As a working artist I’m continually faced with the need to find space to exhibit – and I’m not alone. Shortly the Adelaide Fringe will launch its 2021 program of which the visual arts section is an integral part. Last year was difficult but as with the South Australian Living Artists festival in August, anything up to 1500 artists will be looking for space. A number of those are part of local art societies and schools all of which put up exhibitions of member’s work but there are also the professional and amateur artists who work independently.

If I look across the available spaces in Adelaide, I can see how limited they are. There are a handful of commercial galleries [only one in the CBD], artist spaces and a couple of places for experimental work such as Feltspace, the Mill, ACE Arts, Collective Haunt and Floating Goose with resident artists taking priority. The Adelaide Town Hall regularly exhibits curated work as well.

Each gallery has an ethos or focus. ACE Arts Nexus gallery deals with artists of ethnic or first nation origin; PRAXIS encourages emerging young artists; SAMSTAG museum revolves around big questions in art; BMG in anyone whose work will sell and HUGO MICHELL with prize-winning and representative artists. Of course, there are also on-line opportunities, but they are another matter.

For all of us who aren’t under thirty, are not of ethnic origin, didn’t attend the state art school, don’t fit into curatorial categories and who haven’t been selected for the Venice Biennale or won the Archibald Portrait Prize, there is limited choice. No doubt there will be popup exhibitions in empty shops, shopping malls and street corners but as with online space such as Bluethumb, you are dealing with the denominator of the shopping trolley and the bargain. Offer a discount for buying before a certain date or two-for-one and you may be in business. Even fitting within the designated categories of online platform Bluethumb may be difficult because once you get past portrait, landscape, resin, people and dogs you are left with Abstract.

Without a recognised and organised gallery structure to show and promote work, the onus falls back on the artist. Pop up exhibitions are all well and good but they probably don’t come with hanging facilities, lighting, public liability insurance, publicity, an on-site sales manager or a catered opening. Without the Fringe Guide [all online in 2020] you probably won’t find popups anyway even if the artist can manage to open outside of the weekend and deal with anything but cash.

There is also no guarantee of selling anything if you go outside of the city and take on a regional gallery. You may well have all the attributes of a well-appointed gallery but also a dependence on tourists and visitors. Perhaps the necessity of holidaying at home in 2021, with international travel cancelled, will help but who goes on a local holiday to visit art galleries?

Where does a significant gallery system come from? For anyone to open and maintain a gallery is a difficult proposition. Lease arrangements and set up costs are high. Finding a clientele of buyers is also difficult. Who buys art? At one end of the scale are the one-off purchasers looking to fill a space on a wall [domestic or corporate] and at the other, state collections. Neither point to a regular income. Working with commercial businesses, councils and government may also provide opportunities but the trade-off may well be a matter of compromise on a variety of levels.

As an artist said recently, ‘can you bite the hand that feeds you?’ Can artists actually expect independence and expect a means of earning an income that is not tied to commercialism? There are certainly instances of benefactors supporting artists [the Reids looked after Sidney Nolan] but that idea seems to have gone out of fashion. There have always been collectors such as Ivan Morozov who took a significant interest in Cubism and Sergei Shchukin who purchased many works by Matisse. In Australia, billionaire Alan Bond collected work by a range of Australian artists in the1980s as a matter of national pride and housed them in Western Australia. The State Art Gallery of South Australia purchases significant works for its collection but at any one time only 10% is ever on display due to space problems. There are still individual bursaries handed out by the Arts Council to a few selected artists to travel overseas, the odd community project, and of course there is the art prize circuit for those lucky enough to meet often opaque criteria.

For the rest…….the artist is now seemingly cast adrift to find his or her own way. The one essential ingredient for artistic development is time but without an income from an unrelated job [a dedicated painter I know drives a backhoe all week], from a working partner or a solidly commercial line in art, time is in limited supply and there is no guarantee of finding exhibition space where they are few galleries in the first place even if the hire fees are within bounds. I read only yesterday of a NY gallery charging $4000 USD per week and taking 40% commission on sales. Adelaide isn’t in that realm of high prices but even so, to find $500 per week in a commercial gallery can seem prohibitive let alone leasing a city building costing up to $5000 a month.