David Corbet's Australian artnotes appear in edited form in Art Monthly Australia
Above: Tony Albert Pay Attention, 2012, exhibited at unDisclosed: 2nd National Indigenous Art Triennial, NGA Canberra, courtesy the artist and NGA.
This last column for the year is a good time to look both back and forward, so here’s a personal take on 2012 and beyond. 2013 is an election year, and pessimists point to recent savage cuts to arts funding, by the incoming NSW and QLD governments, as a foretaste of the Federal Coalition approach, should they win national government. The record suggests this fear may be overstated – Australia enjoys a remarkable bipartisan consensus around arts funding and no sudden shocks are expected either way. The conventional wisdom is that Labour takes the Arts vote for granted, whereas the Opposition knows they have to court it assiduously but quietly. For arts administrators continuity, index linked, is the name of the game.
Bricks and mortar
In terms of new spaces, the big addition was the new-look MCA Australia, re-booted in April as a de facto national museum. This follows a strong run of building in recent years – Brisbane’s GoMA, the NGA Canberra’s new wing, Hobart’s MONA and the AGNSW’s new Kaldor galleries. MONA, designed by Nona Katsalidis, won the Australian Institute of Architects’ coveted Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture 2012. Due for completion in early-mid 2013 are UNSW’s new COFA galleries in Sydney, and stage 1 of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery’s redevelopment. In Sydney ground was broken on the Barangaroo precinct and the ‘hollow hill’ of the northern Headland Park will contain a massive (and so-far vaguely-defined) underground ‘cultural space’. This site has long been championed as an ideal one for a National Indigenous Museum or Cultural Centre, but its underground setting would send all the wrong signals. A stand-alone new building in Barangaroo central appears more likely, situated in a ‘living’ zone of apartments and businesses. This is closer to the National Trust’s alternative vision, which envisaged a cruise ship terminal and a Cultural Centre near the water. It would also be within shouting distance of James Packer’s new 6-star Crown hotel and high-roller casino, if he gets his way, which seems likely. Maybe the penny will drop and Packer, who has made much of his commitment to Indigenous employment, will realise that the way to sweeten the deal is to pay for a new Indigenous Cultural Centre – at say $60 million it would be just a fraction of the 1 billion plus cost of the new hotel. 2015-19 is the completion period for the precinct.
Blockbusters
International blockbusters have had a robust year, particularly at State gallery level, with fierce competition between the capitals to secure the biggest crowd-pullers. The most popular offerings still tend to be pre-20th century, and there is a trend towards borrowing their contents while overseas museums are undergoing redevelopment. Following the runaway success of the 2010/11 Musée d’Orsay loan-show Masterpieces from Paris, the NGA followed up with Renaissance (from the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo) and is now showing Toulouse-Lautrec (until 15 April 2013). The NGV International showed Napoleon: Revolution to Empire; The Mad Square; and currently Radiance: The Neo-Impressionists (until 17 March 2013), and has announced a mid-2013 blockbuster – Monet’s Garden: The Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris (10 May - 25 Aug). AGNSW’s big-ticket loan show in 2012 was Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris and currently Francis Bacon: Five Decades (until 24 Feb 2013). These expensive imports fall under a NSW state government initiative: the Sydney International Art Series (SIAS), and the MCA Australia hosts the other part of this: Anish Kapoor (until 1 April 2013). The MCA has already announced its next SIAS offering: War Is Over! (if you want it): Yoko Ono, curated by Rachel Kent (14 November 2013 – 23 February 2014). Other upcoming MCA highlights are: South of No North - Laurence Aberhart, William Eggleston, Noel McKenna (8 March – 5 May); Jeff Wall Photographs (1 May – 28 July); and Wangechi Mutu (23 May – 11 August). Perth’s AGWA secured a 6-exhibition partnership with New York’s MoMA until 2015, with the first instalment, Picasso to Warhol, on show until 3 December 2012. Next up in 2013 is Picturing New York (16 Jan – 12 May) followed by Van Gogh to Richter (22 June – 2 December). QAG/GoMA’s major 2012 import was Portrait of Spain: Masterpieces from the Prado.
Biennale-land
It has been a very big year for bi/triennials: AGSA’s Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art; the NGA’s undisclosed: National Indigenous Art Triennial; the Biennale of Sydney (BoS); the Tarrawarra Biennial and QAG/GoMA’s Asia Pacific Triennial (APT, 8 Dec – 14 April 2013). In addition there was significant Australian participation in Germany’s Documenta and China’s Shanghai Biennale. Simryn Gill will represent Australia at the 2013 Venice Biennale, curated by Belgian Catherine de Zegher (co-curator of BoS 18), also curator of the 5th Moscow Biennale in 2013, which is expected to include a number of Australian artists. BoS 18 established a new attendance record for an Australian contemporary art exhibition, although APT figures may exceed these by April next year.
Import/Export
Urban Australians have other opportunities to see international contemporary art. Alongside the major National and State institutions, funded entities like ACCA (Melbourne), PICA (Perth), CACSA and AEAF (Adelaide), IMA (Brisbane) and the 4A Centre (Sydney) consistently present interestimg new work. The University galleries augment this, aided by some of the more adventurous Regional galleries. On the export side, apart from biennials, Paris’s Musée du Quai Branly is currently showing Aux Sources de la Peinture Aborigène (Central Desert), curated by Judith Ryan (NGV) and Philipp Batty (Melbourne Museum) until 20 January 2013. BALGO showed in Havana, Cuba and Message Stick: Indigenous Identity in Urban Australia, toured the Pacific and Africa. Lie of the Land: New Australian Landscapes was at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC, and Healy and Cordeiro showed Are we there yet? at the city’s Corcoran Gallery. Two overseas institutions dedicated to Australian Indigenous art continue to present a varied program: The Kluge-Ruhe Collection in Charottesville, Virginia and the privately-benefacted Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art (AAMU) in Utrecht (Netherlands). There was increased participation by Australian commercial galleries at regional art fairs, with Art Hong Kong asserting itself as by far the most important fair in the Asia Pacific region. Michael Reid exhibited in Berlin and Janet Clayton in Beijing.
Private patronage
Along with MONA in Hobart, Sydney’s privately-funded White Rabbit and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) continued to present international contemporary art at the highest level. White Rabbit celebrated its third anniversary with Double Take, a ‘greatest hits’ show, and SCAF presented Janet Laurence After Eden; Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan In-Habit: Project Another Country; and Go Figure! Contemporary Chinese Portraiture (in conjunction with NPG Canberra). Australia’s longest-established independent art patron, Kaldor Public Art Projects, mounted Project 25: Thomas Demand (The Dailies, MLC Centre, Sydney); Project 26: Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla (Stop, Repair, Prepare, State Library of Victoria); and announced Project 27 (13 Rooms, Walsh Bay, Sydney) for early 2013. Melbourne has a new ‘private presenter’ in the form of Matthias Arndt, who will present ‘museum-quality artists in unconventional settings outside the traditional white cube space’. While he continues to run his eponymous Berlin gallery, he is now based in Melbourne and his first show of over 90 works, titled Migration Melbourne, runs at Ormond Hall until 15 December.
The market
The best that can be said about the art market in 2012 is that very few dealers actually went to the wall. Despite some new records, auction results overall were lacklustre, and smaller commercial galleries continue to do it tough. Many will tell you that ‘quality works’ have no problem finding buyers, particularly at the premium end. It is the emergent and early career market (works under $5k) that is having the worst time of it, and this of course impacts on secondary sales. For a decade until 2008/9, young professionals with rapidly appreciating real estate drove this sector, and they just aren’t spending like they used to. The pressure on gallery prices is noticeable – art by early-career Australian artists remains very competitively priced by world standards, and shrewd buyers should do well when the resale market recovers, but don’t hold your breath. Pessimists blame two local factors for the ‘otherwise inexplicable’ doldrums – the Federal Resale Royalty Scheme, and the tightening of rules for self-managed superannuation funds, but there is little evidence to suggest these are significant factors. No-one really knows why people are being so tight-fisted, but the same trend is visible in retail markets generally – a new Zeitgeist of caution and paying down debt. It is fortunate that Australia offers relatively good support to young artists through a combination of city, state and Federal funding mechanisms, because the commercial market doesn’t look like making a strong comeback in 2013.
Arts policy
2012 has been something of a waiting game for policy wonks, with the outcomes of multiple reports and policy reviews still in the pipeline. The most-awaited of many is undoubtedly the Federal Government’s National Cultural Policy, mooted for 2012 but looking increasingly unlikely as the year ticks away. Harold Mitchell delivered some sensible, if hardly revolutionary, recommendations in his Review of Private Sector Support for the Arts. Gabrielle Trainor and Angus James’ Review of the Australia Council for the Arts proposed among 18 key recommendations that Ozco focus on nurturing ‘excellence’, and that arts programs that exist primarily to provide access should be managed and funded by the Federal Arts Department, separating ‘access from excellence’. Unexpectedly, Minister Crean responded by allocating responsibility for all Federal touring programs (Playing Australia, Visions of Australia, Festivals Australia, the Contemporary Music Touring Program, Contemporary Touring Initiative and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy) to Ozco, which will no doubt mean major staffing-up at Ozco’s Sydney HQ. The Federal Government’s Asian Century White Paper has been broadly welcomed, but deemed short on specifics. According to Ozco the paper ‘lays out a series of pathways for Australian arts, artists and cultural institutions to play a pivotal role in building our relationships and networks across our region’, an admirable sentiment, and about as vague as you can get. ACARA has competed the consultation period for the Draft Australian Curriculum: The Arts, with revisions expected in February 2013.
