Is there art without politics?

Ai Weiwei comments (The Guardian Weekly 21/09/12 p.37) on “Art of Change: New Directions from China” at the Hayward Gallery, London and he asks: “How can you have contemporary art that doesn’t address a single one of the country’s most pressing issues?”

I frequently find myself asking this question looking at contemporary art in Melbourne that stands for nothing but superficial gestures and thinking similar thoughts to Ai Weiwei but about Australian art rather than Chinese.

Although Australian art is heavily influenced by contemporary western cultures, it rejects the essential human values that underpin it. The Australian Government claims to the rule of law, respect for international laws and human rights but have so often excepted themselves from any obligations in various circumstances that nobody understands what this means anymore. In Australia you have a right not be discriminated against on the basis of your race except if you are an aborigine living in the Northern Territory. You have the right to claim asylum except if you come by boat. I could go on and on about the exceptions that the Australian Government has granted itself and then another tract about the exceptions that have been granted to allied governments.

Ai Weiwei offers a solution at the end of his comment. “What’s needed is open discussion, a platform for argument. Art needs to stand for something.”

Politics may not be something that an artist chooses but a position that is thrust upon them because their art does stand for something. Bill Henson has become the spokesman for artistic freedom because of the government campaign against him, not because of any overt political content in his work, but the content that government wanted to repress, a discussion that it did not want opened.

Sydney-based artist, Stephen Copland suggested to me that perhaps the political art should be judged from the archaeology of the stratigraphy of exhibitions (and the art exhibited) within the artist’s career rather than individual works of art. In this way the seriousness and depth of the artist’s political interest can best be judged. In a broader survey many artists would mark out the stratigraphy of the burning political issues in the layers of art works.

There are still plenty of largely uncensored platforms in Australia and Australian art is not under as many restrictions as art in China; the ALP did give the Australian Classification Board the power to censor art exhibitions after the Bill Henson furore.  But this freedom counts for nothing if nobody is saying anything or making superficial gestures. So many good artists remaining silent… I see so many exhibitions that are studiously saying nothing.

Sometimes it looks like all that many contemporary artists are trying to achieve is to fill a gallery space and I don’t mean completely fill up a gallery space, like the “New York Earth Room” (1977) by Walter De Maria. I mean just scale up a simple drawing so that it fills a wall or projecting a looping video onto a wall. As if filling up a gallery was an end in itself. Not that this should be taken as a complaint against all contemporary art installations as a whole, it is not about skill or technique or lack of them. There are boring exhibitions of highly competent paintings and the work of skilled crafters. Almost every week I see exhibitions that are a bit of a bore.

And the artist’s comment on this whole empty process appears to be bored and empty. Sometimes it appears that contemporary artists have done post-graduate studies in grant and application writing. This involves the composition of studied art world patois involved in over complication and indulging in obfuscation. “The exhibited works appear as chapters severed from their context” – that’s a nice way of say it is an incoherent exhibition. “Post-planning” – they are making it up as they go along. “Leading artist” – who is being lead? (For more on this art speak see Hyperallergic’s “How to Talk about Art” column.)

Why do we put up with these solipsistic, self-absorbed creations that contribute nothing to the wider cultural discourse of politics or life or anything of than other contemporary art? Who is responsible, who is to blame for this awful boring art? Let me say this first off, it is not all the artist’s fault; they are too obvious and too easy to blame. Nor is it entirely the fault of their teachers, the curators, gallery and arts grants boards. It is also the fault of the critics and art reviewers – it is my fault.

I should have slammed the artist’s work from the moment my fingers touched the keyboard. I should have dismantled their flimsy ideas and dammed their pretentious self-indulgent attempts at art. Perhaps I should have howled at the other critic’s praise for these artists. The fact is there aren’t really that many arts writers, even including bloggers, in Melbourne to complain about. We are living in a time when people in all seriousness praise the arts coverage in MX, the free paper distributed on the trains, over any other newspaper in Melbourne simply because they print more pictures.

I am not expecting that art will change that many minds or that art should be judged by its political efficacy or position. In 2010 Marcus Westbury asks “Does Political Art Work?” with the danger preaching to the choir or the tabloid frenzy the sidetrack issue. I’m not expecting art to work in politics all I’m asking is for the artists to make art that stands for something important. (The artists don’t have stand for political office, like Carl Scrase or Van Rudd.)

I am expecting that “art needs to stand for something.”

Melbourne Don’t Blow

“When a gentleman sounds his own trumpet he ‘blows’. The art is perfectly understood and appreciated among the people who practise it. Such a gentleman or a lady was only ‘blowing!’ You hear it and hear of it every day. They blow a good deal in Queensland – a good deal in South Australia. They blow even in poor Tasmania. They blow loudly in New South Wales, and very loudly in New Zealand. But the blast of the trumpet as heard in Victoria is louder than all the blasts – and the Melbourne blast beats all the other blowing of that proud colony. My first, my constant, my parting advice to my Australian cousins is contained in two words – ‘Don’t blow.’”

- Anthony Trollop (The Birth of Melbourne ed. Tim Flannery, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2002, Australia p.283)

I am sorry to report that over a century later Melbourne is still loudly blowing its trumpet. There is a belief that a bigger local noise must mean a significant culture. I forget how many times have I heard that something in Melbourne is amongst the best in the world. World’s first feature film, world’s best drinking water, the world’s richest horse race, the finest fashion, world’s most liveable cities…

It just goes on and on – I hear street artists declaring that Melbourne street art is amongst the best cities in the world. Musicians talking about Melbourne’s little bands and its electronic music, from Percy Granger to the present day. The whole Melbourne and Sydney rivalry is part of this phenomenon.

Australian culture is obsessed with its own feedback but only stories that praise Australia are feed back into the loop, criticism is dismissed as ill-informed. It is just embarrassing to hear especially when you know that it is not true. Southern Cross Station even has signs that say: “world class station” – it is far from it but they won’t hear of it.

Australians are insecure and do all this blowing to be reassured. Australians have long felt insecure, as far back as the first colonial settlement and this colonial inferiority complex has many significant cultural and political implications. The Australian “cultural cringe” coined by Melbourne critic, A.A. Philips in 1950 describes the attitude of inferiority to Europe in all areas except for sport. This insecurity has also lead to sycophancy in politics and an inability to accurately assess or deal with criticism.

I feel that the constant sound of this blowing has deafened Melbourne’s public to any criticism. So I’ll say it again on behalf of Anthony Trollop because it obviously needs repeating – Melbourne please don’t blow.

Compassion etc. @ Collingwood Gallery

Australia is the only western democracy not to have constitutional or legislative bill of rights. Currently the racial discrimination act has been suspended in part of the country, so that the Australian federal government can discriminated against the aboriginal population. The abuse of the rights of refugees is currently a fundamental cornerstone of Australian mainstream political debate and both major political parties vie to be the cruellest and least humane towards refugees. Basically the state of human rights, even awareness of human rights, in Australia is appalling.

Against this background there are two alternatives: to be loudly critical or quietly submissive. The exhibition, “Compassion and Commitment: Starting from Home” at the Collingwood Gallery, part of the 2010 Human Rights Arts & Film Festival. has chosen the later alternative. The curators, Louisa Marks and Kelly Madigan have referred to human rights in their curatorial statement as often as Australian governments have legislated to protect them – zero. Instead they have decided, with all the good will in the world but little of the intellect, that humanism and other vague positive statements are a satisfactory alternative.

“Recognising the inspiration and awareness which stems from creative expression, the objective of this exhibition is to highlight the active collaboration and communication between artists and community groups.” (Curatorial statement) They could have, with this kind of statement, recognized “the inspiration and awareness” stemming from the artists who design logos and propaganda for fascist groups. Many totalitarian regimes, like Stalinist Russia, encourage “active collaboration and communication between artists and community groups.” It is all very vague; perhaps it would have helped if the curators had developed some understanding of human rights rather than trying to shoehorn their interests into a human rights festival.

In a further demonstration of how much value Australia has for human rights the exhibition is at the Collingwood Gallery, a small shop front rental gallery space. In 2007 I saw the “Apropos” exhibition at Bus Art Space, part of the first Human Rights Arts & Film Festival, and my disappointment with the exhibition was that the art on exhibition wasn’t reaching a wider audience.

It is all very disappointing and depressing. I have reviewed some of the artists exhibiting in this exhibition before; there is nothing wrong with their art, some of which I’ve seen before, but I don’t think that their work has anything to do with human rights. I don’t think that these artists are fooling themselves that their art has anything to do with human rights either – it is just another exhibition opportunity. A few of the artists like, William Kelly, Ben McKeowan, Stephanie Karavasilis and Sonja Hornung do address current and local human rights issues in their art but in the context of this exhibition they were effectively muted.

I don’t know what the rest of 2010 Human Rights Arts & Film Festival is like but I hope that it has more guts and relevance than the exhibition at Collingwood Gallery.

Street Art around the World

Calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand new beat,

Coz summers here and the time is right for painting in the street.

(Apologies to Marvin Gaye/William “Mickey” Stevenson/Ivy Hunter)

Of course the list of cities where they are painting in the street is a bit longer than a few cities in the USA. Is there city in the world where there isn’t graffiti or street art? It would have to be the most repressive of police states and probably affluent without slums or other areas of neglect (e.g. empty factories). Nor could there be any indigenous tradition of wall painting. It is not Singapore, Iran or even the Vatican City (where there is both ancient and modern graffiti). In Tahiti there is Kreative Concept, l’association graffiti de Tahiti, representing Tahitian street artists. The site is in French (try Google translate) but has lots of photos as you might expect that require no translation. Requiring no translation is Cebu Street Art, from Cebu City in the Philippines. Of course we can just forget about war torn states like Somalia where a Canadian soldier reports “graffiti on everything”. I don’t know where there isn’t graffiti and I wouldn’t bet a dollar that any city in the world was graffiti free now.

As I explored the wide world of graffiti and street art I thought that I would to find more regional differences in this the most international of all art movements but there isn’t anything as obvious as that. The internet has made street art influences global even the cultural divisions of languages and alphabets is not significant in street art. The domination of English language in street art is surprising; even some francophone artists use English. It is disappointing that there aren’t more local references evident in global street art. Surely somewhere in the world traditional wall painting has merged with contemporary street art?

I have been reading, or rather looking at because it is ≈98% photographs, Nicholas Ganz Graffiti World – new edition (Thames & Hudson, 2009). I’m glad that I borrowed it from the library rather than buying it. Artists from the Americas and Europe occupy most of the book so the title is misleading. Although it mostly photographs with very short pieces of information about the artist and it does provide some small overviews of street art in various countries. For example, that Eastern bloc countries were late in developing a street art scene because of government bans on the sale of aerosol spray cans. And Nicholas Ganz reports that the first pieces have gone up in Burma and North Korea (p.374) addressing the question that I raised at the start. There are a few parochial features mentioned in Graffiti World like drawing on rail cars in oil chalk in Canada or the strategies of the some street artists from Brazil. I haven’t been able to compare it to the old edition (2004) but the list of Australian and Singaporean artists appears to have not been greatly revised in this new edition.

Racism Denials

“Australia is not a racist country.” After apologizing for the government’s stealing aboriginal children, after the Cronulla riots, the Palm Island riots, even after two sober assessments by the Indian ambassador and former Telstra chief Sol Trujillo, it is still denied. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd initially dismissed it as “ridiculous” rather than acknowledging that Australia does have longstanding problems with racism.

After still more violent attacks on Indians in Melbourne I feel that I have to write something. What offends me most is not the violent outer-suburban racists but the network of tacit support that they receive from other parts of mainstream Australian culture. The support and cover from politicians that denies that Australia is a racist country. The support and encouragement from all aspects of Australian nationalism, for it is nationalist pride that leads to the denials in the first place.

Australia is a racist country, it was established as a racist colonial program and since then racism has been institutionalised in Australian culture. Australia has conducted the most successful program of genocides in the modern world against the aboriginal peoples of Australia, especially the Tasmanian aborigines. Australia’s white immigration policy may have ended but the political sentiment that supported it remains and is now expressed in anti-refugee detention policies and the Aboriginal intervention policy in the NT.

You have to be mentally blinkered to not see the racism in Australian culture. In one of the shared houses that I lived in we had a set of old kitchen chairs that were made in Australia and labelled: “Product of European labour only”. If you don’t believe that there is racist hatred of Indians in Melbourne then let me show you the racist graffiti against Indians scratched in the concrete footpath of Coburg.

There needs to be more action taken on the serious cultural problems, like racism, in Australia rather than denials and public relations management. To deny and mentally repress Australian racism is not the solution and will only create more and new problems. The Australian and Victorian government need to recognize that they are part of the problem rather than deny the existence of the problem. Don’t believe the equivocations, the empty apologies and denials that Australian’s make about racism – look at their actions and inactions.

Graffiti & Censorship

In January 2009, Australian censors banned issue #8 of Dirty Deeds, an Australian graffiti magazine.  I’m unsure who Dirty Deeds are. They might be one are a crew of breakbeat DJs from Melbourne. Dirty Deeds is published by Dirty Deeds Streetwear. (Dirty Deeds is, just in case anyone’s missed it, a title of an AC/DC song). I have not seen any issues of the magazine but early issues of the magazine are still available from various places in Europe online. From online descriptions the magazine is about 100 pages and contains images and reports about Australian graffiti and pieces from Australian writers on tour. If anyone knows anymore about Dirty Deeds or the censorship of its issue#8 please leave a comment.

Censorship of graffiti related material has been increasing, like Mark Ecko’s Atari game “Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure” or the film about graffiti, 70K that the Melbourne Underground Film Festival attempted to show last year. These items are being censored in Australia because they “promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence”. This is a very broad category that could include information on crime prevention or a movie showing an armed robbery etc. It is also far broader than any other countries protection, e.g. the USA where  “…the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”  Per Curiam Opinion, Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969)

This is the same excuse for censorship that lead to the protracted 1995-1999 persecution of the editors of the LaTrobe University student newspaper, Rabelais (eventually the charges were dropped with no explanation, so calling it a ‘prosecution’ is misdirection). This law is only used against small independent publishers although the law is so broad it could be used against any publisher with any crime content. The government’s application of this law makes it intentions clear; the government wants to use it to justify the persecution of some victims of moral panic.

Censorship is unjust in that it is arbitrary. It is arbitrary in the choice of targets and in the rules that govern censorship. What will be censored it is rarely completely defined but kept vague and subject to opinion of an authority.

When censorship is not arbitrary it does tend to create embarrassing moments for the authorities when they quickly back down in the face of unimpeachable examples. Creating rules for censorship is not a simple as stating no images of nipples, public hair, torture, bestiality or naked children. Under the Jacaranda Tree has a story about a Chinese blogger who fought the censorship of his Renaissance nudes. The story is similar to an early 2008 controversy London Underground censoring another image of a Renaissance nude. Renaissance nudes are an unimpeachable example that any censorship rules, guidelines or legislation must avoid censoring to appear reasonable and sensible.

One strategy to avoid such ridicule is for censorship to be arbitrary. In Australia censorship is a discretionary act instigated by a complaint. For example, there have been nude photographs exhibited in public at Platform that have been censored and others that have not because censorship by the City of Melbourne is based on complaints.

Censorship continues to be an ugly, arbitrary and unjust feature of Australian law. And I am sick of it.

The Secret Philistines

Australia is the most outwardly philistine of all countries; there is a deeply held contempt for all culture in Australia. Suburban Australia, where the vast apathetic majority of Australians live, is quintessentially philistine. Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy used the word ‘philistine’ to define the middle-class as ignorant, narrow-minded, devoid of culture and indifferent to art. To have wider tastes than meat pies, football and cars is considered in Australia an elitist insult to the majority.

So it is not surprising that within the minority of cultured Australians and even artists there is a trace of these philistine attitudes. Is “Cryptophilistinism”, curated by Amita Kirpalani at Gertrude Contemporary Art Space, about this phenomenon?

What exactly is a crypto-philistine? Have the secret philistines of the art world taken over the art space and are the de-valuing art? Are they neo-Dada anti-art artists who, ironically don’t value art? Or, are they artists with non-artistic agendas? Perhaps it is the secret philistine in all of us that is being referred to; Kirpalani does not explain but she does give examples.

Are the social politics of Stuart Bailey assemblages more important than any artistic quality? “The Nimbin Victims”, “Shameless” and “These filthy dreamers defile the flesh” do look as ugly as improvised road signs. James Dodd’s work is similarly political and as ugly as a roadside stall with all the fluoro colours. Sarah Goffman makes art about the excess in society; her “Iso Mass Xtreme Gainer” is a minimalist circle made from wide waisted jeans. Scott Morrison celebrates the passions of the middle class, as expressed in audience shots from the Oprah Winfrey Show, in his 2003 DVD “Oprahagogo”. But it is Justin Trendall’s screen prints with the lines of influence connecting artists and thinkers that, for me, expresses the crypto-philistinism of contemporary art. The pseudo-intellectual past time of creating theoretical art family trees, as a representation of culture, is truly crypto-philistine in its indifference to the actual art and culture. And Trendall makes them look so artful.

Now that they have been named and exhibited can they really be secret philistines?