marcus westbury

WHAT’S the difference between good art and bad art? Should we judge art and artists by form or intent or technical proficiency? How should we measure whether or not art is a success when taste will always be a subjective thing? After many passionate arguments over a wide variety of beverages over many years, the [...]

Musings about the relationship between art and creative industries that originally appeared in The Age. There is probably much more to say on this topic but probably not witout the sweeping generalisations inherent in 700 words. SHOULD governments fund the arts “for art’s sake”, or should they be developing “creative industries”? It may seem like [...]

I am writing this on the train from Sydney to Newcastle on my phone as my laptop is dead and in need of charging… Returning from Newcastle after a very successful launch weekend for the renew Newcastle project, I’ve started to reflect on some of the larger policy questions. In part this is inspired by [...]

From the Not Quite Book notes. Click here for an explanation… Traditionalists will hate me but I am less and less convinced that artforms are a particularly useful way to slice up the way that cultures are talked about or resourced in the world. The qualities that interest me are far more about the resonance [...]

I am stuck in a hotel in Singapore for three days. If you aren’t into shopping for high end luxury brands and you’ve discovered that the cheap electronics that this place was once awash with are nowadays not-as-cheap-as-they-used-to-be electronics spending time here can be something of an ordeal. In a world of low tariffs, where [...]