Comments on: Can i have $30m too please?

By: John Walker

John Walker — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 02:25:02 +0000

The australia Council was formed by the forced amalgamation of a wide range of very disparate bodies.
Right from The Councils beginning it was pretty obvious that forcing large organisations like for example, the Elizabethan Theater Trust , operas, orchestras… into a collective management system, that would also be shared by the many artforms that mostly consist of numerous small independent organisations and sole traders was…. less than optimal in its outcomes.

Organisations and a marked preference for dealing with organisations, quickly came to dominate the thinking of the council.

In the mid 90s the council set out to impose peak industry ‘representative’ bodies on areas like the visual arts .
This concept of a peak industry, ‘representative body’, could only be achieved by the exclusion of the real independent , “herding artists is like trying to herd cats”, art industry.

Thus the polices/programs that were advocated by these ‘peak industry bodies” to inquiries like Rupert Myers were mostly advocacy for increased funds for ‘peak industry bodies’ to “represent their artists”, Or were based in ignorance =nonsense. Or sometimes they were grounded in real malice towards the real industry that blankly refused to recognize the authority of these ‘peak industry representative bodies” to speak for anybody much at all.

By: John Walker

John Walker — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 01:19:37 +0000

Whatever the intentions of the individual reports over the decades , the trend for decades been the path of more and more payments to people to administrate the system (of making payments), and less and less payments to the making of any kind of art at all. The venice biannual where the OZOC paid for the OZCO to go and Private philanthropy paid for the artists to go, was I hope the nadir of this trend. The problem of the ‘many competing art forms’ is a ironic, recurvsive sort of problem ; because nobody can agree on what art is…. not .. ,we cannot agree on what should definitely not get funding -And so most of the money is used up trying to ‘decide’, ‘facilitate’ and administer ‘who’ gets whats left of the money after administration costs.

By: Paul Squires

Paul Squires — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 22:34:09 +0000

Really enjoying your articles on Arts Funding, Marcus. It’s a topic that doesn’t get enough coverage or reasonable, disinterested coverage in the mainstream media. Keep up the great work.

By: Richard De Martin

Richard De Martin — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 02:05:17 +0000

Here Here!

By: glengyron

glengyron — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 01:15:28 +0000

I’m surprised you found anything to say from the “Miss Teen South Carolina” mess of Blanchett’s speech.

Her statements and arbitrary number make no sense, I think your philosophy of seeking tangible support for artists, such as space in which to work is far more practical.

It also keeps the bureaucrats out of making value judgements about art which is a current trend which needs to die.

Let me just finish with a little more from Blanchett’s speech. Holy shit it’s bad. Gravity? WTF?

We process experience and make experience available and understandable. We change people’s lives, at the risk of our own. We change countries, governments, history, gravity. After gravity, culture is the thing that holds humanity in place, in an otherwise constantly shifting and, let’s face it, tiny outcrop in the middle of an infinity of nowhere.