"If you are real lucky you got CDEP or your are making it selling your art and then you got a good art centre too, maybe. If you are real lucky just when you turn up with a couple of week's art production, maybe yours, maybe the families, the centre's got cash, no one's a bastard, everyone's happy, the store has even got some decent food, even new bikes, toy guns, tape decks and a few tins of Log Cabin. Shit, life's good - sometimes anyway." A personal view of art making in indigenous communities.
Brisbane has been and continues to be well served by artist run spaces and access galleries, particularly in the last 2 years 1993-1994. Can there ever be an over supply? Looks at Dogget Street Studios, QAA, Metro Arts, Inkahoots, Loading Bay, Isn't Studios and Fireworks Gallery.
How do artists survive when they are not able to sell work in galleries -- sales are at a record low and many galleries have folded-- or get commissions through State agencies -- because these are few and far between?
Written with Lee Salomone exploring the utilisation of prominent billboards on the tram track in Adelaide for the term of one year at no cost for them to be used as public art spaces.
Artists collectives and access galleries do not just exist in big capital cities. It seems that wherever there is a community of artists and Artist Run Initiative will happen.
Located in Melbourne Victoria, the City of Fitzroy was given $1m by the federal government in 1992 for capital works. One project funded was the commissioning of 16 pieces of public art from 11 artists to build on that heart of cafe culture Brunswick St.
The transforming role of local government. More enlightened attitudes towards art making are coming from all levels of government and from property developers and others - often at the urging of those various levels of government.