The case for a network of artspaces at the Gold Coast
How are you spending your coronavirus stay-at-home-time? I’ve been catching up on neglected chores and appreciating the time to quietly reflect and be creatively productive. I’ve also been watching TV, and this afternoon I came across an old episode of The Simpsons which inspired the title of this post.
It’s a story about the sale and theft and repossession of ‘The Poetess’, a famous painting which Homer becomes obsessed with at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts. To raise funds, Mayor Quimby closes down the museum and The Poetess is sold by auction to a private buyer. But then the painting goes missing. At the conclusion of a twisted investigative plot of desires and deceit, ‘The Poetess’ is found and returned to the City of Springfield. The mayor puts it on display it at the football arena that was built with the money raised by selling public art.
Homer’s experience prompted me to reflect on the state of the arts in our own city, and the different perspectives and competing ambitions that we hold in relation to culture and the arts.
The most visible emanations of public investment in the arts at the Gold Coast in recent years have been HOTA, the Commonwealth Games Festival 2018 and, dare I mention, the two controversial public artworks: Hi-lights at Yatala, and the steel ferns which are yet to be planted.
I will save my thoughts about public art projects for a later post, and I’ll skip over Festival 2018 because that’s just a feint memory now. The most significant development by a long stretch is the permanent Home of the Arts (HOTA). I was privileged to have made an early formative contribution to HOTA as the author of the overall cultural precinct design brief.
Seven years on, HOTA is really taking shape now. The landscape is growing nicely over the outdoor stage, the blue-green bridge has linked Evandale to Chevron Island, and a new six-level art gallery now rising within the precinct and scheduled to open in 2021, will pronounce HOTA as the epicentre of the cultural life of the Gold Coast. The construction cost of $60.5m is less than half the projected budget of $120m for the multi-faceted 14-storey art tower in the winning design competition proposal. But then, that was predicated on the council’s intention to source funding contributions from the Federal and State Governments.
The new art gallery will be an exciting and momentous achievement for the Gold Coast to finally have a place where our vibrant visual arts can be proudly displayed and celebrated. A video animation of the interior design reveals a conventional look-and-see approach for display of art collections and exhibitions.
Many of the cultural production elements that the creative community had asked for which were specified in the original design brief have not been accommodated within the scaled-down budget and project scope. Consultation undertaken in 2011 identified demand and desires for the gallery to include: a writers’ salon and community publishing facility; a techspace for digital art experimentation; an art, history and design library; a retail outlet for Gold Coast Made products, training and meeting rooms and, most importantly, maker-spaces for interns and artists-in-residence.
It is not unusual for large capital projects to be refined in this way, it’s called value-management, a technique to secure maximum output from limited resources. Nor does this mean that some of the omitted elements will not eventuate. Some could take place elsewhere - in pavilions within the HOTA precinct, or maybe even atomised throughout the city, extending the cultural infrastructure beyond Evandale and closer to where people live.
That thought brings me to a chronic Gold Coast problem. There is a gaping hole in professional training and studio opportunities for artists. Studio practice courses at Griffith University have been discontinued and while some enterprising artists have set up studios in industrial areas, most struggle to establish operational sustainability.
In other Australian cities, training and studio opportunities for artists are much greater. Take Canberra for example, a city with a resident population of 400K. In addition to the national university and arts institutions and various art colleges, there are more than 100 art spaces of various types and sizes. Many of these have been publicly supported with start-up funds and some receive recurrent subsidies to operate.
For artists who want to live at the Gold Coast, most default to working out of their garage or bedroom. This may seem quite appropriate while we are in a public health lockdown, however, in the normal course of life, home isn’t the only place where the art-making should occur. Some creative practitioners function well in isolation. But we know that the rigour of group studio spaces, where artists, designers, craftspeople, photographers and filmmakers can mix with others and make work in a supportive professional environment, can elevate the quality of their creative practice.
In March, in the middle of an industrial estate at Nerang, a mix of more than 20 visual artists and musicians came together to display work and perform in ACID-TEST art show Vol.2. I visited on a Saturday afternoon with my friend Mona Hecke and recorded this brief interview with Michelle, the producer, about the importance of supporting local artists.
Despite the great vibe and obvious success of this initiative, conversations that day revolved around the challenges to set-up and be creative in places like this. The start-up and organic nature of such initiatives requires flexibility and affordability, without the frustration of onerous rules, fees, and town planning regulations. Some artists are involved with co-working spaces but most of these are typically business-oriented and fit-out for digital production and office type activities. Artists often need more gritty, experimental spaces. Artists also tend to not be so business-minded. They need assistance to jump through the hoops, over the hurdles and find ways to fund establishment and manage the operation.
To foster local culture, creativity, and the arts I’ve been imagining it would be easy, cost-effective, beneficial, social, and democratic to draw artists out of their bedrooms and garages into local group work and display studios in empty retail, warehouse, and public buildings.
Tim Minchin says “the difference between a good functioning democracy and not, is art” and there seems to be universal agreement across all economic sectors that creativity is key to future productivity.
While we are staying home trying to stay confident about gainful work prospects post-coronavirus, let’s think about how to foster a network of artist-run studio spaces, all over the city. It seems like a real opportunity that could help to recover and enrich the cultural life and economy of the Gold Coast.
GOLD COAST ARTIST-RUN STUDIO SPACES
Currumbin Waters - Dust Temple, 11 Past 11 Studio
Currumbin Valley - The Communal House
Reedy Creek - Creative Hearts Gallery
Burleigh Heads - Mo’s Desert Clubhouse, Mint Art House, Relative Creative, TBC Gallery
Miami - The Walls, Hotel Miami
Mermaid Beach - 19 Karen
Isle of Capri - One Arts
Nerang - Level One Seventeen
Southport - Creative Hearts Gallery
Please send names of places I have missed, to add to the list.