Why do students still describe Australia as a ‘young’ country lacking culture? Are our universities doing enough to to teach Australian films, artwork and books?
It is a strange reality but opera as an artform is always given special and arguably preferential treatment by governments and other influential forces in Western society. This happens, it seems, regardless…
New survey from the Australia Council shows pretty much all Australians engage with the arts, and 8-in-10 do so online. However more people are ambivalent about public arts funding, and more people think the arts are too expensive.
Ken Thaiday Snr, an internationally-acclaimed artist from Erub Island in the Torres Strait, has been awarded a 2017 Red Ochre Award. Thaiday’s work draws on dance, the people and land of the islands to produce elaborate masks and headdresses.
Many great artists died in 2016: Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Paul Cox, Shirley Hazzard. It was a year of creative foment and as always, intense debate about the importance of the arts to a thriving, democratic society.
There was once a sense of excitement about creating a genuinely Australian culture and making our own way in the world. What’s happened to that optimism?
A culture of ‘managerialism’ has bled the arts of originality and purpose. We need a changed mindset and an arts and culture think-tank that is separate from the Australia Council.
The organisation Senator George Brandis described as having an “iron wall” around it, is refreshing its sentinels. This week’s announcement of four new appointments to the Australia Council Board represents…
In one of those abyssal silences that punctuate official Thinkfests when artists have to come up with new policy ideas that don’t involve asking governments for more money, I once facetiously suggested…
In 1983, a groundbreaking inquiry into the economic circumstances of artists released a report containing a string of recommendations. Thirty three years on, the inquiry’s chair asks, what has changed?
Many Australian artists eke out a living, yet government funding is generally heading backwards. Can we learn from Mexico, where artists are allowed to pay tax in paintings or sculptures in lieu of cash?
In the words of Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, “the injustice of it is almost perfect”. Last week, Jason Potts argued here that the cuts made to around 60 cultural organisations under the Australia…
Last night’s budget failed to offer a compelling overall policy framework and vision for the arts in Australia. Like a Beckett play, narratively not much is going on.
Ien Ang, Western Sydney University and Phillip Mar, Western Sydney University
Diversity is a vital part of a thriving art sector, yet only 8% of professional Australian artists come from a non-English speaking background. How can we beat “diversity fatigue”?
With a change in prime minister and a new arts minister there has been an acknowledgement perhaps that the arts matter. But have the needs and concerns of the arts sector have been understood?
The Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam said changes to arts funding will mean arts minister George Brandis won’t need to publicly disclose who he’s funding. He said it’s unbelievable – but is it true?
Given the pressure being applied to the majority of people working in the arts sector, we would be foolish not to consider the roles and inherited rights of Australia’s major performing companies.
The draft guidelines for the new National Program for Excellence in the Arts have been released – now begins the work decoding of what’s written in the text and implied in the subtext.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne