Art and the Economy

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What does the recession mean for artworkers? Looks at all the hard issues providing for the art worker a guide to the economy. Includes reflections on people and place, artists exchange with the usual abundance of reviews and points of view. Reviews

Topic list: community, cultural policy, economy, identity, patronage, regionalism, women.

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Articles in Vol 12 no 3, 1992

A Response to 'Incidental Benefits'

Feature by Anna Ward

Response to the article by Peter Anderson in this issue of Artlink examining arts industry rhetoric and policy objectives. — More »

A response to the Article by Nelson English

Feature by Norm Austin

A response to the article by Nelson English in this issue of Artlink Volume 12 no 3. — More »

Aboriginal Art, the Nation State Suburbia

Feature by Peter Sutton

In Englishwe use the word 'country' in two main senses: to refer to nation states, and to speak about rural lands beyond the big cities and their suburbs. In Australia there is historically a third zone out past the country; the now quickly shrinking Outback. — More »

Art, Sports Stars and the Depression: Knocking at the Door of the Special World

Feature by Nelson English

Our sports stars are successful because they are not burdened by funding programs which dribble a meagre supply to an army of unknown novices....the arts need radical strategies to help them survive the recession and achieve greater audience participation. (this article is responded to by Norm Austin, the Deputy Director of the Art Gallery of NSW). — More »

Arts and the Economy?

Feature by Max Bourke

Just recently I was giving a lecture to a large group of arts people when a person in the audience had a go at me for talking about the economy of the arts and not about art. I, too, am very conscious of the intellectual dilemma in this regard. — More »

Culture as Transformation: ARX

Feature by Vivienne Binns

Artist's regional exchange (ARX). Events such as ARX in Perth are rare and potentially of such value for me that, although not a participating artist this time, I was determined to travel from the east to attend. Four views on the exchange See also the articles by Ian Howard, Anne Kirker and Adrian Jones in this issue of Artlink. — More »

Dialogue with Thailand

Feature by Anne Kirker

Interview format with Dr Poshyananda One of Four views on the exchange. See also the articles by Vivienne Binns, Ian Howard and Adrian Jones in this issue of Artlink. — More »

Incidental Benefits: Arts Industry Rhetoric and Policy Objectives

Feature by Peter Anderson

The notion of the arts as an industry dates in Australia from about 10 years ago with the beginnings of statistical data measuring the economic impact of artistic activity. ... (Response to this article by Anna Ward, Director of the National Association of Visual Arts also in this issue of Artlink.) — More »

Managing ARX

Feature by Adrian Jones

Written by the co-ordinator of the past three ARX events which have taken place in Perth Western Australia. Four views on the exchange See also the articles by Vivienne Binns, Anne Kirker and Ian Howard in this issue of Artlink. — More »

Predicaments of Furniture Design

Feature by Robert Nelson

No matter what we say about furniture, it seems to have been said before. Small wonder that painting and installation attracts our writers more than furniture, when discourse about tables and chairs is confined to the rehearsal of so many grim platitudes. But if banality beleaguers the objects themselves, it is still more oppressively unavoidable in discussion of the unfortunate Australian industries of furniture design and manufacture. — More »

Proposals from Invisible Worlds

Feature by Marian Pastor Roces

This paper is almost all stories. Each one is part of much larger ones about cultures changing and moving to occupy the same geographies. We can speak of the conflicts and possibilities that seem to ignite by spontaneous combustion in these sites. But there is a series of sites from which I wish to speak: spaces of crisis that seem to lie within my person. B/w photographs of ritual and shrine. — More »

The Artist, the Gallery and the Recession

Feature by Geoffrey Legge

In thinking about the repercussions of the recession for artists and galleries, I am worried that our dismay at the present hardship and heartbreak may blind us to the fundamental recession related changes to the artist-gallery system which tend to the detriment of artists and forever endanger the quality and excitement of the Australian art scene. — More »

The Arts- Survival of the BIGGEST?

Feature by Brian Tucker

The arts community of Australia has weathered the recession extremely well. While shopkeepers are shutting their doors, factories are shedding their workers, and the average Australian contemplates life in the same house for the next five years, the average artist continues on pretty much as always. — More »

The Australia Shop -- EXPO 92 Seville

Feature by Marjorie Johnson

The Australian Government's decision to participate in Expo 92 in Seville, the biggest Expo this century, has culminated in a presence recently described in a 'Best of Expo Guide' as "high spirited in mood and one of the most distinctive pavilions at Expo." — More »

The Brush-Off Syndrome: Stage Design, History and Visual Art in Adelaide

Feature by Pamela J Zeplin

Clear discussion of the issues facing stage and set designers in the visual arts world. — More »

The Business of Art

Feature by Margriet Bonnin

It's not easy to make a conference look sexy - especially when it's about regional galleries. But the team at the five year old Regional Galleries Association of Queensland managed just that in the late winter sunshine of Cairns last year. — More »

The Ham Museum ARCO 1992

Feature by Ian North

Critically examines the 11th manifestation of the international art fair ARCO in Madrid. Photographs of the art fair included in the article. — More »

The Recession and the Arts

Feature by Greg McCarthy

The theme in this article is that the recession will have significant implications for the arts community. The argument is that the recession is not just a temporary phenomenon, related to a decline in demand, but is the product of weaknesses in the Australian economy and of the peculiar nature of economic growth in the 1980s.... — More »

The Silence of the Lambs: Before Leaving for a Trip Abroad

Feature by Anita Aarons

Looks at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Circular Quay in Sydney and the issue of economics. — More »

There's Magic in your Hands

Feature by Karen Brown

Looks at the artist in residence program for Thancoupie at the Hamley Bridge Primary School South Australia in May 1992. — More »

Towards a Legitimate Interest

Feature by Ian Howard

The most important questions that arose from ARX3 related to the issue of legitimacy of interest. Four views on the exchange See also the articles by Vivienne Binns, Anne Kirker and Adrian Jones in this issue of Artlink. — More »

Vicious Circles: Women's Exclusion from Contemporary Visual Art

Feature by Dorothy Broom

Written with Cassandra Cavanaugh with graphs illustrating participation of women in the various sectors of the visual arts. — More »

What is Australian Work?

Feature by Susan Cohn

I am often asked where I originally come from. And, if I am in a wicked mood, I will try to embarass the questioner with some non-answer. A persistent enquirer will ignore the flippancy and further qualify their question by rephrasing the terminology to ask whether I was born in Australia (which incidentally, was the form the question was usually couched in up to the 1980s when issues of multiculturalism introduced a so-called obscure politeness. — More »

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