Once a year during August every South Australian artist puts up an exhibition, takes part in a group show or opens up their studio to the public. This year i'm opening my Vanilla Sky Studio each weekend
The national conversation towards A new National Cultural Policy building upon the initiatives of the Gillard Labour Government in 2011 is a good place to start. The five areas below are currently up for discussion and you could hardly argue with any of them. Let’s hope that the current government isn’t going to be a one term affair saddled with debt from its predecessor and on the skids before its time is up or at least before discussion on a cultural policy can reach some sort of conclusion and pass into law. We can but hope, but don’t hold your breath. No doubt the Gillard government said the same thing.
Is there a future for the painted portrait? The annual rush to present a work for selection to the NSW Archibald committee never seems to diminish and nor does the disappointment in being passed over yet again. The archies aren’t the only portrait prize either. But just who gets their portrait painted anyway these days when the camera phone can capture every waking moment in perpetuity?
So, it all comes back to whether you accept the prognostications of others or not. The ‘next big thing’ of the music industry often comes down to a ‘one hit wonder’ heavily promoted and quickly forgotten. Is it any different with art? In one respect it isn’t. An art book lives a very long time and its digest of its time lives with it. Books, after all, are precious symbols of culture and civilisation to be preserved at all costs in spite of the remainder bins filling faster than they can be emptied and their contents pulped. Any predictive art compendium will no doubt follow suit as it its premise is overtaken by reality.
Promoting locally made products in any arts field is a necessity and whether that is down to critics, radio hosts or the press, there is little being said or heard other than on an artist-to-artist level. Surely, we can do better. Or is even that question irrelevant when mind-numbing screen-time experience swamps all others?
Even a cursory glance at the history of art in the last century or so suggests radical change occurred with great frequency – at least that is how the history is written.