The campaign to persuade the O’Farrell government to change its mind about precipitately withdrawing funding from fine art education in NSW TAFE has met with stony silence (if you don’t count the occasional statements by the premier about how he values art). When I saw the fact sheets on the coming changes to the TAFE system, I couldn’t resist:
I’ve been helping the Art Student upload some video taken at ArtRage, a recent gathering of ‘prominent’ artists to express concern over the NSW government’s attack on art education in TAFE. Although some press representatives were there, and others had said they would be, the mainstream media ignored the event. So much for the media power of prominent visual artists in New South Wales.
All of that gives added poignancy to this YouTube clip showing an encounter between rapper Jay-Z and a ‘sweet little old lady’, via the Rachel Maddow blog (the shorter clip may have been removed from YouTube, so I’m linking to the whole short documentary, Where I’m From; the bit I mean starts at about the 16:50 mark and goes for just a minute or so):
The little old lady is artist Ellen Grossman, evidently well-known on the art scene. It wouldn’t be too hard to imagine a similar encounter between one of ArtRage’s participants, say Elisabeth Cummings, and, um, Guy Sebastian.
The New York encounter has a further resonance with current events in New South Wales. Ellen Grossman did her undergraduate studies at Cooper Union in New York City, where there is currently a fight going on over the imposition of student fees. The video at that last link is fun, if you’ve got a 4 minutes and 50 seconds to spare.
I didn’t expect to attend a NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Dinner this year. For a while back there it looked as if the awards might go the way of the Queensland equivalent, but the Liberal Party-approved panel’s unpublished report must have come down in favour of continuation, because here they were again last night, six months late, run by the State Library rather than the Arts NSW, charging $200 [but see Judith Ridge’s comment] for a book to be considered, and sharing the evening with the History Awards, but alive and kicking. And pretty special for me, because I got to go as my niece’s date, my niece being Edwina Shaw, whose novel Thrill Seekers was shortlisted for the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing.
The dinner was held in the magnificent reading room of the Mitchell Library. Not everyone approved of the venue – I was in the Research Library in the morning when a woman complained very loudly that she had driven the four hours from Ulladulla only to find the Mitchell’s doors were closed for the day so it could be converted into a banquet hall. She must have been placated somehow because she stopped yelling, but there were other problems. None of the shortlisted books were on sale – Gleebooks had a table at this event for years [but see Judith Ridge’s comment], as the Library has its own shop, which wasn’t about to stay open late just for us. And library acoustics aren’t designed for such carryings-on: the reverberation in the vast, high-ceilinged room made a lot of what was said at the mike unintelligible at the back of the room. But those are quibbles. It’s a great room with happy memories for a good proportion of the guests.
Aunty Norma Ingram welcomed us to country, inviting us all to become custodians of the land.
Peter Berner was the MC. He did OK, but organisers please note: the MC of an event like this needs to be literate enough to pronounce Christina Stead’s surname correctly.
The Premier didn’t show up. Perhaps he was put off by the chance of unpleasantness in response to his current attack on arts education. The awards were presented by a trio of Ministers, one of whom read out a message from the Premier saying, among other things, that art in all its forms is essential to our society’s wellbeing. But this was a night for celebrating the bits that aren’t under threat, not for rudely calling on people to put their money where their mouths are.
The Special Award, sometimes known as the kiss of death because of the fate met by many of its recipients soon after the award, went to Clive James – whose elegant acceptance speech read to us by Stephen Romei necessarily referred to his possibly imminent death. He spoke of his affection for New South Wales, of his young sense that Kogarah was the Paris of South Sydney, and his regret that he is very unlikely ever to visit here again. He also said some modest things about what he hoped he had contributed.
After a starter of oyster, scampi tail and ocean trout, the history awards:
NSW Community and Regional History Award: Deborah Beck, Set in Stone: A History of the Cellblock Theatre
The writer told us that the book started life as a Master’s thesis, and paid brief homage to the hundreds of women who were incarcerated in early colonial times in the Cellblock Theatre, now part of the National Art School.
Multimedia History Prize: Catherine Freyne and Phillip Ulman, Tit for Tat: The Story of Sandra Willson
This was an ABC Radio National Hindsight program about a woman who killed her abusive husband and received lot of media – and wall art – attention some decades back. Phillip Ulman stood silently beside Catherine Freyne, who urged those of us who enjoyed programs like Hindsight to write objecting to the recent cuts.
Young People’s History Prize: Stephanie Owen Reeder, Amazing Grace: An Adventure at Sea
This book won against much publicised Ahn Do on being a refugee (The Little Refugee) and much revered Nadia Wheatley on more than a hundred Indigenous childhoods (Playground). It not only tells the story of young Grace Bussell’s heroic rescue of shipwreck survivors but, according to the evening’s program, it introduces young readers to the ‘basic precepts of historical scholarship’. It also looks like fun.
General History Prize: Tim Bonyhady, Good Living Street: The Fortunes of My Viennese Family
A member my book group rhapsodised about this book recently, comparing it favourably to The Hare with Amber Eyes. It’s a family history, and in accepting the award Bonyhady told us it had been a big week for his family because the lives of his two young relatives with disabilities would be greatly improved by the National Disability Insurance Scheme introduced by the Gillard government.
Australian History Prize: Russell McGregor, Indifferent Inclusion: Aboriginal People and the Australian Nation
This looks like another one for the To Be Read pile. Russell McGregor acknowledged Henry Reynolds and Tim Rowse as mentors.
After a break for the entrée, a creation in watermelon, bocconcini and tapenade, it was on to the literary awards:
The Community Relations Commission Award: Tim Bonyhady was called to the podium again for Good Living Street, but he’d given his speech, and just thanked everyone, looking slightly stunned.
The newly named Nick Enright Prize for Drama was shared between Vanessa Bates for Porn.Cake. and Joanna Murray-Smith for The Gift. Perhaps this made up to some extent for the prize not having been given two years ago.
Joanna Murray-Smith said she learned her sense of structure from the Henry Lawson stories her father read to her at bedtime. As her father was Stephen Murray-Smith, founding editor of Overland, she thereby managed to accept the government’s money while politely distancing herself from its politics. She lamented that her play hadn’t been seen in Sydney and struck an odd note by suggesting that the Mitchell Library and a similarly impressive building in Melbourne may have been the beginning of the Sydney–Melbourne rivalry: I wonder if any Sydney writers accepting awards in Melbourne feel similarly compelled to compete. Vanessa Bates couldn’t be here, so her husband accepted her award, with his smart phone videoing everything, perhaps sending it all to her live.
The also newly named Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting (and I pause to applaud this conservative government for honouring an old Communist in this way): Peter Duncan, Rake (Episode 1): R v Murray
Peter Duncan gets my Speech of the Night Award. He began by telling the junior minister who gave him the award that he was disappointed not to be receiving it from Barry O’Farrell himself, because he had wanted to congratulate Barry on the way his haircut had improved since winning the election. At that point we all became aware that Peter Duncan’s haircut bears a strong resemblance to the Premier’s as it once was. He then moved on to congratulate the Premier for instituting a careful reassessment of the Literary Awards and deciding to persevere with them. He expressed his deep appreciation of this support for the arts. (No one shouted anything about TAFE art education from the floor. See note above about this being an evening to celebrate the bits that aren’t under threat.)
The Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature: Kate Constable, Crow Country (Allen & Unwin)
I hadn’t read anything on this shortlist, I’m embarrassed to confess. It looks like a good book, a time-slip exploration of Australian history.
The Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature: Penni Russon, Only Ever Always (Allen & Unwin)
Again, I hadn’t read any of the shortlist. But Bill Condon and Ursula Dubosarsky were on it, so this must be pretty good! Penni Russon’s brief speech referred to the famous esprit de corps of Young Adult writers: ‘You guys are my people.’
There was break for the main course to be served, and for about half the audience go wander and schmooze. I had the duck, the two vegetarians on our table were served a very fancy looking construction, only a little late. Then onward ever onward.
The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Gig Ryan, New and Selected Poems
Again, I hadn’t read any of the shortlisted books, but wasn’t surprised that Gig Ryan won, as this is something of a retrospective collection. She speaks rapidly and her speech was completely unintelligible from where I was sitting (like some of her poetry). However, someone tweeted a comment that got laughs from the front of the room:
The Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction: Mark McKenna, An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark
Another lefty takes the government’s money, and a good thing too.
The UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing: Rohan Wilson, The Roving Party (Allen & Unwin)
I know nothing about this book. Rohan Wilson is in Japan just now. His agent told us that when she asked him for an acceptance speech ‘just in case’, he emailed back, ‘No way I’ll win – look at the calibre of the others.’ The three writers on my table who were in competition with him seemed to think it was a fine that it had won:
Favel Parrett and Edwina Shaw respond to not winning the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing
The Christina Stead Prize for Fiction was almost an anti-climax. It went to Kim Scott for That Deadman Dance. We had a small bet going on my table, and I won hundred of cents. Kim Scott’s agent accepted on his behalf.
There was dessert, layered chocolate and coffee cake, then:
The People’s Choice Award, for which voting finished the night before, went to Gail Jones for Five Bells. She was astonished, genuinely I think, and touched that her book about Sydney as an outsider should be acknowledged like this. I haven’t read the book yet, but I’m also a bit astonished, because what I have read of her prose is not an easy read.
Book of the Year: Kim Scott, That Deadman Dance. No surprise there!
No surprise, either, that the award to Clive James overshadowed all the others in the newspaper reports.
I believe that the judging panel for next years literary awards has had its first meeting. The dinner will move back to the Monday of the week of the Writers’ Festival, where it belongs.
Added later: Edwina has blogged about the evening.
Tagged ABC, Ahn Do, Aunty Norma Ingram, Barry O'Farrell, Betty Roland, Catherine Freyne, Clive James, Deborah Beck, Edwina Shaw, Favel Parrett, Gail Jones, Gig Ryan, Hindsight, Ivor Indyk, Joanna Murray-Smith, John Tranter, Kim Scott, Nadia Wheatley, National Art School, NSW Premier's History Awards, NSWPLA, Penni Russon, Peter Berner, Peter Duncan, Philip Ulman, Russell McGregor, State Library of NSW, Stephanie Owen Reeder, Stephen Murray-Smith, Stephen Romei, TAFE, Tim Bonyhady, Vanesssa Bates
On the front page of today’s Sydney Morning Herald, there’s an article by Rachel Browne on a survey of 6200 children aged between 10 and 12 in 47 countries asking them what they want to do when they grow up. Cathy Wilcox’s cartoon gives the gist of the article – two white children are chatting: ‘Lots of kids in developing countries want to be doctors’ says one, and the other replies, ‘They don’t have the luxury of squandering their education on a sporting career!’
You have to read to the seventh paragraph to discover that, while ‘professional athlete is the highest ranked career choice for Australian children’, the second rank is ‘entertainer and professional artist or creative professional’. The latter is immediately dismissed by someone associated with the study as ‘probably influenced by popular TV shows’. Lisa Power’s article in the Telegraph, presumably based on the same press release, includes a table that seems to indicate that Rachel Browne got it wrong:
If you combine ‘Entertainer’ with ‘Artist/creative professional’ you get 26%. What’s that? More Australian children want a career in entertainment and the arts than in sport. But that doesn’t fit the media narrative, so let’s bury it.
Has it occurred to anyone else that our governments are willing to back young people’s sporting aspirations with millions of dollars, but leave their artistic aspirations unresourced so that for most of them it remains an unrealistic dream? It’s not just that winning gold at the Olympics is seen by the press and politicians as more important and newsworthy than making things ‘with which the soul of any witnessing human being can resonate and conceivably find comfort, catharsis, awakening, provocation, solidarity, beauty and, perhaps, enlightenment,’ as Clare Strahan put it recently on the Overland blog. Young people’s desires to do the latter must also be trivialised and marginalised. The current precipitate withdrawal of funding from fine arts education in TAFE is symptomatic. So is the Sydney Morning Herald‘s almost total silence about the cuts.
And now a quick sonnet:
Sonnet 8: To children who responded to a survey
We ask you what you want to do
and what you fear. It’s no surprise
if drought, rape, kidnap threaten you
you don’t desire a glittering prize
but want to build the general good,
to teach or heal. And in a land
where gold and silver most command
acclaim, of course it’s understood
your heart goes bling! Celebrity
can look like meaning when you’re ten.
The headlines mock you: Sport! again!
Oh child! child! We’ve corrupted thee!
They don’t hear that your brave young heart,
wants to make, give, create art.
On Friday evening the Francis Bacon exhibition officially opened at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Premier Barry O’Farrell was to preside, on whose watch a number of gallery staff have been summarily sacked and fine arts courses in the TAFE (Technical and Further Education) system almost as summarily deprived of government funding, with devastating effect on the equitable provision of studio-based arts education in the state. A demonstration was called for, and happened. Maybe two hundred of us gathered outside the gallery with banners and art works, chanting and singing and staging a mock funeral, and handing leaflets to the invited guests. One bejewelled matron, when approached by the Art Student with a leaflet, told her imperiously to get a job.
In what looked like a display of political pusillanimity, the Premier didn’t risk having to face some of the people whose lives he has disrupted. George Souris, Minister for Arts and, among other things, Horse-Racing, did the honours instead. Invited guests were asked to turn their backs during his speech in solidarity with the sacked staff and stranded students. Evidently some did, and there was little if any applause. Outside, as he spoke, we chanted, ‘Save TAFE art’. Guests continued to arrive and I noticed that the man on the door was very quick to open the door for them and slow to close it after them, thereby ensuring, perhaps deliberately, that the door was open for as much of the speech as possible, allowing our uncouth ruckus to be heard inside.
This probably deserves more than a sonnet, but a sonnet is all I’ve got:
Sonnet 7: Rally at the Gallery
Swallows, bats and other pests
perform outside the gallery.
Some fly, some squeak, some accost guests
to talk about O’Farrell. He
was due to launch the Francis Bacon.
‘Barry, Barry, we’re not fakin’…’
‘We want to keep art education
for the future generation.’
”Oh, get a job.’ ‘Art is work.’
Don’t celebrate dead money-spinners,
snatching all funds from beginners.
No art, no soul. We’d go berserk!
Inside, poor Francis’ heads explode.
Bats claim the night on Gallery Road.
Edgar Alvarez, student, holds up his homage to Francis Bacon cum reproach to the O’Farrell government. The other feet belong to his brother.
There are so many more important things to be thinking about, from Woolworths’ continuing to make money out of problem gamblers to an Onion article about Sandy that rings too true for comfort, with the NSW government’s plans to destroy the employment prospects of thousands of aspiring artists somewhere in between. But the muse has handed me half a dozen dogs tied to a fence:
Sonnet 2: The Dogs outside Orange Grove Markets
The dogs line up at Orange Grove.
A Whippet whimpers, Shih Tzus yip
and won’t take comfort, Collies move
their twitchy eyebrows, Labs – so hip –
refuse to look abandoned, while
undaunted Staffies wag and smile.
It’s farmers’ market day. They’re tied
here while their owners go inside
for reasons past dogs’ understanding.
There is affection between species.
We house them, feed them, bag their faeces.
But now, resigned, sad or demanding,
dogs wait until, they know not when,
the rapture when we come again.
It’s November! My self-imposed month of blogging in verse has arrived. To see previous years’ mixed bag of efforts, click here, or you can buy the vanity publication of all 28 sonnets, plus my versification of Alan Jones’s epic ‘apology’ press conference, ‘The Apology, or Manning Up’, here:
I may not stick to sonnets this year, but for tradition’s sake, I’m still calling it Local Sonnet Rhyming Month – LoSoRhyMo (as distinct from the much more demanding NaNoWriMo.)
Because it’s the start November, it’s also the last days of Sculpture by the Sea at Bondi. First some snaps:
Sonnet 1: Sculpture by the Sea again
We hear of artists living hand
to mouth, yet paying vast commissions
if they exhibit on the sand
or rocks near Bondi. Yet their visions –
moulded, cast, carved, planted, hung –
transcend commerce. They give tongue
to joys and sorrow, shape to fear
and hope and meaning year by year.
Cord and bamboo help us grieve.
Plastic cutlery cries, ‘Think!’
Glass, stone and steel forms bid us drink
their beauty, help us to perceive
what lies around us, and within.
To rip them off must be a sin.
The handful of sculptures specifically alluded to are:
One last note: my companion pointed out to me that where it was indicated in the catalogue that an artist was trained at TAFE, the skill level was manifestly superior. Despite whatever the government’s advisers have been saying, there is a need for the skills taught in fine arts at TAFE.
Here’s the Art Student speaking to a meeting at NSW Teachers Federation Conference Centre last week about the imminent cutting of all funding to fine art education in TAFE.
Ain’t she something?
In case you haven’t heard, the New South Wales government is in the process of a vigorous attack on education in this state. Judith Ridge has posted passionately and lucidly on the subject at Misrule (full disclosure: she says some nice things about me at the link, in the middle of much else). If you haven’t been noticing the headlines, you can catch up here.
Amid the carnage:
On September 11 the NSW government announced that it would stop funding art education in TAFE, leaving 4000 students without access to finishing their courses in 2013. TAFE Art courses are the main provider of art education in NSW, with many prominent artists getting their first ‘hands on’ training in TAFE. The withdrawal of funding will mean that only the wealthy will be able to afford private art education and NSW will suddenly find it no longer has emerging artists with skills coming through.
That’s right, art education in TAFE will no longer be funded as of 1 January next year. No transition – just a short sharp shock. It’s anyone’s guess what that will mean for people who started a year or two ago confident that the NSW government would honour its implied contract, let alone the hundreds of artists who survive thanks to part time or casual teaching. TAFE is of course the poor relation in art education: when the National Art School boasts of its many illustrious alumni, for example, it rarely mentions that most of them attended when the NAS was actually East Sydney Tech, part of the TAFE system. So art is vulnerable because of course the contribution that artists make to society is routinely rendered invisible, and art teaching at TAFE is double vulnerable because it doesn’t have prestige at the big end of town.
There’s an online petition at CommunityRun, which is the source of the quote above. Do have a look and, if you agree with its gist, sign it. Students at a number of TAFEs are organising, including St George, Nepean, Goulburn, Moss Vale, Meadowbank and Wollongong so far.
The Hungry for Art Festival has hardly finished attracting hundreds of people to The Gallery School at Meadowbank than the government announces it’s in effect closing the school down. (Because where will they find alternative funding in three months, and will the school still be public, affordable and accessible if they do?) The facebook page of FAIM (Fine Arts Inc Meadowbank) is humming.
As you might guess, the Art Student is in the thick of the campaign against the cuts. Among many other initiatives, it is the subject of the final printmaking project in her Advanced Diploma.
The project is inspired by the petition sent to the Pope by the House of Lords in 1530 pleading for the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. That petition was displayed in Lux in Arcana, the exhibition of material from the Vatican Archives that we were lucky enough to see in July. As well as signatures, the petition boasted the seals of about a hundred lords and bishops hanging on leather thongs. The effect is impressive, but also beautiful.
The Art Student hopes to attract a similar number of artists to sign a petition (wording similar to the one at CommunityRun) and carve a small soapstone block with a symbol representing themselves that can be printed in sealing wax and hung from the petition. The art student will supply the soapstone, and the artists are welcome to keep the carving once the imprint has been made..
If you know any artists who might be interested, send them this way. My email is jonathan at shawryan dot id dot au.
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