney Biennale of Sydney</a> (which, ironically, is subtitled “you imagine what you desire”) to pressure the Board of the Biennale to relinquish its sponsorship agreement with Transfield Holdings. </p>
<p>This was on the basis that Transfield Services <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/03/construction-company-set-to-take-over-salvos-asylum-seeker-welfare-services">has contracts</a> with the Australian Government to operate the Manus Island and Nauru detention centres. The executive director of Transfield Holdings, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, was also the Chairman of the Biennale. He <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandartsdaily/why-did-belgiorno-nettis-resign-from-sydney-biennale-board3f/5311796">resigned</a> last week. </p>
<p>Given Transfield Holdings remains a major sponsor of a number of other Australia Council-funded organisations (including the <a href="http://www.aco.com.au/">Australian Chamber Orchestra</a> and the the <a href="http://www.transfield.com.au/museum-of-contemporary-art-mca">Museum of Contemporary Art</a>), the impact of the fuss around the Sydney Biennale decision could be far-reaching.</p>
<p>How far-reaching depends, of course, on politics. I would argue that we should not be afraid of this fact – unless we want the arts to be “relevant” and “meaningful” only when it makes us comfortable. </p>
<p>Arts sponsorship is, indeed, always political. Commercial companies do it not just out of a sense of altruism. It helps with brand management and can give senior managers social capital to leverage for business advantage, among other benefits. </p>
<p>None of this is inherently wrong, or bad. But neither is a debate about such sponsorship in and of itself ill-conceived or misplaced. To that extent, George Brandis is wrong to imply that it is. </p>
<p>Brandis is also wrong to suggest the political opinion of the individual artists boycotting the event was “a matter which has nothing to do with the Sydney Biennale”. <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/79.html">Aesop was on the money</a> (as it were) when he argued that once an artist or arts organisation was connected to the community-at-large he or she could could not claim to be separate from it when things got, well, awkward …</p>
<p>Furthermore, if Brandis is concerned about the “effective blackballing of a benefactor […] merely because of its commercial arrangements”, is he not asking the Australia Council to commit a similar sin by refusing to fund organisations that make decisions based on political views with which he may disagree?</p>
<p>It is curious that he would argue this in context of the debate around S18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, given <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/george-brandis-to-repeal-bolt-laws-on-racial-discrimination-20131108-2x50p.html">his argument</a> for the Government to revise the current clause is, in my view, a powerful one. On a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3946770.htm">recent edition of ABC TV’s Q&A</a> Brandis said, no less:<br></p>
<blockquote>
<p>how do we achieve a civilised society? […] [D]o we have a society in which every time somebody says something unpopular or offensive to a majority of opinion the Parliament passes a law to say, well, you are prohibited. You are censored from saying that? I don’t want a society like that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is he not suggesting, in effect, that the Australia Council should silence (or at least disadvantage) organisations that say or do things the Government doesn’t like?</p>
<p>By the same token, there is no inherent contradiction in arts organisations taking funding from companies and governments that do things they disagree with if we are prepared to argue for the arts a place in civil society that we accord, say, to universities. </p>
<p>We should want them to be embodiments of the value of free speech, as awkward as that can be at times to ruling elites of any political persuasion. If we don’t allow occasional acts of subversiveness, the alternative might end up being submissiveness. </p>
<p>I know which I would prefer.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/arts-kicks-own-goal-in-biennale-of-sydney-stoush-and-risks-vital-clash-20140308-34dzu.html">A report in the Sydney Morning Herald</a> declared that “the arts are the only loser in the Biennale of Sydney’s decision to sever ties with founding sponsor Transfield”.</p>
<p>I could not disagree more. As cultural commentator <a href="http://www.marcuswestbury.net/">Marcus Westbury</a> wrote recently on social media: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The most important thing as far as I’m concerned for artistic freedom and democracy is to defend the principle that artists, audiences, and everyone can and should ask ethical questions of themselves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If as a result of the debate around the Sydney Biennale we not only take the arts more seriously, but also artists (and arts boards) take their social responsibilities more seriously, that’s no bad thing for both art and society.</p>
<p>On that point, I suspect, Brandis and I would agree.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>Further reading:</strong> <br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/luca-belgiorno-nettis-should-just-buy-a-yacht-24355">Luca Belgiorno-Nettis should just buy a yacht</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-should-value-the-biennale-protest-not-threaten-arts-funding-24333">We should value the Biennale protest, not threaten arts funding</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-there-any-clean-money-left-to-fund-the-arts-24159">Is there any clean money left to fund the arts?</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-victory-over-transfield-misses-the-bigger-picture-24131">Artists’ victory over Transfield misses the bigger picture</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-biennale-transfield-and-the-value-of-boycott-24155">The Biennale, Transfield, and the value of boycott</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-artists-boycott-the-sydney-biennale-over-transfield-links-23067">Should artists boycott the Sydney Biennale over Transfield links?</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24336/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Tregear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
As anyone who works in the arts business well knows, when art and politics meet (and certainly when art and politicians meet …) the result is more often than not awkward. Many of us will remember the fuss…
Peter Tregear, Professor and Head of School of Music, Australian National University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/24159
2014-03-11T00:30:31Z
2014-03-11T00:30:31Z
Is there any clean money left to fund the arts?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43439/original/5v9cs4nb-1394411634.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Sydney Biennale boycott campaign has raised important – and difficult – questions about how we fund the arts.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wexner Centre</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the wake of the Sydney Biennale’s split from its major sponsor Transfield in recent days, <a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-victory-over-transfield-misses-the-bigger-picture-24131">certain uncomfortable questions</a> are again floating very close to the surface.</p>
<p>In the late 1990s, I had a successful career in finance. As a free-market hawk, I had revelled in the introduction of the neoliberal agenda and, armed with an education from a conservative economics department, honestly believed a free market would lead a fairer society for all. </p>
<p>In retrospect, I was naïve – but that’s who I was.</p>
<p>Working in finance, I was well compensated and built a healthy share portfolio, purchased property and enjoyed the benefits of an expense account.</p>
<p>For reasons not of concern here, I took a year off and travelled around the world on what was originally meant to be a romantic holiday of wine, women, and dance. In the end it ended up very differently: I witnessed child labour, environmental destruction, the displacement of indigenous people and people excluded from beaches because of the colour of their skin.</p>
<p>The failings and brutality of the free market were laid bare.</p>
<p>On returning to Australia I made some life-changing decisions, including investigating the behaviour of the organisations I had invested in. It was a financially difficult decision, but I slowly divested myself from the shares of organisations that compromised human, social, environmental or labour rights.</p>
<p>I have attempted to direct my funds and consumption patterns towards ethical organisations ever since. It’s not an easy thing to do, and I find myself making all sorts of compromises: the pasta company that’s good on genetically modified foods but has a homophobic chief executive; the large supermarket that sells organically produced tomatoes but has questionable retail practices; the fair-trade coffee company with excessive packaging.</p>
<p>We love smartphones but <a href="https://www.newmatilda.com/2013/08/07/your-phone-paying-guns">recent research into mineral supply chains</a> by University of Sydney PhD student, Darian McBain is exposing the grim social and environmental costs of consumer electronics, including links to the funding of guns.</p>
<p>I love watching rugby league – but what do I do about the gambling and alcohol sponsors?</p>
<h2>The money trail</h2>
<p>Anyone who has worked with community-based, human rights or arts organisations knows the difficulty of accessing funds and trying to survive.</p>
<p>It’s here things get even more complex: how does a small community-based organisation such as a local sports team survive without money from the so-called “club industry”. You know, the money that comes from problem gamblers that are losing their homes. </p>
<p>Or what of one of my favourite theatre companies, sponsored by BHP Billiton, when we are being told constantly that mining projects the world over are accelerating climate change? </p>
<p>When I was the Campaigns Director at <a href="http://www.aidwatch.org.au/">Aid/Watch</a>, an independent monitor of Australian foreign aid spending, we a had very clear policy on funding: no money from corporations. But we did take money from philanthropic organisations who made their money from the share market – which put us back to the same loop.</p>
<p>We had to investigate the difference between the <a href="http://www.rbf.org/">Rockefeller Brothers Fund</a> and the <a href="http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/">Rockefeller Foundation</a>. It was complex, but as an organisation that specialised in finding the money trail of large infrastructure projects, it was something we became very good at. Despite this, I could never honestly feel each and every dollar that entered our bank account was clean.</p>
<h2>Arts funding and dirty money</h2>
<p>One of my research areas has been on understanding the role of the arts in society. I am particularly interested in why, in a time of economic hardship, it’s seen as important to fund the arts.</p>
<p>Despite the many social and health benefits we know of that flow from funding the arts, many governments choose to give very little to the arts. The answer for the arts community is philanthropic funds from organisations.</p>
<p>The problem is that it is never “clean” money: BHP Billiton <a href="http://www.bellshakespeare.com.au/support/corporate/currentpartners">sponsors Bell Shakespeare</a>; the Belvoir’s <a href="http://belvoir.com.au/support-belvoir/corporate-partnerships/our-sponsors/">partners include alcohol companies</a>. There are links between the National Gallery of Victoria and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce (the founding member of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce <a href="http://www.majorprojects.vic.gov.au/our-projects/our-past-projects/national-gallery-of-victoria-international/news/new-appointments-boost-ngvas-breadth-and-depth">is a trustee</a>) – uncomfortable for those supporting Tibet.</p>
<p>As most of us know now, Transfield Holdings has a <a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-victory-over-transfield-misses-the-bigger-picture-24131">long history of supporting the arts</a>, including assisting in establishing the Biennale of Sydney. It has a stake in Transfield Services, which holds large contracts related to the immigration detention centre at Manus Island.</p>
<p>This relationship between Transfield and the Biennale of Sydney became the focus of protest as many artists, concerned about Australia’s policy of mandatory offshore detention, withdrew from the arts festival and many in the community called for the boycott. As a result, <a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-victory-over-transfield-misses-the-bigger-picture-24131">Luca Belgiorno-Nettis resigned last week</a> as chair of the festival and the Biennale of Sydney severed its longstanding ties with Transfield.</p>
<p>There have been two reactions to this – each being equally valid.</p>
<p>The first is the pro-boycott movement, which are celebrating. This has been a successful boycott supported by many within the refugee community. It has assisted in raising awareness within the broader community.</p>
<p>The second response is by those who actually are asking, “what has been achieved?”</p>
<p>The overwhelming likelihood is that Transfield will not cancel <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/transfield-services-shares-soar-after-it-wins-offshore-detention-centre-contract-20140224-33d1i.html">its contract</a> linked to the detention centre on Manus Island and what we have seen is a funding avenue compromised.</p>
<p>Some artists are voicing their concerns about feeling bullied. Others are acknowledging the freedom of artists to protest but are unhappy that in the process a long-term supporter of the arts has been singled out.</p>
<p>While I supported the boycott, I also saw a larger question being raised linked with my broader research: who should fund the arts?</p>
<p>This is a question the Biennale attempted to raise through <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/19bos/events/forum/">an event</a> dedicated to this very issue. I personally supported the event thinking that establishing such dialogue was exactly what such protests should encourage.</p>
<p>So who should fund the arts?</p>
<p>Maybe the government should be more active in funding such events through the <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/">Australia Council</a> – but as has been pointed out to me, it is the government that has established the Manus Island detention camps, not Transfield.</p>
<p>So where does that leave us?</p>
<p>That is the question that many are asking now – and no-one really knows how to answer – for there is no such thing as “clean money”.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>Further reading:</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-victory-over-transfield-misses-the-bigger-picture-24131">Artists’ victory over Transfield misses the bigger picture</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-biennale-transfield-and-the-value-of-boycott-24155">The Biennale, Transfield, and the value of boycott</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-artists-boycott-the-sydney-biennale-over-transfield-links-23067">Should artists boycott the Sydney Biennale over Transfield links?</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24159/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Arvanitakis receives funding from Australian Research Council and the Office of Learning and Teaching.
James was invited to speak at the Biennale event mentioned in this article but declined due to a prior commitment. </span></em></p>
In the wake of the Sydney Biennale’s split from its major sponsor Transfield in recent days, certain uncomfortable questions are again floating very close to the surface. In the late 1990s, I had a successful…
James Arvanitakis, Professor in Cultural and Social Analysis, Western Sydney University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/24155
2014-03-09T01:27:06Z
2014-03-09T01:27:06Z
The Biennale, Transfield, and the value of boycott
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43433/original/jz7hg4v7-1394326828.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Biennale's severing of ties with Transfield won’t change anything for those suffering on Manus Island right now. But gestures matter.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Department of Immigration and Citizenship/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In July 1846, the American writer <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/henry-david-thoreau-9506784">Henry David Thoreau</a> went to prison for refusing to pay his poll tax. He couldn’t abide the thought that his money would be used, however indirectly, to perpetuate the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican-American_War">Mexican-American war</a> and the institution of slavery. “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison,” Thoreau reasoned, and so that’s where he was.</p>
<p>Like <a href="http://thegazine.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/no-thoreau-was-not-a-hypocrite/">many things</a> in Thoreau’s life, his stint in jail was somewhat less impressive than he made it sound. He’d simply run into the tax collector by chance, who demanded six years’ worth of unpaid taxes. Thoreau refused, spent one night in a freshly-whitewashed cell, drank a pint of hot chocolate for breakfast, and was released against his will later that day when someone (probably his aunt) paid the tax for him.</p>
<p>Nothing changed. Both the war and slavery went on, unperturbed. The most significant outcome was Thoreau’s deeply influential essay <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Ehyper/WALDEN/Essays/civil.html">Civil Disobedience</a>, an ongoing source of inspiration to anti-statist activists from the anarchist left to the libertarian right.</p>
<p>Four decades later, the people of Lough Mask in Ireland began a campaign of ostracisation against Lord Erne’s local land agent – a certain <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=ooS47L8V7nsC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=charles+boycott+letter+to+the+times&source=bl&ots=zkDzV0OfT6&sig=75FrVEzNcLBG-JAkqnn-z34NGfM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OmwaU57SBsWPrgfr5IDwDA&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=charles%20boycott%20letter%20to%20the%20times&f=false">Captain Charles Boycott</a>. The British ultimately used troops to guard the Orangemen brought down to harvest Erne’s crops (at 20 times the cost of what the crops were worth). But in the process the English language acquired a useful new verb.</p>
<p>But is the practice of boycotting as useful as the word? Are withdrawals of support such as Thoreau’s morally valuable acts of defiance or mere self-indulgent theatre?</p>
<p>The news that the Sydney Biennale has <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/07/sydney-biennale-chairman-quits-transfield-detention">severed all links with Transfield Holdings</a>, including accepting <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/arts/biennale-of-sydney-future-in-doubt-as-chairman-luca-belgiornonettis-resigns-over-disputed-links-to-detention-centres/story-fniv7r7y-1226848360250">the resignation</a> of its chairman <a href="http://www.transfield.com.au/luca-belgiorno-nettis-am">Luca Belgiorno-Nettis</a> (who remains Transfield’s director), throws all these issues into relief.</p>
<p>Like Transfield itself, the Biennale was founded by Luca Belgiorno-Nettis’ father Franco (who had earlier established the <a href="http://www.arttransfield.com/the-collection/the-transfield-art-prize">Transfield Art Prize</a>). No-one disputes, therefore, that Transfield has been a deeply valuable benefactor of the arts. As recently as late February, the Biennale board was <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/blog/2014/02/22/response-from-the-biennale-of-sydney-board-to-the-working-group/">insisting it could not survive</a> without Transfield.</p>
<p>But Transfield’s subsidiary, Transfield Services, operates the Australian government’s immigration detention facility in Nauru, and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/construction-company-transfield-to-be-paid-122b-to-run-offshore-detention-20140224-33bs5.html">has just signed a A$1.22 billion contract</a> to run the Manus Island facility in PNG as well. Protests against Transfield’s involvement with the Biennale had been gathering steam for weeks. Nine artists had withdrawn from the event altogether.</p>
<p>In the statement announcing his resignation, Belgiorno-Nettis <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/07/sydney-biennale-chairman-quits-transfield-detention">complained</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There would appear to be little room for sensible dialogue, let alone deliberation. Yesterday I learnt that some international government agencies are beginning to question the decision of the Biennale’s board to stand by Transfield. </p>
<p>Biennale staff have been verbally abused with taunts of “blood on your hands”. I have been personally vilified with insults, which I regard as naïve and offensive. This situation is entirely unfair – especially when directed towards our dedicated Biennale team who give so much of themselves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As the reference to Biennale staff reminds us, ethical decisions are never made in a vacuum. We moral philosophers like our thought-experiments <a href="http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/fatman/">artificially clean and simple</a>: strip out all the messy, extraneous stuff and display the moral problem in its clarity and purity. Real-life moral dilemmas aren’t like that: the truth, <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=4HIWAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=importance+of+being+earnest&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1VgaU_LpHIahiAefv4GoAQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=rarely%20pure&f=false">as Wilde quipped</a>, is rarely pure and never simple. It would be silly to ignore the fact there are livelihoods and careers involved here, and real costs to each if the event folds.</p>
<p>Villains are rarely as pure as we’d like them to be either. <a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-victory-over-transfield-misses-the-bigger-picture-24131">Writing on The Conversation, Joanna Mendelssohn notes</a> that Luca Belgiorno-Nettis is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>by any measure a major patron of the arts on a personal level and one of the great subtle thinkers in modern Australia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And yet, he profits from what can only be called systematic cruelty.</p>
<p>As an act of protest, the decision to boycott an arts festival may seem decidedly sub-Thoreavian. There are certainly real costs involved to the protesters, but no-one’s going to prison. Moreover, it’s no doubt impossible for even the most well-meaning boycotter to achieve complete disentanglement here either. </p>
<p>Other sources of funding are also likely to be ethically tainted too – is taking part in the Sydney Festival, which <a href="http://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/News/Festival-News/The-Star-announced-as-Principal-Sponsor/">has a casino as its principal sponsor</a>, an endorsement of the gambling industry, for instance?</p>
<p>Presumably the local artists who threatened to boycott the Biennale still pay their taxes too. We’re still paying for Manus whoever gets the contract. (Even Thoreau continued to pay the Highway Tax, because “I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.”)</p>
<p>And of course, none of this will move the needle one bit on asylum seeker detention policy, any more than Thoreau’s theatrics stopped the war against Mexico. </p>
<p>His belief that even a minority “is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight” sounds wildly optimistic, then as now. Australia seems determined to punish asylum seekers for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/drowning-mercy-why-we-fear-the-boats-16394">unforgivable crime</a> of disturbing our three-big-tellies-and-two-cars-in-the-driveway complacency. </p>
<p>As Waleed Aly <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-logic-of-png-policy-is-sanctioned-horror-20140220-333so.html">put it in a grimly eloquent piece recently</a>, “The political truth is that there is almost nothing any government could do that the electorate would deem too brutal” when it comes to detainees. A few artists pulling out of a festival is unlikely to get much traction in the suburbs of Western Sydney (which, as we learned during the last election campaign, is apparently the entirety of Australia).</p>
<p>And yet.</p>
<p>And yet, a group of individuals stood up, at some cost to themselves, to withdraw their implicit support of a company that makes money from our brutalisation of the most vulnerable. And they won.</p>
<p>The board’s statement suggest it’s reacting to pressure rather than acting from genuine ethical concern, and Belgiorno-Nettis’ comments aren’t exactly a study in contrition. When the sun came up Saturday he was still director of Transfield Holdings, and Transfield Services was still running detention camps for profit.</p>
<p>But even so, the Biennale board has chosen a course of action that, on its own admission, puts its survival in doubt. I’ve <a href="https://theconversation.com/ethics-is-a-jealous-god-self-regulation-vs-self-sacrifice-14298">said here before</a> that we need more turkeys prepared to vote for Christmas. Perhaps we’ve found some. Perhaps.</p>
<p>Whatever the complexities, and however limited the impact, there was, at least, a moment, here in 2014, where the idea that misery outweighs money won some sort of victory.</p>
<p>It won’t change much. It won’t change anything at all for those suffering on Manus and Nauru right now. Some will call it merely symbolic, an empty gesture. But gestures matter. Symbols matter.</p>
<p>Thoreau died of TB at the age of 44, too soon to see the <a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/">Emancipation Proclamation</a> – by just eight months. History can be quicker than you think.</p>
<p><br>
<em>Please leave your comments on this story below.</em></p>
<p><em>Are you an academic or researcher? Would you like to respond to the Biennale of Sydney and Transfield story? Contact the <a href="mailto:paul.dalgarno@theconversation.edu.au">Arts + Culture editor</a>.</em>
<br></p>
<p><strong>Further reading:</strong><br></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/luca-belgiorno-nettis-should-just-buy-a-yacht-24355">Luca Belgiorno-Nettis should just buy a yacht</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-should-value-the-biennale-protest-not-threaten-arts-funding-24333">We should value the Biennale protest, not threaten arts funding</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-there-any-clean-money-left-to-fund-the-arts-24159">Is there any clean money left to fund the arts?</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/artists-victory-over-transfield-misses-the-bigger-picture-24131">Artists’ victory over Transfield misses the bigger picture</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-artists-boycott-the-sydney-biennale-over-transfield-links-23067">Should artists boycott the Sydney Biennale over Transfield links?</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24155/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Stokes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In July 1846, the American writer Henry David Thoreau went to prison for refusing to pay his poll tax. He couldn’t abide the thought that his money would be used, however indirectly, to perpetuate the…
Patrick Stokes, Lecturer in Philosophy, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/24131
2014-03-08T04:16:19Z
2014-03-08T04:16:19Z
Artists’ victory over Transfield misses the bigger picture
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43430/original/x46pbcr3-1394252045.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It is infantile to pick on one holding company while ignoring the central role of the Australian government.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eoin Blackwell/AAP Image</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Biennale of Sydney, which begins on March 21, has announced it will sever ties with its founding partner Transfield, following <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-artists-boycott-the-sydney-biennale-over-transfield-links-23067">weeks of pressure</a> from artists angered by the company’s links to Australia’s offshore detention centres.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.transfield.com.au/luca-belgiorno-nettis-am">Luca Belgiorno-Nettis</a>, director of <a href="http://www.transfield.com.au/">Transfield Holdings</a>, has also <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/arts/biennale-of-sydney-future-in-doubt-as-chairman-luca-belgiornonettis-resigns-over-disputed-links-to-detention-centres/story-fniv7r7y-1226848360250">resigned</a> as chairman of the event.</p>
<p>Nine Australian and international artists, including Olafur Olafsson, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/matters-of-principle-and-protest-20140307-34d9t.html">had pulled out</a> from the Biennale in protest at the event’s sponsorship deal with Transfield Holdings. The company has a stake in <a href="http://www.transfieldservices.com/">Transfield Services</a>, which was recently granted a contract last week to operate a detention centre on Manus Island.</p>
<p>How the event will be funded going forward is now unclear.</p>
<p>In its statement, the Biennale board said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have listened to the artists who are the heart of the Biennale and have decided to end our partnership with Transfield effective immediately.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The original Transfield, under its founder <a href="http://www.australianbiography.gov.au/subjects/belgiorno/bio.html">Franco Belgiorno-Nettis</a>, initiated the Biennale in 1973. The first Biennale was at the Sydney Opera House as a part of the opening ceremonies. It was opened by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam who had not been invited to the Opera House opening by the Queen (NSW had a Liberal government, enough said). </p>
<p>It is fair to say that Franco Belgiorno-Nettis was able to leverage his patronage of the Biennale and other cultural activities to foster informal connections to the most powerful people in the country. Transfield was then a construction company, pure and simple (it was <a href="http://www.transfield.com.au/sydney-harbour-tunnel">one of the joint venturers</a> to build the Sydney Harbour Tunnel) . </p>
<p>Connections are, after all, one of the reasons for arts patronage. The subtle patrons use their connections well. The great value of visual arts events is that it is easy to have conversations while looking at art – opera and theatre tend to demand silence except at interval. This is different from crude acts of sponsorship such as those by large mining or oil companies which use the arts to polish their corporate image.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43424/original/dmrt3dry-1394239919.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43424/original/dmrt3dry-1394239919.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43424/original/dmrt3dry-1394239919.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43424/original/dmrt3dry-1394239919.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43424/original/dmrt3dry-1394239919.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43424/original/dmrt3dry-1394239919.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43424/original/dmrt3dry-1394239919.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43424/original/dmrt3dry-1394239919.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Art family the Belgiorno-Nettis (L-R:) Guido, Luca and Amina Belgiorno-Nettis at the Art Gallery of NSW for the announcement of their A$4 million donation to the gallery in Sydney, in 2007.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tracey Nearmy/AAP Image</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Time has moved on. Franco died eight years ago. Transfield is now a very large and complex series of companies. <a href="http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=2972540&ticker=TSE:AU">Luca Belgiorno-Nettis</a> is a director of Transfield Holdings. Transfield Services, the company that is now operating some of Australia’s detention camps, is a separate subsidiary. </p>
<p>Luca Belgiorno-Nettis is not a part of Transfield Services. He is by any measure a major patron of the arts on a personal level and one of the great subtle thinkers in modern Australia. He is behind the <a href="http://www.newdemocracy.com.au/">newDemocracy Foundation</a>, which aims to create a climate of intelligent debate and decision-making in this country. </p>
<p>In what can only be described as one of life’s little ironies “intelligent debate” has not been one of the characteristics of the current controversy. </p>
<p>As well as Transfield, the <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/19bos/support-us/current-partners/">major supporter</a> of the Biennale of Sydney is the <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/">Australia Council</a>. While it participated in the 1973 exhibition, its significant financial support dates from the second Biennale in 1976 (for some years Sydney had the only Biennale in the world that ran once every three years). The Australia Council develops its policies at arms length from government but it remains wholly funded by the Australian Government. </p>
<p>In a very real sense, artists receiving Australia Council money are taking government money. So from my perspective it is quite reasonable for non-Australian artists to be so appalled by the acts of both the Australian government and their contractors that they remove themselves from the Biennale. It is reasonable to assume they would not know that our government runs concentration camps in our name, and has done so for many years. </p>
<p>However their protest will be somewhat hypocritical if they renew their connection with the Biennale now that Transfield has left. This is especially as Luca’s brother, <a href="http://www.transfield.com.au/guido-belgiorno-nettis-am">Guido Belgiorno-Nettis</a>, also a director of Transfield Holdings, is the <a href="http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/about-us/people/agnsw-trust/">President of the Trustees</a> of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the principal venue for the Biennale.</p>
<p>Australian artists are in a different category. Australia has been imprisoning refugees since 1992, shortly after the first Iraq War. In 2001 the Tampa election made hostility to those fleeing conflict official policy. </p>
<p>As an aside, it’s worth remembering also that <a href="http://www.santos.com/Blog/archive/2009/11/24/20.aspx">Santos</a> and ARCO became major sponsors of state government art galleries in the late 1980s and early 1990s, just as mega-exploration was taking off. In the catalogue of <a href="http://www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/research/publications/past/balance_1990">Balance 1990</a>, Queensland Art Gallery’s seminal exhibition of Aboriginal art, ARCO Coal Australia Inc. is “thanked for its substantial financial support which enabled works to be purchased directly from artists during the tour to remote areas”. Whenever those <a href="http://mobile.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/voice_and_reason">now iconic works of art are reproduced</a>or are on view, ARCO’s support is honoured.</p>
<p>The last election confirmed that both major political parties have lost their moral compass. The current mood by people of good will is despair.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43426/original/72q9gfx5-1394241115.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43426/original/72q9gfx5-1394241115.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43426/original/72q9gfx5-1394241115.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43426/original/72q9gfx5-1394241115.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43426/original/72q9gfx5-1394241115.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43426/original/72q9gfx5-1394241115.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43426/original/72q9gfx5-1394241115.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43426/original/72q9gfx5-1394241115.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An artwork by American artist Sam Durant stands in front of Museum of Contemporary Art overlooking the Sydney Opera House as part of the 2008 Biennale of Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tracey Nearmy/AAP Image</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It would be good to see artists in the Biennale use their position to foster a conversation on what is happening in Australia now. It is however silly and infantile to pick on one holding company of one of the camp operators while ignoring the central role of the Australian government which is directing the whole disaster.</p>
<p>I would have thought the intelligent response for local artists would be to make works that reflect the dilemma of people living in a country once thought of as a utopia but is now transforming itself into a dystopia. Take their money and use it to do good.</p>
<p>One of the big issues that is not being discussed here is that our government is effectively outsourcing many of the operations that have traditionally been a part of the core business of governing. It is fairly clear, from the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/35m-spent-on-manus-island-detention-centres-kitchen-defended-20140302-33u0x.html">amounts of money being thrown around</a>, that they aren’t doing this as a cost-saving activity. </p>
<p>Rather it is clear that by outsourcing the more distasteful aspects of government they are setting up private companies as future scapegoats, and in doing so hoping to avoid the consequences of their own decisions. </p>
<p>I’d also like to emphasise that as well as being committed to maintaining their father’s initiative in giving Australia a place in the contemporary art scene, the next generation of the Belgiorno-Nettis family have a personal passionate involvement in the arts. Luca’s wife, Anita, was the executive producer for the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0865297/">The Black Balloon</a> (2008), Elissa Down’s film about autism and teenage love. Look closely at the opening scene. </p>
<p>A middled aged couple are walking their dog, and look at the family moving in across the road. The couple are Anita and Luca doing an Alfred Hitchcock moment.</p>
<p><br>
<em>Please leave your comments on this story below.</em></p>
<p><em>Are you an academic or researcher? Would you like to respond to the Biennale of Sydney and Transfield story? Contact the <a href="mailto:paul.dalgarno@theconversation.edu.au">Arts + Culture editor</a>.</em></p>
<p><br>
<em>This article was updated on March 9, 2014. A reference to “concentration camps” was changed to “detention camps”.</em></p>
<p><br>
<strong>Further reading:</strong><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/luca-belgiorno-nettis-should-just-buy-a-yacht-24355">Luca Belgiorno-Nettis should just buy a yacht</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-should-value-the-biennale-protest-not-threaten-arts-funding-24333">We should value the Biennale protest, not threaten arts funding</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-there-any-clean-money-left-to-fund-the-arts-24159">Is there any clean money left to fund the arts?</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-biennale-transfield-and-the-value-of-boycott-24155">The Biennale, Transfield, and the value of boycott</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-artists-boycott-the-sydney-biennale-over-transfield-links-23067">Should artists boycott the Sydney Biennale over Transfield links?</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24131/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn receives funding from the ARC through a Linkage Project on the History of Exhibitions of Australian Art and a LIEF grant for Design and Art of Australia Online.</span></em></p>
The Biennale of Sydney, which begins on March 21, has announced it will sever ties with its founding partner Transfield, following weeks of pressure from artists angered by the company’s links to Australia’s…
Joanna Mendelssohn, Program Director, Art Administration, School of Art History and Art Education. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/19749
2013-11-06T04:46:14Z
2013-11-06T04:46:14Z
40 years on: how Gough Whitlam gave Indigenous art a boost
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34317/original/b566nfm8-1383529318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Sydney Opera House is not the only cultural institution celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2013.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Quentin Jones</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As you’ve no doubt noticed, celebrations are underway to mark the <a href="http://40.sydneyoperahouse.com/">40th anniversary</a> of the Sydney Opera House – and that’s as it should be. But this year marks a few other “40ths” that have had a tremendous impact on Australian culture, and not least on Indigenous art. </p>
<p>My favourite research library is located in the basement of the <a href="http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/">Art Gallery of NSW</a>. It houses catalogues of exhibitions great and small. There are ancient minute books which record squabbles between trustees and press cutting books that date back to the 19th century. Together, these documents offer a multi-layered narrative of every event and attitude vaguely related to art. </p>
<p>My research has taken me back in time to 1973, the first year of <a href="http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/primeministers/whitlam/">Gough Whitlam</a>’s government – and the year the Aboriginal Arts Board was established. The Board was made up of <a href="http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_4_no1/papers/inroads_offshore#Endnotes%201-25">Aboriginal artists, writers and performers</a>. A prime ministerial <a href="http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/preview.php?did=2908">press statement</a> makes its purpose clear:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The decision to place control for the arts in the hands of Aboriginals is intended to stimulate indigenous Australian arts and lead to the preservation of many art forms almost lost since the settlement of Australia by Europeans.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Queen opened the Opera House in 1973. While the 40th anniversary of Danish architect <a href="http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/about/the_architect.aspx">Jørn Utzon</a>’s magnificent building has been marked by <a href="http://40.sydneyoperahouse.com/">enthusiastic public celebration</a>, there are other events from that compelling time vital to the cultural life of this country that deserve to be commemorated. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0tecBKSQIJ4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Queen Elizabeth II opens the Sydney Opera House in 1973.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first Biennale of Sydney took place in 1973, a landmark occasion for Australian contemporary art. When Whitlam opened the exhibition, he noted it was his first public event at the Opera House as then NSW premier <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/askin-sir-robert-william-bob-12152">Sir Robert Askin</a> had refused an invitation to the opening party. Forty years later and the <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/19bos/artists/">Biennale of Sydney</a> is one of the great festivals for contemporary art and continues to showcase the work of Indigenous artists.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34201/original/6f53542d-1383264958.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34201/original/6f53542d-1383264958.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34201/original/6f53542d-1383264958.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34201/original/6f53542d-1383264958.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34201/original/6f53542d-1383264958.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34201/original/6f53542d-1383264958.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34201/original/6f53542d-1383264958.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34201/original/6f53542d-1383264958.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daily Telegraph, November 24 1973.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ongoing success of these two great institutions, the Sydney Opera House and the Biennale, has only been made possible by another innovation of 1973 – the radical restructure of the Australian Council for the Arts (renamed the <a href="http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/">Australia Council</a> in 1975) and the introduction of significant funding for creative endeavours. </p>
<p>Every art form can claim to have benefited from the new availability of arts funding. Young practitioners could travel overseas to obtain the necessary experience. The new funding pool gave practitioners time to write or make new works, or subsidised international performances and exhibitions. </p>
<p>Easily the greatest impact of the Australia Council, though, has been how it has enabled the transformation of a broader understanding of Australia’s Indigenous culture and – in fostering the achievements of Indigenous artists, writers, musicians, performers and curators – helped reposition Indigenous culture as central to this country’s identity.</p>
<p>Press clippings give some indication of the attitudes of the time. In 1973, prominent art collector, Jim Davidson, gave an interview in which he claimed, “Aboriginal art is doomed and so are the Aboriginal people”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34203/original/nd3s6vpr-1383265204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34203/original/nd3s6vpr-1383265204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34203/original/nd3s6vpr-1383265204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34203/original/nd3s6vpr-1383265204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34203/original/nd3s6vpr-1383265204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34203/original/nd3s6vpr-1383265204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34203/original/nd3s6vpr-1383265204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34203/original/nd3s6vpr-1383265204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Newcastle Herald, April 4, 1973.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This wasn’t the view of the prime minister of the day. On May 22 the Canberra Times reported a speech by Gough Whitlam in which he said that “Aboriginal art should be used to inspire social protest in the cities”. The excerpts from the speech contained in the press cuttings show an intense emphasis placed on the significance of art:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Artists are not only those who see and feel most intensely the agonies, the sorrows and the hopes of their own people … They are those who can bring to others the willingness and capacity to comprehend and share these emotions.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34202/original/xj5nwpzn-1383265092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34202/original/xj5nwpzn-1383265092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34202/original/xj5nwpzn-1383265092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34202/original/xj5nwpzn-1383265092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34202/original/xj5nwpzn-1383265092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34202/original/xj5nwpzn-1383265092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34202/original/xj5nwpzn-1383265092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34202/original/xj5nwpzn-1383265092.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canberra Times 22 May 1973.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Whitlam was opening a seminar on Aboriginal Arts in Australia, held at the Australian National University, one of the first events held under the auspices of the newly-formed Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council. </p>
<p>The Board had the strong support of the chair of the Australia Council, <a href="http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/coombs-herbert-cole-nugget-246">Dr H. C. (Nugget) Coombs</a>, who was so influential on arts policy that artist <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/pugh-clifton-ernest-15045">Clifton Pugh</a> once accused him of being Whitlam’s <em>de facto</em> arts minister</p>
<p><a href="http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_4_no1/papers/inroads_offshore">Nina Berrell</a> has written on how, throughout the 1970s, the Aboriginal Arts Board, led first by artist <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A657">Dick Roughsey</a> and later by artist and activist <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/marika-wandjuk-djuakan-14917">Wandjuk Marika</a>, devised a strategy to simultaneously encourage creative endeavours, change the standing of Aboriginal arts and direct much needed money to Aboriginal communities. </p>
<p>In those early years the Australia Council was the largest single client for Aboriginal art. It bought works direct from artists and, as no Australian institutions were especially interested in Aboriginal art, those works were sent on “cultural exchange” to museums and galleries the United States and Canada. </p>
<p>This is one of the reasons the international commercial market for Australian Aboriginal art was so strong. And because board members understood the essential interconnectedness between art forms, the visual arts remained connected to the performing arts. </p>
<p>There is wonderful photograph of Nugget Coombs, sitting on the floor, enjoying a performance by David Gulpilil and David Bannacey to celebrate the departure of the first great exhibition to Canada.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34224/original/m8b7db44-1383297649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34224/original/m8b7db44-1383297649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34224/original/m8b7db44-1383297649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34224/original/m8b7db44-1383297649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34224/original/m8b7db44-1383297649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34224/original/m8b7db44-1383297649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34224/original/m8b7db44-1383297649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34224/original/m8b7db44-1383297649.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Australian, February 19 1974.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These policies helped create a supportive climate for later generations of Indigenous artists. The first urban artists were noticed in the 1980s. For the last three decades Indigenous artists have represented Australia in international forums. </p>
<p>In next year’s Biennale of Sydney, Bindi Cole’s uncompromising <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/19bos/artists/cole-bindi/">We all need forgiveness</a> will be seen with Michael Cook’s whimsical <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/19bos/artists/cook-michael/">Majority rule, memorial</a> and Yhonnie Scarce’s unnerving <a href="http://www.biennaleofsydney.com.au/19bos/artists/scarce-yhonnie/">Weak in Colour Strong in Blood</a>.</p>
<p>Forty years on, the Sydney Opera House, the Biennale, and the Aboriginal Arts Board are all anniversaries worth celebrating. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19749/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn receives funding from the ARC through a Linkage Project on the History of Exhibitions of Australian Art.</span></em></p>
As you’ve no doubt noticed, celebrations are underway to mark the 40th anniversary of the Sydney Opera House – and that’s as it should be. But this year marks a few other “40ths” that have had a tremendous…
Joanna Mendelssohn, Program Director, Art Administration, School of Art History and Art Education. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW Sydney
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