state of the arts : AZ IMC

"the state of the arts" by greg hoey.

The visual arts fraternity that do most of the arts critiqueing at 'the western australian' specifically on the saturday morning pages of this newspaper have as retarded an idea of current visual arts as the limitations they have on the type of artists and exhibitions they would choose to confer upon with their high and mighty arts sensibilities and standards.
Everso confined by the parameters and dictates governed by the fashion of the time as well the economic soothsayers they hold court to, it is demoralising to any visual artist not especially interested in the dictates of fashion ,or whatever laws of aesthetics that might be d'riguer at that particular point in time and right now within this country the visual arts coda seems to be that feminism is 'the light, the way and the great god almighty herself'

And any so-called artist that chooses to not get caught up in all the moral politics is to be accorded pariah by these intellectual determinators for the good of the human eye, thereby forever suffering the indignity of being disqualified from the scope of such narrow yet high purveyers of art taste, a dismissal of work deemed unworthy, and damned through faint praise, or the complete by-passing of it altogether.

I do feel that it is all well and good to incorporate politicised issues into art but only at the risk of turning ones work into propaganda, and reducing its visual component and availability to a wider audience. Hard as it is not to feel that in recent decades art in australia has become relegated to a minority elite at the expense of a serious dialogue and relevance for australian cultural values, especially when considered up against sport.
For when the snob factor is done away with from the visual arts in this country ,so to will the fixation on 'sport at all costs' be made less omni-present and all consuming, whereby art may become valued not just as to cover over bare walls or as hit for charisma junkies , but it might finally be taken seriously, and in the doing a serious more intelligent culture well may emerge into being.
Not a culture I should stress that is to be over socialised, nor driven by paranoid excessives of appearance and thought policing. But a culture with an appearance to it possibly of symbiosis to classical ancient greece.

So it seems that in Perth, western australia an artist is caught up between the trendy philistines whom only value art as decoration , or the self-styled evangelists like those writing in the arts pages of 'the west australian', that see art purely in terms of an espousal of left-wing bleeding heart logic/sentiment or superior moral views.

A rock and a hard place.

Bad. Bad for the practitioners of the arts whom have little real alternatives - [unless they are the already ensconsed, ie politically very pliant usually marked by adopting typically the stance of the whatever sphere of politics is conducive to their success at the time, playing the irreverent easygoing laconical aussie with the demeanor of cultural ingenue' sub-versive one minute to maybe the multi-cultural loving redneck the next, but generally marked with having well established familial connections preferably with non-working class decidedly bougousie antcedents],- except for the likes of those intellectual connoiseurs in the high income bracket range that dominate court in places like the W.A. ART Gallery, P.I.C.A. and other publicly run institutions, and yes as well Perths only major daily.
The full gamut of sensibilities whom want to claim art culture for their own moralistic ends all the while scraping a nice and pretty penny for themselves as our art guides or guardians.

As a local and productive western australian arts practitioner if one was to go to the director of the our most funded and hallowed public arts institution[the W.A. art gallery] and ask nicely if one could per chance put on an exhibition there-in? You won't get told to fuck-off directly, they'll do it via a nicely worded letter telling you how their large and imposing art institution is only for large and important art shows and artists from elsewhere , more often than not as an exercise in multi-cultural globalist propaganda.
Essentially one is made to feel its all a little about self-preservation for and by elites who's main aim is to entrench themselves and their peers into the system for now and forever, amen.

And when an individual or group puts time and unpaid effort into their work only to be devalued, blacklisted indeed excised through lacking a moral basis or through political bias, not intelligence, maturity, skill, this instills within such people a predilection for redress.

It can however be hard not to acquaint the rampant hetero-phobic and trenchant pseudo-feminisation of our arts institutions and the intellectual community within this country in general, -along with the state of our nation being still unable to disolve itself from a monarchical system 13,000 kms away [and just as distant in the realms of time itself ] and our countries unholy servant/master position to anglo-american corporations, whom seem to have relegated this country into a mindless beach community with at its backyard a vast quarry pillaged for its resources and eventually recharged and brought back into the country 20-30 times more expensive than when exported.

For those of us persuaded by the excesses of paranoia and all the associated conspiritorial-like overtones that go along with, it can at times be hard not to agree with them that the situation within this country that we are faced with, is all, well a little Machiavellian .

A country that at its heart is constructed for a shareholding rich who's real loyalty lies elsewhere and not upon these fatal shores, alas.

written 1/7/2000