There's no climate of criticism which takes the media themselves seriously as art, so it's hardly surprising if the media return that compliment to art.
Artists' Week was established in 1982 as an initiative of the South Australian visual arts community in reponse to the poor emphasis on visual art in the Adelaide Festival Program and to the growing need for forums to discuss art.
The last 10 years has seen a noticeable empowerment of the visual art institutions in Australia. As recently as the late seventies the Sydney Biennale still sometimes happened every three years. In 1980 the Adelaide Festival was as yet innocent of Artist's Week and the Adelaide Biennial.
Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art Art Gallery of South Australia Adelaide 2 March - 22 April 1990 Confined exclusively to Australian art - the Whitney Biennial is a model - the Adelaide Biennials will both complement the international Biennale of Sydney and posit alternatives to the surveys of current art represented by the biennial Australian Perspecta exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
The slide from film to video may perhaps one day be compared to the move away from the alexandrine and toward free verse poetry - out of this there emerged a reflection on the literary fate of language and the same is happening today for the image.