Australian artnotes November/December 2012

David Corbet's Australian artnotes appear in edited form in Art Monthly Australia

Above: Tony Albert Pay Attention, 2012, exhibited at unDisclosed: 2^nd 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-20^th 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.

Australian Art Notes: June

 Pierre Huyghe at dOCUMENTA (13) - detail of installation in Karlsaue Park: "Live things and inanimate things, made and not made"

dOCUMENTA (13) update

Europe’s prestigious quinquennial contemporary art event is underway in Kassel, Germany (until 16 September). The final list of participants, kept under wraps until the press preview, includes a record 8 Australian artists: Gordon Bennett, Simryn Gill, Fiona Hall, Stuart Ringholt, the late Margaret Preston, the late Doreen Reid Nakamarra, Warwick Thornton, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri and Australia-based Hazara artist Khadim Ali. Indigenous curator Hetti Perkins worked closely with Artistic Director Christov-Bakargiev as part of a core group of international curators, and a several other Australian writers and thinkers are also featured (see Artnotes May). Australia is currently marking its 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations with Germany, however plans to create a significant celebratory event in Kassel seem to have fallen over for unexplained reasons. Instead, a pleasant, low-key gathering for participating artists and other luminaries was hosted by Sydney’s MCA Australia, and was attended by Australian Ambassador Peter Tesch and other diplomatic staff. The response from the many Australian collectors, curators, gallerists and non-participating artists gathered in Kassel, many residing and/or promoting Australian art in Europe, was a kind of resigned cynicism – the feeling was that Ozco/DFAT had squibbed a major networking and promotional opportunity. Perhaps the $143k that Ozco dispensed for the Australian participants was considered enough. Such gripes were soon forgotten however, with dOCUMENTA’s Australian-born Media Director, Terry Harding, welcoming one and all to a spectacular launch party held at Kassel’s railway station, into the small hours. The sprawling and atmospheric Hauptbanhof is also the site of some of dOCUMENTA’s most exciting installations (see full review in next issue).

Ozco review

Responses to the Australia Council Review Report have now closed, with final recommendations expected in coming months. Under the proposals, Ozco would have four redefined roles: to support work of excellence; to promote an arts sector that is distinctively Australian: to ensure that the work it supports has an audience or market, and to maximise the social and economic contribution made by the arts sector to Australia. The 18 key recommendations, by Gabrielle Trainor and Angus James, have a renewed focus on ‘excellence’, and significant implications for future allocation of Ozco funding. Major arts companies would also have to pass the excellence test, and community programs that exist primarily to provide access – i.e. many artist-in-residence, Indigenous and arts-health programs – would be managed and funded by the Federal Arts Department. Trainor told media “We have tried to provide a filter which separates access from excellence. The role of the Australia Council is to support work that is excellent, while other government departments support work that has primarily social outcomes”. The Review proposes an extra $21+ million annually for new models of funding, including $15 million of new funding for ‘unfunded excellence’, i.e. work the Council currently considers good enough to fund but does not have the money to support. This is really just another way of saying that Ozco is underfunded for the work is does.

www.culture.arts.gov.au/review-australia-council-2012

Indigenous Arts Fellowship

Congratulations to ‘digital native’ Jenny Fraser, who has been awarded a fellowship worth $90k over two years. Fraser will use the funds to develop her cross-media project, Midden, which will ‘celebrate unsung heroes and previously unspoken events, incorporating installation, screen-based and performance elements to enhance, reframe and remix stories, creating new ways of engaging audiences’. 

MCA Australia attendance record

When the new-look MCA’s inaugural exhibitions (Marking Time, Christian Marclay: The Clock and Local Positioning Systems) closed in early June, a record-smashing 264,625 visitors had visited. The busiest day had  an extraordinary 8,233 visitors. Equally busy days are expected to continue, with the gallery now hosting a major part of the 18^th Biennale of Sydney, running until 16 September.

NGA news

The National Gallery of Australia has announced its summer blockbuster: Toulouse-Lautrec: Paris & the Moulin Rouge (from 14 December), featuring over 120 paintings, posters and drawings. The NGA has secured loans from 35 international collections such as the Musée d’Orsay (Paris), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), the Courtauld and Tate (London) and El Museo de art Thyssen Bornemisza (Madrid). Works will also be drawn from the NGA’s own collection of Toulouse-Lautrec prints and posters, the most extensive in Australia, many of which will be shown for the first time. The exhibition, which will not travel elsewhere, is expected to boost NGA attendance figures for its crucial summer season, attracting significant interstate and international visitation. The Gallery will once again have timed ticketing, which proved very successful during the recent Renaissance exhibition. In other news Arts Minister Simon Crean announced the appointment of Catherine Harris to the NGA Council, and artist Callum Morton was reappointed for a second 3-year term.

Experimenta 2012

Experimenta has announced the participants for its 5th International Biennial of Media Art (14 September – 17 November, RMIT Gallery and other venues across Melbourne, then touring). Experimenta: Speak to Me will showcase emerging and experimental artworks by leading media artists from across the world. The line-up includes Ryoko Aoki & Zon Ito (Japan), Sylvie Blocher (France), Natalie Bookchin (USA), Johan Grimonprez (Belgium), Shih Chieh  Huang (Taiwan), Hiroshi  Ishiguro (Japan), Meiro  Koizumi (Japan),  Scenocosme (France), Nobuhiro Shimura (Japan), Kenji Suzuki (Japan), and Takayuki Yamamoto (Japan). Australian artists include Philip Brophy, Grant Stevens, Archie Moore, Kate Murphy, Charlie Sofo, Priscilla Bracks Tristan Jalleh, Dominic Redfern, Eugenia Lim, Soda_Jerk, Nina Ross and Gavin Sade. Experimenta will also present five newly commissioned artworks by Australian artists Christopher Fulham, Jess MacNeil, Wade Marynowsky, Katie Turnbull and Ian Burns. Also announced was a major commission in partnership with Federation Square, to present a large-scale work by renowned Seoul-based artists Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries

NBN and the arts

A comprehensive report outlining how the NBN will affect the way the arts in Australia will be practised, delivered and consumed is available on artsHub. The report contains examples of early initiatives like Trove, the composite archive of Australia’s heritage from the National Library of Australia and more than 1,000 libraries and institutions all across the country.

www.artshub.com.au/au/news-article/opinions/arts/the-nbn-and-the-arts-here-now-and-to-come-189645?sc=1

NAIDOC at NMA

The National Museum of Australia, Canberra, will host NAIDOC on the Peninsula (Sunday 1 July 2012, 10:30am – 3:30pm)  – an annual event presented as part of a week of celebrations across Australia. Join Museum curators and Indigenous hosts on highlight tours of the First Australians gallery. Enjoy music, dance, community stalls and food outside in the forecourt, as well as craft activities in the Hall.

Federal funds for Albury

The Federal Government has announced its will contribute $3.5 million towards the redevelopment of the Albury (NSW) Art Gallery. Mayor Alice Glachan sais the project involves a major refurbishment and expansion of the gallery ‘that will ensure it fulfils its role as the premier cultural centre for the region and a driver of economic growth’.

David Corbet's National Artnotes appear in edited form in Art Monthly Australia (www.artmonthly.org.au)

Letter from Hong Kong

Above: © Choi Jeong Hwa, site-specific installation, Art Hong Kong 2012, photo David Corbet

Next year The Hong Kong International Art Fair (ArtHK) will be re-branded Art Basel Hong Kong, and is widely judged to have hit the big time in 2012. With 266 exhibitors from 38 countries, this is now one of the world's largest fairs, and looks set to grow even larger. For major galleries worldwide it has already joined Art Basel (Basel and Miami), Frieze (London) and Armory week (NY) as an essential event. For the big players, not to exhibit at ArtHK will henceforth not be an option.

The prestige fairs are as much about networking as floor sales, and by any measure ArtHK12’s celebrity quotient was considerable. Coming between the inaugural Frieze NY (4-7 May) and the venerable Art Basel (14-17 June), some major gallerists evidently sent their B-teams to ArtHK, but increasingly celebrity artists are encouraged to attend these events. John Baldessari’s much-quoted comment that hanging around your gallerist’s booth is “like watching your parents having sex” may still hold true but, outside of the vernissage, the booths are not where the real action is. What matters are the numerous cocktail parties, lunches, dinners, after-after parties and harbour cruises laid on by galleries and wealthy individuals, and entrée to these is in high demand. At ArtHK12 the privileged could rub shoulders with Maurizio Cattelan, Anselm Kiefer, Joseph Kosuth, Mariko Mori, Takashi Murakami, Pipilotti Rist, Luc Tuymans and Jeff Wall, along with many lesser luminaries. The big fairs also attract influential museum directors and curators, and Australians Elizabeth Ann MacGregor (MCA Australia), Melissa Chiu (Asia Society NY) and Aaron Seeto (4A Centre Sydney) joined the likes of Hans Ulrich Obrist (Serpentine London), Klaus Biesenbach (MoMA PS1 New York), Philippe Vergne (Dia NY) and Sam Keller (Fondation Beyeler Switzerland). Added to these were a host of private museum owners, a fast-growing phenomenon worldwide, but especially in Asia. These included Judith and Paris Neilson (White Rabbit Sydney) Guy Ullens (Ullens Centre Beijing) and François Pinault (Paris).

In a recent New Yorker piece, Peter Schjeldahl characterised the phenomenal rise of art fairs as the commercial dealers’ counter-offensive against the growing market share of the auction houses which, at around $30 billion, now accounts for half of all fine art sales worldwide. Less noted are the ways in which the quality fairs also challenge the role of contemporary art museums and biennales, commissioning ambitious site-specific works from renowned artists, usually in conjunction with major commercial galleries. ArtHK12 presented 10 such ‘Projects’ curated by Yuko Hasegawa (MCA Tokyo). These included major installations by Yayoi Kusama, Ai Weiwei, Shen Shaomin, Yin Xiuzhen, Tatsuo Miyajama, Choi Jeong Hwa, Daniel Buren and José Patrício. These offerings were hugely popular with the throngs of fair-goers, and the dense crowds of ordinary HK families was a phenomenon in itself – testament to the growing ‘entertainment’ value of contemporary art. ArtHK12 drew an impressive 67,000 visitors over its four days, yielding a daily figure far exceeding the wildest dreams of the world’s most popular blockbusters. The large, mixed booths of the major galleries appeared less of a draw than the 49-strong Asia One section, where smaller and middleweight galleries each presented the work of a single artist. Australia had a strong presence here, including Damien Minton (showing Peter Gardiner), Nellie Castan (Bindi Cole), Ryan Renshaw (Martin Smith), Tolarno (Brendan Huntley), Tim Olsen (Sophie Cape), Sullivan & Strumpf (Alex Seton) and Tristan Koenig (Karen Black). The Futures section, featuring artists under the age of 35, was also very popular and included Anna Pappas Gallery (Sue Dodd and Michaela Gleave) and Neon Parc (Viv Miller and Katherine Huang). All reported brisk business.

From the exhibitors’ point of view the crowds, though gratifying, are more of an irritant than an advantage, requiring constant vigilance and distracting attention from potential buyers. The conventional wisdom with art fairs is that most business is done at the VIP/collector previews before the public opening, however ArtHK seems to be different, with many exhibitors reporting sustained buyer interest throughout the four days. All the booths featured a small storage room, which were firmly closed once the public surged in, but opened during VIP hours to reveal discreet arrays of massively valuable works – I saw many Picassos, numerous Warhols, a minor Léger and even a small Courbet landscape, some with asking prices in the high seven figures. The status of such historical works is unclear – whether owned by the exhibitors, or opportunistically shipped over on behalf of private sellers – it was certainly interesting to see so many significant Picassos still in private hands.

Many contemporary artists have multiple representation and some appeared ubiquitous. A good number of booths featured shiny Tony Cragg sculptures, and works by Zhang Xiaogang, Zhang Huan, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Louise Bourgeois and Damien Hirst were also a common sight. Many galleries simply ship over a selection from the stockroom, and in the main galleries section Roslyn Oxley9 and Barry Keldoulis showed a discerning pick from their stables. Anna Schwartz bucked this trend, presenting a technically demanding whole-booth neon installation by American Joseph Kosuth. The well-heeled Galerie Gmurzynska (Zurich) had a booth designed by Zaha Hadid, and a museum-quality survey of paintings by the late, great Cuban cubist/surrealist Wilfredo Lam. Michael Werner (NY/Cologne) presented a survey (curated by Dimitri Ozerkov, Hermitage St Petersburg) of 20^th century German modernism featuring key works from artists such as Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Markus Lupertz, and Georg Baselitz. Galleria d’Arte Maggiore (Bologna) showed a superb collection of Morandi still lives. The fair saw several million dollar plus sales, and scores in the six figure zone, including work by Chuh Teh-Chun ($3m), Alighero Boetti ($1m), the late Robert Motherwell ($1m), George Baselitz ($700k) and Paul McCarthy ($450k). Alex Seton’s life-sized marble hoody-figure (Soloist, 2012) sold promptly to an Australian collector for around $110k – a snip I’d suggest. Heedless of Baldessari’s adage, Seton and other Australian artists made themselves cheerfully available to talk about their works.

It seems undeniable that HK has successfully re-asserted itself as the international gateway to the exponentially expanding Chinese contemporary market - for both international and Chinese buyers and sellers of many persuasions – a big change from a decade ago, when the city was perceived as something of a contemporary backwater. Although there has always been plenty of money, collectors were seen as more interested in traditional Chinese art and antiquities, French impressionists and perhaps, at the adventurous end, the odd Picasso or Warhol. The contemporary action was to be found in the dynamic art districts of mainland cities like Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, where a new generation of artists was transforming the contemporary scene, often selling direct to local and international buyers, and giving rise to a new breed of dealer-gallerists.

HK now has its own emergent art districts, located in several grimy industrial locales on HK island and further afield. ARIs abound, and many new commercial operations have crowded in. Most telling of all is the recent and much-noted arrival of some of the world’s most prestigious commercial galleries. On a cramped street in the Central shopping and financial district lies the unremarkable entrance to the historic and famously expensive Pedder Building where, stacked floor-upon-floor, are the cool spaces of Gagosian, Simon Lee, Pearl Lam, Ben Brown and others. Even more impressive, indeed setting a new benchmark for the city, is the first White Cube gallery outside of the UK, not far away on Connaught Road. Having opened in April with Gilbert and George’s London Pictures, it was in May/June showing Anselm Kiefer’s Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom. Whether you love or loathe the work of the celebrated German, this exhibition of large paintings and sculptural installations was a statement of supreme confidence - mounted on two levels with production values befitting a major institution. A few blocks away, Sotheby’s in May launched their own dedicated gallery space, occupying a whole floor at 1 Pacific Place, Admiralty, with two large selling shows: Yayoi Kusama’s Hong Kong Blooms in My Mind and Modern Masters: Corot to Monet – French Landscape Paintings in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

It may take a while for the HK market to deliver a return on these outlays, but such multi-million dollar developments are not made lightly. One thing most people agree on is that ArtHK has been the significant, if not dominant, driving factor in all of this. While rival events such as Art Stage Singapore, the Korea International Art Fair and Australia’s Melbourne Art Fair all have good reputations, the rapid growth of ArtHK is nothing short of remarkable, the more so for having been achieved in just five years. Founder Tim Etchells is a savvy businessman whose global company Single Market Events (which owns Art Melbourne and the upcoming, in 2013, Sydney Contemporary Art Fair) has a successful track record with events from fashion to hospitality. However it is ArtHK Director Marcus Renfrew who is credited with steering the event to its current winning status, and he will stay on, at least for the time being, under Art Basel’s ownership.

Nothing succeeds like success, and the HK administration has clearly decided to build the city’s creative profile as rapidly as possible. Symptomatic of this was the opening, at the Heritage Museum and coincident with ArtHK, of the touring show Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, seen earlier this year at the AGNSW. And it likely that as an ‘art destination’ HK will only get better, for it is not just commercial operations investing in the city. New York’s Asia Society has just opened a spectacular new HK base, and across Victoria Harbour the $2.7 billion West Kowloon Cultural District will feature, along with theatres and concert venues, the new M+ museum. The future for contemporary art in HK looks dynamic indeed.

David Corbet's National Artnotes appear in edited form in Art Monthly Australia (www.artmonthly.org.au)

Australian Art Notes: April 2012

Above: DCM's winning proposal for the new Australian pavilion in Venice's Giardini

2011 attendance survey – a global view

The Art Newspaper’s international attendance survey is always eagerly awaited, and the 2011 figures confirmed the NGV Melbourne as the top Australian institution, attracting 1.55 million visitors across its two sites, against 1.42 million for QAG/GoMA. Both Brisbane venues were closed for a month by the January floods, and it was dramatically down on its chart-topping 1.8 million visitors in 2010. AGNSW achieved 1.27 million,  Melbourne’s ACMI 895,410 and the NGA Canberra 723,625. The most popular museum in the world was, as always, the Louvre with 8.8 million visitors, followed by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (6 million) and the British Museum in London (5.8 million). Only two institutions outside of the USA, France and Britain made the top ten: The National Palace Museum, Taipei (3.8 million), and the National Museum Of Korea, Seoul (3.2 million).

The most attended Australian exhibition was Melbourne Museum’s ticketed show Tutankhamun (796,000) followed by QAG/GoMA’s free show 21st Century: Art in the First Decade (451,000 – the fifth most attended contemporary art show worldwide) and AGNSW’s ticketed The First Emperor: China’s Entombed Warriors  (305,611). Internationally, total exhibition attendance was led by Abstract Expressionist New York (MOMA NY: 1.16 million); Claude Monet (Grand Palais, Paris: 913,064); Landscape Reunited (National Palace Museum, Taipei: 847,509); and Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (NY Met: 661,509). The Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, had the world’s highest number of daily visitors (9677) for The Magical World of Escher (total 573,691) and had two other exhibitions in the top 20: Mariko Mori: Oneness (538,328) and Laurie Anderson (535,929).

Venice Pavilion update

Melbourne architects Denton Corker Marshall have won the design competition for the new $6 million Venice Pavilion, with a restrained, black granite-clad building designed to accommodate art, architecture, film and photography exhibitions. The venerable firm, whose projects include the Melbourne Museum, Museum of Sydney, Australian Embassies in Tokyo and Beijing, and the Stonehenge Visitor Centre in the UK, was unanimously selected from a shortlist of 6 local firms. Their submission states their aim “to make a form of the utmost simplicity; a white box contained within a black box. The pavilion is envisaged as an object rather than a building; a presence that is simultaneously powerful and discreet within the heavily wooded gardens”.
 The Biennale attracts over 250,000 visitors during its 5 months, and last year 192,000 visited the Australian Pavilion, featuring Hany Armonious. Australia has occupied the site in the Giardini since 1988 – one of only 29 countries to have a permanent national presence, and Phillip Cox designed the existing pavilion as a temporary structure for the Arthur Boyd exhibition of that year. Simryn Gill will represent Australia in 2013, the final artist to show in the old Pavilion. The new building is due for completion for the 56th Biennale in 2015. The project, managed by the Australia Council, will be largely funded by private donations, and is being led by Australian Commissioner, MCA chair and fundraiser extraordinaire Simon Mordant.

Fair games

Art Melbourne (subhead: Melbourne’s Affordable Art Fair) takes place again from May 24-27, produced by global company Single Market Events (SME). The biennial Melbourne Art Fair (MAF) returns in August (1-5), the first under new co-directors Emilly-Rose Davis and Laetitia Prunetti. Gallerists Vasili Kaliman and Gerrod Rawlins will simultaneously launch The New Fair at KalimanRawlins in South Yarra, featuring 6 Aus/NZ galleries. Their announcement proposes a “more measured approach to Australian art fairs, tailored to a knowledgeable audience as opposed to the conventional bulk approach … keeping it modest and boutique is the best way to focus on presenting the highest quality contemporary art”. With 3 fairs in Melbourne across 4 months, Sydney has nothing scheduled for 2012. SME’s Art Sydney (aka The Affordable Art Fair) was canned this year, but there has been consistent talk of a return in 2013, with a late March date to coincide with Art Month Sydney, a new name, and the expectation that it will be more selective than its hapless predecessor. 

There has always been speculation about a Sydney edition of MAF in alternating years, always accompanied by doubts that the prestige market can sustain an annual event.  However it has now been confirmed that  SME will launch a new fair, titled Sydney Contemporary Art Fair, at the Hordern Pavillion from 12 - 14 April, to be run by SME's local subsidiary, Art Fairs Australia (AFA). In addition to the new Sydney event, SME will manage MAF from 2014. The 2010 MAF had 80 exhibitors, attracted 30,000 visitors and generated $11 million in sales, 60% ($6.6 million) of which was returned to artists through their galleries. MAF’s non-profit parent is the the Melbourne Art Fair Foundation, and it is unclear exactly who will be responsible for what in the new management structure.

SME have plenty of experience running high-quality art fairs, having built the annual Art Hong Kong (AHK12: 17-20 May) into a hugely successful event, last year selling a controlling interest to Art Basel for an undisclosed sum. 

China markets

In the meantime AHK, which last year attracted 63,000 visitors, will in May boast an impressive 264 exhibitors, including 12 Australian galleries: Barry Keldoulis, Roslyn Oxley9, Anna Schwartz, Tolarno, Nellie Castan, Tristian Koenig, Damien Minton, Tim Olsen, Sullivan+Strumpf, Ryan Renshaw, Neon Parc and Anna Pappas. Australian contemporary art also has a high profile at Australian expat Amanda D’Abo’s Cat Street Gallery, which represents many established and mid-career artists. According to the European Art Foundation, China is now the world’s largest art market. Sotheby’s has announced the May launch of a new Hong Kong operation, situated in the Admirality business district, with setup costs of $7.2 million. Chinese law currently prevents foreign auction houses from selling on China’s mainland, so the move will allow Sotheby’s to hold art more auctions in the country. There is plenty of competition, notably from arch-rival Christie’s International, which opened its own HK operation two years ago. With soft markets in the USA and Europe, both companies hope to sell more Western art to cashed-up Chinese collectors, and both have created Asian advisory boards. Last year, scroll painter Zhang Daqian was the world’s top auction earner with an astonishing $506.7 million, dwarfing the $325 million paid for works by the late Andy Warhol. China accounted for a fifth of Christie's 2011 global sales, and Sotheby's Asian sales jumped 47%.

Beltway contemporary

Washington DC and environs have been enjoying a good run of Australian contemporary art of late. The Corcoran Gallery of Art featured Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro’s Are We There Yet? (closed 11 March), the duo’s first solo museum exhibition in the USA, part of the gallery’s NOW series, showcasing the work of emerging and mid-career artists. Occupying two spaces at the Corcoran, Healy and Cordeiro’s project consisted of a site-specific installation and a number of wall works constructed from Lego that continue the series Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going, Why (2010–11). Lie of the Land: New Australian Landscapes, curated by Alex J. Taylor, was presented at the Australian Embassy, closing 13 April. It featured over 60 works by twelve Australian artists: Sam Leach, Michael Lindeman, Archie Moore, Megan Cope, Tom Alberts, Gary Carsley, Dale Cox, Juan Ford, David Keeling, Sherry Paddon, Rebecca Ross and Jake Walker.

Ah Kee in Virginia

Across the Potomac in Charlottesville, Virginia, Vernon Ah Kee had an April residency at the University of Virginia (UVa). Ill-like, an exhibition of his drawings and textual works, is on view at the University’s Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection through May 10. More of Ah Kee’s works were shown at other UVa campus locations, and his residency included talks, guest lectures and an in situ artwork on Charlottesville’s community chalkboard on the Downtown Mall. The Kluge-Ruhe is the only museum in the United States dedicated to the study and interpretation of Australian Aboriginal art, with a stated mission “to advance knowledge and understanding of Australia’s Indigenous people and their art and culture worldwide. Working with living artists, international scholars and arts professionals, it provides a wide range of learning experiences to the University community and the public through exhibition, research and educational programs”.

Google Art Project

6 Australian galleries are among the first in the southern hemisphere to join the Google Art Project (GAP): NGA Canberra, AGNSW, MCA Australia, NGV, the Melbourne Museum and Griffith University’s Rock Art Research Centre. GAP provides high resolution images of artworks from across the world, so detailed that brushwork not visible to the naked eye can be analysed. AGNSW launched 415 key works across its collections. The Tate Modern in London was the first gallery to digitise its collection for GAP, and there are now 151 participating cultural institutions, featuring more than 30,000 images. Users have the ability to consult additional reading material or videos, and take a virtual tour through 46 galleries using Google’s Street View technology.

David Corbet's National Artnotes appear in edited form in Art Monthly Australia (www.artmonthly.org.au)

Australian Art Notes: March

These artnotes appear in edited form In Art Monthly Australia 

Above: Tim Silver Untitled installation 2012, featured in the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Parallel Collisions, Art Gallery of South Australia. © Courtesy the artist. Photo courtesy © Jamie North.

Festival circuit

The Adelaide Festival visual arts program was well received, tribute to the prominence accorded the non-performing arts by outgoing artistic director Paul Grabowsky. With 3 major components, the Biennial of Australian Art, the Adelaide International (titled Restless), and Deadly at Tandanya, and three different curatorial teams, this is effectively a ‘whole-of-city’ affair across 6 venues. A substantial Artist’s Week program complemented the exhibitions – see the next issue of AMA for detailed reviews.

Grabowsky, a celebrated pianist and composer in his own right, surprised many by introducing the International to complement the long-running national Biennial, and his appointment of one curator (Victoria Lynn) to do two Internationals in a row was also a first – a scenario that curators dream of but seldom experience. This year marks the start of the Adelaide Festival as an annual event, however the Biennial is likely to remain so. Hopes are high that the incoming director, UK-born David Sefton, who also has strong music programming credentials, will continue to place significant emphasis on the visual arts program. If he does, Adelaide stands a fair chance of achieving parity with Australia’s two ‘international’ events – Brisbane’s APT and Sydney’s Biennale (see below). In Grabowsky’s words, to “get back to where it used to be, as the premier arts festival event in Australia”. Karen Bryant has been announced as the new Chief Executive of the Adelaide Festival, taking over from Kate Gould, who leaves the Festival after ten years.

As we go to press, Sydney’s answer to Adelaide’s March Madness is in full swing – i.e. Art Month Sydney (AMS), and again there is grumbling that as a city-wide ‘event’ it is underwhelming. Essentially AMS functions as an umbrella for the existing activities of commercial galleries, with a couple of institutional participants. Critics suggest that AMS’s current approach of ‘indiscriminately’ attracting large numbers of new visitors to galleries is not really what’s needed, inflates the wine bill for not much return, that more emphasis should be placed on cultivating potential ‘serious’ collectors. It is often said that a decent Sydney Art Fair would give the whole thing a proper focus. Given the sprawling and decentralised Sydney scene, and a duration of one month, AMS struggles to achieve critical mass in the public mind, despite an extensive program of talks and activities.

Museum of Contemporary Art… Australia!

Sydney’s MCA has long been a de facto national institution, punching well above its weight on far less money than the big institutions. With the addition of the word Australia to its title, that status is enhanced, and will also help distinguish it from the Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego et al MCAs around the world. The MCAA opens its new wing on 29 March, years in the planning and fundraising, with a major exhibitions program, resplendent in the new spaces. The big drawcard is Christian Marclay’s groundbreaking 24 hour video work, The Clock, which comprises several thousand short extracts from cinema history, each suggesting a particular time of day or referencing a specific moment, often through the appearance of a watch or clock-face. Marclay has stitched these extracts together to form a continuous visual sequence synchronised with the real time of your visit.

Collection Volume 1, selected by MCA Curator Glenn Barkley, presents a narrative of contemporary Australian art over two floors. This new exhibition will reflect the changes and currents of Australian contemporary art and cultural life over the past 20 years Marking Time – an international exhibition selected by MCA Senior Curator Rachel Kent will present major works by eleven artists from Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Japan, and the United States in the Museum’s spacious new top floor galleries.

Local Positioning Systems is a program of live art in many different guises and in several locations in this season of performance, participatory and site-specific art, curated by Performance Space and presented in partnership with the MCA.

www.mca.com.au

Biennial / Triennial-land

At the NGA Canberra, the second National Indigenous Art Triennial (NIAT), unDisclosed, runs from 11 May – 22 July. Curated by Carly Lane, the exhibition includes Tony Albert, Vernon Ah Kee, Bob Burruwal, Michael Cook, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Nici Cumpston, Fiona Foley, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, Gunybi Ganambarr, Julie Gough, Lindsay Harris, Jonathan Jones, Danie Mellor, Naata Nungurrayi, Maria Josette Orsto, Daniel Walbidi, Christian Bumbarra Thompson, Alick Tipoti, Lena Yarinkura and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. The second NIAT was postponed last year for budgetary reasons. More than 260,000 visitors saw the first NIAT (Culture Warriors, 2007) which toured widely, finally closing in Washington DC in early 2010.

Back in Sydney, the line-up for the 18^th Biennale has been announced, and co-directors Gerald MacMaster and Catherine de Zegher have assembled a 100-stong range of participants under the banner of All Our Relations. It’s good to see a large number of women artists, and diverse geographical representation, featuring many names that, whilst well-known in their own regions, are not household names or ‘art stars’. Once again Cockatoo Island, the MCA and AGNSW are the main venues.

In Brisbane, the 7^th Asia Pacific Triennial (APT7) will run from 8 December – 7 April 2013. Participants are being progressively announced, and will feature more than 140 artists from 25 countries across the region. A key element of APT7 will be The Premier of Queensland’s Sculpture Commission, The World Turns by Michael Parekowhai, marking the fifth anniversary of the opening of GOMA in December 2011 and twenty years of APT. Late last year the commission was the subject of controversy when Aboriginal artist Fiona Foley criticised GOMA for “spending $1 million… commissioning Maori artist Michael Parekowhai to reference Aboriginal culture". GOMA responded that the intention for the sculpture commission was always to secure an international artist, and Arts Minister Rachel Nolan said the commission was unanimously chosen by a committee of experts, which included representatives from the Indigenous community.

qag.qld.gov.au/collection/sculpture_commission

Salary caps (headhunting redux)

Well, it’s official - Tony Ellwood will be the next director of the NGV, starting in August, after the July launch of his QAG swansong Portrait of Spain: Masterpieces from the Prado. There also seems to be a new national benchmark for major gallery directors – $445k to be precise – established during the recent bidding war to secure Michael Brand for AGNSW (see National Artnotes March). The NGV's current director Gerard Vaughan is on about $320k. The next question is: who will get the vacated position in Brisbane? Ellwood had only recently renewed his contract, and is considered a hard act to follow. AGSA director Nick Mitzevich is being tipped as a hot contender, however (outgoing) Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said that an international search would begin. No doubt they’ll have to offer more than Ellwood’s current $385k, more like… do I hear $450k?

Support Report

The much-anticipated report of the Review of Private Sector Support for the Arts, chaired by Harold Mitchell AC, has been released. The report's key recommendations include transferring the Cultural Gift Program and Register of Cultural Organisation programs to the Australian Taxation Office;

amalgamating the Australian Business Arts Foundation (AbaF) and Artsupport into a new organisation; introducing a matched (by government) funding program; introducing a taxation incentive for testamentary gifts to arts organisations; and a program of recognition for significant donors through letters from the Prime Minister and the Minister. Initial response to the report across arts industries has been positive, with some worries expressed that small and medium-sized arts organisations may not reap the benefits.

www.arts.gov.au


Russel Drysdale Centenary

In addition to the AWM’s Russell Drysdale at war exhibition (until early 2013), The National Trust’s S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney has assembled an impressive touring show, Russell Drysdale: The Drawings, curated by Lou Klepac, with over 60 drawings from across the artist’s life, which will travel to Carrick Hill, Adelaide and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery during 2012. Albury Art Gallery (NSW) also features Drawing on Drysdale (until 13 May). Although Drysdale was born in England (7 February 1912), he had strong links with the Albury region, famously expressed in his paintings of soldiers at the Albury Train Station during World War II. A move is now afoot to create ‘Drysdale Plaza’ in front of the station, and NSW Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian says she is happy to hear from supporters.

Australian Art Notes: February 2012

These artnotes appear in edited form In Art Monthly Australia 

Elisabeth Cummings, 'Pilbara Landscape' (detail) 2005, etching ed. 25, 23x29cm. Image courtesy of King Street Gallery on William & the artist.

Droit de suite, a global perspective

Popular with artists but disliked by dealers, Australia’s Resale Royalty Scheme (RRS) has attracted both favourable and adverse comparisons with Europe, where Droit de suite (literally ‘Right to follow’) has been in operation for several years. Increased harmonisation is the goal, and Australian artists will soon be able to claim royalties on eligible resales in EU countries. In the USA only California has RR legislation, currently more often honoured in the breach than in the observance, but this may be about to change. In October a group of prominent artists, including Chuck Close, filed a class action against Christie's and Sotheby's for violating the California Resale Royalty Act. The auction houses have responded with a joint resolution to dismiss the California statute as "unconstitutional". The case continues. Late last year new national legislation (the Equity for Visual Artists Act) was introduced into Congress, and has attracted high profile support from artists.

In the UK, new regulations came into force in January, extending rights to the estates of artists deceased 70 years or less, consistent with Australia and the rest of Europe, and is expected to quadruple payments in coming years. A 2010 report (by the European Art Market Coalition) found that in continental Europe, 74% of all royalties went to artists’ heirs, 20% to collecting agencies and only 6% to living artists, leading to claims the 70-year rule largely benefits the heirs of hugely valuable artists like Picasso, Braque and Matisse. UK royalties range from 4% to 0.25%, depending on the ‘profit’ figure, with a maximum royalty of €12k (payable by the buyer). Damien Hirst has come out in favour, with David Hockney and Anthony Caro signing an opposing petition. Dealers worry that extended rights will further depress a flat UK art market, driving customers offshore to a resurgent Hong Kong, which has no intention of introducing resale royalties.

Back home, the Federal Arts Ministry has removed the irksome requirement for dealers to report non-eligible resales under $1k. Since June 2010 the scheme has paid out more than $500k on over 3000 transactions, with two thirds of royalties going to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. This represents total eligible sales exceeding $10 million, a median sale price around $3k, and an average royalty around $150, with the highest royalty to date being $44k on a sale price of $880k. The 5% royalty (payable by the seller) applies to the second resale (after June 2010) of works by Australian artists, for a period of 70 years after death, and includes ceramics, digital artworks, fine art jewellery, installations, paintings, photographs, prints and tapestries.

www.resaleroyalty.org.au

Headhunters and collectors

With two of Australia’s longest-tenured gallery directors stepping down – Gerard Vaughan (13 years at the NGV) will leave mid-year, and Edmund Capon (33 years at AGNSW) left in December – succession plans have been on everyone’s lips for months. As of mid February, the AGNSW has announced Australian-born Dr Michael Brand as its new director – starting mid year – a surprise to those who had predicted him for the NGV job. Brand was Director of LA's Getty Centre from 205-2010, leaving before his contract ended because of differences with then board president James Woods (who died 6 months later). The Getty has been without a director since then. In another surprising development, the Getty has finally announced its new Director - another Australian, Dr Timothy Potts, current director of Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum, one-time director of the NGV  and, bizarrely, a candidate who had been heavily tipped for Capon's job.

So who will get the NGV position? There was apparently a last-minute bidding war for the 54-year old Michael Brand, who will receive $445k a year, almost double Mr Capon’s $240k, and considerably more than QAG/GoMA director Tony Ellwood’s $385k. Bendigo-born Ellwood, a former NGV deputy director, has all along been persistently mooted as a contender for both positions, despite his having just renewed a 5-year contract, and his winning streak in Brisbane – last year QAG/GoMA led the field with 1.8m visitors, trailed by the NGV with 1.5m and AGNSW with 1.3m. 

At the NGV, Allan Myers will step down as  trustee president in April, to be replaced by Naomi Milgrom. Mr Myers is considered a ‘traditionalist’, whereas Ms Milgrom is a noted ‘contemporary’, who steps down as chair of Melbourne’s ACCA to take up the NGV role.

Back in Sydney, Kevin Sumption has replaced Mary-Louise Williams as the new director of the Australian National Maritime Museum, leading the institution into its 20th anniversary year. Mr Sumption was one of the founding curators of the ANMM when it opened in 1991, and for the past three years has been the Director of Exhibitions & Programmes at the National Maritime Museum & Royal Observatory (UK). Before that he was Associate Director at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, from 2001-2008. Finally, in Adelaide, Christine Morrow has been announced as the incoming director of the Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF).

Art of War

The Australian War Memorial’s latest official war artist, Ben Quilty, has returned from a tour of Afghanistan – the fourth artist so far deployed to that zone of conflict, following Lyndell Brown and Charles Green (2007) and Shaun Gladwell (2009). Quilty was attached to the ADF’s Operation Slipper in Kabul, Kandahar and Tarin Kowt during October last year. He described the trip as “life changing”. “Afghanistan is hauntingly beautiful. The people who took care of me there are an inspiration,” he said on his return. The NSW-based painter will now produce a number of works for the Memorial’s permanent collection. In other news, the AWM’s travelling show Perspectives, featuring John Cattapan (Timor L’este, 2008) and eX de Medici (Solomon Islands, 2009) will tour to Artspace Mackay (until 25 March), QUTAM (21 April – 24 June) and Townsville’s Perc Tucker Museum (6 July – 2 September). At the AWM is Russell Drysdale at war – a small exhibition coinciding with the centenary of the artist’s birth, featuring seldom-seen work, on show until early 2013.

OzCo review

Yet another review was announced in late December – this time of the Australia Council for the Arts, part of the development of a new National Cultural Policy to be finalised this year. Angus James and Gabrielle Trainor will conduct the review, the first since the 1980s, to include OzCo’s links with other arts support agencies.

Touring money

$1.17 million has been allocated to 11 arts organisations under round 37 of the Visions of Australia touring program, and $540k to another 7 organisations under round 9 of the Contemporary Touring Initiative. Big winners include KickArts ($78k) for The Outsider Exhibition; the NGA for Fred Williams ($97k), Stars of the Tokyo Stage ($142k) and Roy Lichtenstein ($176k); the AWM for Perspectives ($129k) and IASKA for spaced: art out of place ($129k). Kultour gets $52k to tour Survivor (Dadang Christanto); Experimenta Media Arts gets $42k for Experimenta Connections, and Artisan – idea: skill: product gets $51k for The Antipodean Steampunk Show.

www.arts.gov.au/regional/visions-of-australia.

Festival fun

The summer/autumn festival season nationwide features some excellent offerings for visual arts fans. MonaFoma (Hobart) included three new commissions – by Australians Daniel Mudie Cunningham and Nell, and Brit Susan Philipsz. Sydney Festival included a major new commission, Travelling Colony by Brook Andrew (Carriageworks) and the third instalment of Edge of Elsewhere (Campbelltown and 4A). Perth Festival features spaced: art out of place (Fremantle Arts Centre until 11 March) and Hijacked (PICA until 8 April). Adelaide Festival (2-18 March) presents its 2012 Biennial of Australian Art: Parallel Collisions (AGSA), the Adelaide International: Restless (Samstag, AEAF, CACSA, FUCAG), and Deadly (Tandanya). Back in WA, FotoFreo (7 March-15 April) presents a wide range of photomedia, including No Worries: Martin Parr, Raghu Rai: My India and FutureGen 2012.

Australian Museum

The National Museum of Australia’s exhibition Yiwarra Kuju: The Canning Stock Route, a quiet but steady crowd-puller in Canberra last year, has transferred to the AM, Sydney, until 29 April. The exhibition tells the story of the route's impact on Aboriginal people, and the importance of the Country that surrounds it, through the works of senior and emerging artists and the stories of traditional custodians, interpreted through their voices, art and new media. The exhibition is helping the Museum to shake off an (undeserved) image of being mainly focussed on natural history, and is part of a push to attract new and diverse audiences. Tuesday evenings in summer feature the popular Jurassic Lounge (5.30 – 8.30pm, until 3 April) – with themed events, bands, DJs cocktails, and more. www.jurassiclounge.com

Australian Art Notes: December 2011

Left: in our opinion, the the standout Australian show in 2011:
Dinh Q. Lê Erasure (installation view), 2011, single channel video, boat, found photographs, rocks, online archive, dimensions variable
Photo: Aaron de Souza. Courtesy the artist and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation
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David Corbet's National artnotes appear in edited form in Art Monthly Australia (www.artmonthly.org.au)
_________

Are we there yet? (the year in review)

Well, there goes another one – and has it been a good year for the visual arts, nationally speaking? The answer, as always, is mixed. National Artnotes aims to cover issues of national arts policy and funding, the art market, national institutions and significant regional developments. We also try to view Australian art with an international perspective. We get to see some great art, but in general it is left to others to review and evaluate individual artists and exhibitions.

Export

One of our themes has been presentation of Australian art in an international context, whether at home or abroad, and how our governments, funding bodies and institutions perform. With a small population, we need to grow our markets for art and culture beyond our borders. The primary vehicles for offshore promotion are Ozco and DFAT, which support Australian art through institutional touring shows, along with key events like the Venice Biennale. Apart from Hany Armonious in Venice and Papunya Painting: Out of the Australian Desert (National Museum of China, from the NMA collection) it hasn’t been a big year for touring exhibitions. Australian Cultural Attachés in the world’s capitals continue to lament a diminution of resources for presentation. Ozco supports participation (by artists) in overseas biennales, and attendance (by commercial galleries) at art fairs, while many other quasi-government and University-based grant programs support overseas residencies. The commercial galleries play a major self-funded role, and 2011 has been a growth year for commercial art fairs in our region. We saw a significant Australian presence at Art Stage Singapore, India Art Summit (New Delhi, renamed India Art Fair for 2012), Art Hong Kong (recently acquired by Art Basel), the Auckland Art Fair, and the Korea International Art Fair. Further afield Anna Schwartz showed at the invitation-only Armory Show in New York, and Breenspace at VOLTA.

Import

On the import side there was a steady stream of international semi-blockbusters flowing into national and state institutions, including Vienna: Art & Design (NGV); Peggy Guggenheim (AGWA); Saatchi in Adelaide (AGSA); Surrealism (GoMA); The First Emperor, The Mad Square and Picasso (AGNSW); Annie Liebovitz and (from 16 Dec) Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (MCA) and Renaissance (NGA from 9 Dec). Apart from these (often pre-existing) shows, more international art has been seen in institutions, for example the NGA’s excellent Life Death & Magic (Indonesian traditional arts) and AGNSW’s specialist Asian galleries exhibitions. It has been a big year all round for the AGNSW, with the superb Kaldor Collection of late 20^th century art now housed alongside the rest of the contemporary collection in spacious new galleries, a spectacular swan song for outgoing director Edmund Capon. But for contemp-o-holics keen to see current and edgy overseas work, the above are slim pickings, with only the MCA consistently programming ambitious stand-alone shows of current international art. In Hobart and Sydney, three privately funded institutions help fill the gap, with MONA, the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) and White Rabbit Gallery consistently presenting new work. Commercial gallerists Anna Schwartz and Roslyn Oxley operate in the remaining gap, with significant private wealth and some major international artists, alongside a handful of well-heeled dealerships. The prestigious Melbourne Art Fair attracted a smattering of overseas galleries, including a modest Canadian participation.

Biennale-land

It is to Australia’s three major curated international bi/triennials that one must look for currency. The Biennale of Sydney (BoS) and Brisbane’s Asia Pacific Triennial (APT), both with 2012 editions in planning, are regarded internationally as ones to watch, and their attendance figures compare with major events worldwide, in part because of a policy of appointing curators of international renown. The Adelaide International, a de-facto biennial staged alongside the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art (ABAA), is also well-regarded, with Victoria Lynn’s Restless (from 2 March, various venues) eagerly anticipated. It is expected that the 2^nd edition of the NGA’s National Indigenous Art Triennial (NIAT 2012: unDisclosed, re-scheduled for May) will live up the promise of Brenda Croft’s first (2008) instalment, which toured nationally and to Washington DC to some acclaim.

Federal, State and City

Federal Arts Minister Simon Crean has maintained a steady-as-she-goes approach, with predecessor Garrett’s policy initiatives (notably the Resale Royalty Scheme and Indigenous Art Code) proving uncontentious, and a steady stream of reviews and reports under consideration. The arts are not seen as an election-winner by Labour or the Coalition, and hopes that a change of government signifies funding increases, or even enthusiasm, long ago gave way to acceptance that continuation, indexed for inflation, is the best one can hope for. Queensland bucked the national trend, with a 5% real increase in arts funding for 2011/12.

Ozco and the other nationally funded institutions, the NGA, NPG, NMA, NLA, NMM, Artbank, ABAF, Screen Australia and Bundanon Trust, all continue to do good work on limited resources, and we should certainly never take their existence for granted. The University galleries nationwide are an often underrated asset, supplementing a well-developed network of state regional galleries and some arts-aware city and local governments across the country. The major capitals in particular are attempting to nourish an inner city creative revival, with a noticeable increase in small-scale support for beach art, laneway art, urban art projects, ARIs and creative networks of many kinds. It’s not such a bad picture, and art may even be said to be gaining space in the imaginative life of nation.

Markets

Fact: people do buy art. All sorts of people buy it, and they buy it at all levels, from village fêtes to prestige auctions. It’s certainly true that many smaller galleries have been doing it tough for several years, struggling to keep afloat, much less returning to pre GFC (2007) levels. It appears that at the more accessible end of the market ($1-5K), people are keeping their credit cards in their pockets. Above that, it’s all about who’s ‘collectable’, and if you are, the $10-30K range appears surprisingly robust. Above these levels it’s likely there’s already a waiting list for your work, and you’re being re-sold at auction or dealerships. After a bit of re-shuffling, the auction scene has settled down again, with most major players still in the game, and an ambitious, new-ish kid on the block (Deutscher and Hackett) stalking the established houses. It’s widely believed that the heady sales of the noughties, especially for Indigenous art, are over – it was a bubble that was never going to be sustainable. But despite worldwide economic jitters, 2011 has been an encouraging year at re-sale, with clearance rates and revenues holding up in most cases, and a number of million dollar plus individual sales. Verdict: cautious optimism.

The zeitgeist

Across the year and across the nation we’ve seen ample evidence of a diverse art scene that sustains many thousands of artists, many galleries large and small, and a significant curatorial and academic infrastructure, extending beyond capital cities via regional institutions, supported by a broad political consensus that this is a worthwhile use of taxpayer money. Surveys regularly show that more Australians follow artistic pursuits than sporting ones. The audience for contemporary art, including Indigenous artists, is growing modestly, but imported ‘old master’ shows and well-worn favourites like the Archibald remain the most popular offerings. Our educational institutions are adequately resourced. There are reasonable opportunities for young artists with talent and industry to get ahead, get noticed, get a grant, even make a living if they are lucky.

GenY artists in Australia seem a remarkably cheerful bunch, and a self-protective carapace of techno-savvy irony seems to be de rigeur. Self-destructive, garret-like attitudes are out, and passions are not worn on sleeves, or even on lapel buttons. Understatement is what it’s all about, either that or full-on overstatement. GenX artists are establishing themselves in institutional positions to augment modest returns on art practice, and increasingly run University art departments, as the Boomers approach retirement. Across the generations, only a handful of Australian artists have achieved significant international recognition. That most of those are Indigenous artists may tell us something about how we are perceived globally.

We’ve heard it said that it’s all too easy. That a complacent and risk-averse curatariat presides over a parochial system of patronage, meekly followed by a compliant constituency of artists. That without social challenge, political upheaval, blood and guts, great art will not emerge. That most Australian visual art is a half-hearted, cynical business, a watered-down version of what is going on ‘overseas’. That most video art is banal and easy to do. That there is too much unexceptional photomedia, too much dot painting, too much portraiture, too much… well, you know how it goes. We don’t have the answers, but the questions are always interesting. Can you think of any art experience this year past which changed your worldview, made you see with new eyes, provided an epiphany? We can, but if you can’t, get into that studio and start making it!

All best wishes for 2012 – keep the comments and emails coming.