West of Centre: A Sociological View on the Challenges and Opportunities for Artists in Western Australia

This text was prepared for and presented at the recent Postscript event (22 October 2022), at the closing of the 2022 City of South Perth Emerging Artist Award.

I am stepping in tonight as a late addition to this panel to contribute some thoughts to this evening’s discussion, and I hope that I may be able share some things of value.

So, who am I? I am the Arts Officer here at the City of South Perth, and I’ve been working as a local government arts administrator for the past eight years. I have been a practising and exhibiting artist at a couple of points in my career, though it has never become my main gig as a professional. I have spent more than ten years at university studying art up to PhD level and I am currently researching part time for a Master of Curatorial Studies at the University of Western Australia.

The perspective that I will share tonight comes from this range of personal experiences working in Perth, and also from the data and findings of my sociological doctoral research project, which I completed in 2013 and was focused on finding out about the working lives of professional artists in Western Australia.

We are here to talk a bit about what is special and different about being an artist here in Western Australia, compared to being an artist in other places.

When we go art school, we are taught about how to use materials and techniques, we are taught about how to look and think critically about the images we make, and we are taught about the progression of art history in terms of stylistic and conceptual innovations.

Throughout this education we conserve the idea that the greatness of great art is fundamentally something that is a personal pursuit and intrinsic to an individual’s art practices. That is to say that great art comes from an artist’s exceptional skills, unique vision, and innate capacity to create something that hasn’t been seen before.

In theory this should mean that great art can be made anywhere that there are creative people.

Yet, the conundrum for artists learning to be artists in Western Australia is that our art education refers to very few examples of internationally recognised great art that has been made here.

Western Australian artists seldom rate a mention in the art history books that claim to survey Australian art, let alone international art history. There are no Western Australian artists on the roll-call of winners of a major Australian art prize such as the Archibald.

Is this evidence that no great artists, and no great art has ever come from Western Australia?

Of course not. But it is evidence that the ideas we hold onto about how the greatness of great art is determined are not the whole story.

We typically do not like to think about, or talk about, how and who decides what is great art, and which artists should have a place in our histories of important art. We like even less to dwell on how these decisions have a direct bearing on an artist’s income while they are alive, and the prices their work fetches when they are dead.

But some sociologists have given these ideas some thought and carried out research that can be quite helpful in understanding the factors that shape the way that Western Australian art sits in the world.

Philosophers Arthur Danto and George Dickie proposed in the 1960s that in order for something to be art, the key thing was for it to be identified and accepted as such by a social group that Danto called an “artworld”. This has since become known as the “Institutional Theory of Art”.

In the 1980s the eminent American Sociologist Howard Becker built on this concept to inform his seminal book “Artworlds”. In this work he proposed that all artworks are in fact the outcome of collective social action, even though they are usually attributed to an individual. So, for example, a literary work owes its existence and its success, not only to the author, but also to the publishing house who selects it for publication, and the editors who revise and shape the text for the published edition, as well as the critics, booksellers and audiences that accept the work. Similarly, the public presentation of works in this exhibition has now been shaped by the City of South Perth’s competition and facilitated by the people who’ve curated and put them on display, and they have been recognised as artworks through selection by credible judges, and some also by people who’ve purchased them.

In the 1990s French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wrote a major work entitled “The Rules of Art” in which he proposed what he called the “field of cultural production”. The field of cultural production is linked to and influenced by pressures from other fields — such as the social, economic and political fields. In his study he showed how French authors and painters of the 19th century and their artworks occupied positions in the field relative to these influences, whereby certain political views, socio-economic status, styles and tastes were supported by particular publishing houses and galleries, and distinct audiences were associated with these.

Bourdieu also observed that artworks and other cultural items were exchanged and consumed in the context of what he termed a “market for symbolic goods”. Symbolic goods are items whose value is primarily determined by reference to cultural and symbolic significance, rather than being determined by material costs. So a painting’s price on the market often has much less to do with the cost of materials from which it is made, or the labour costs involved in its production, than it has to do with the reputation of the artist, the accepted art historical significance of the artwork, and its rarity as an original and unique item.

Becker and other writers also wrote about the confused relationship between the artworks and the prices they fetch on the market. While high prices are associated with artists and works recognised to be important, it is also the case that artists may take the view that recognition and higher prices will follow for artists who maintain their reputation and the integrity of their practice by pursuing ends other than immediate economic gains. Bernard Beck observed that art practice was a peculiar line of work in which not succeeding was not a reason to quit, but rather lack of success was on some level taken as proof that artists are real artists.

Lastly, Bourdieu also noted that artists were engaged in a process not only of making works of art, but by doing so they were also making themselves into artists and seeking an advantageous position for themselves and their work in the field of cultural production.

So how does all of this help us to understand to circumstances in which Western Australian artists are working?

Sociologists of art have studied and have documented the profoundly different ways that artworlds function in places that are removed from major art centres and the international art market. For example, in a 1977 study by Michal McCall there is a description of the artworld in St Louis, Missouri that sounds a lot like the one that exists here in Perth:

“…few dealers, fewer commercial dealer’s galleries, and no gallery district. The St. Louis art museum seldom exhibits and does not collect local contemporary art. There are few private collectors in St Louis, and fewer who buy local work. Artistic value is created socially by alternative means.”

In an art centre like New York, or Sydney, the important and significant art is the art that is taken on and championed by established dealers, critics, curators and auction houses, creating and supporting a demand for that work that translates into value that has currency in national and international markets.

In a place like St Louis, or Perth, the significance of local art practice is not primarily determined by dealers and critics and confirmed by the market, but rather local credibility and status is established through other forms of validation. Examples include selection by credible arts professionals for juried and curated exhibitions (like this one), winning major art prizes, securing competitive grants and residency opportunities, acquisition of works for notable public and corporate collections, and employment on the faculty of local art schools.

The challenge for artists working “west of centre” is that these various measures of local credibility often have very limited currency outside of Western Australia.

In significant art centres, there is often also a clearer demarcation between contemporary art that aspires to be nationally and internationally significant, and more conventional art that is produced for local markets and tastes. In a major art centre, particular galleries, audiences and collectors would be associated more or less exclusively with each of these kinds of art. In places like Perth, and in exhibitions like this one, we frequently encounter a mixture of boundary-testing contemporary practice and accomplished works in more conventional forms, shown and sold in the same places. Similarly, some established Western Australian I interviewed in 2011 were showing their work in commercial galleries in Perth, and also had work in different galleries in tourist centres around the State (Margaret River and Broome) in order to diversify their audience and market.

For artists living and working here who aspire to pursue a national or international career in contemporary art practice, local circumstances create a few very special challenges.

Because values in the local art market do not correspond with values in the national or international art markets, local artists must rely on securing other forms of validation that do have some national or international currency. So it becomes important for artists to be included in exhibitions in other states and countries, to win competitive grants and residency opportunities from Federal and international funding bodies, and to win nationally and internationally significant prizes. Further, to demonstrate the career progression necessary to successfully compete for these forms of validation, artists must demonstrate how each opportunity builds upon the last, and so artists who have accomplished local successes can quickly find that there are few other opportunities available to them in WA that seem to offer a step forward.

It has been noted that few curators, critics and dealers who play key roles in the Australian art world actively look at artists and art practice that is “west of centre” and so for many WA artists pursuing these opportunities, relocating to Sydney or Melbourne is an obvious strategy. While some artists do attempt to participate at a national level whilst remaining in WA, there are significant disadvantages to doing so — particularly in terms of freight and travel expenses, and simply in terms of maintaining their visibility and presence in the broader Australian artworld.

So, it can be seen that the circumstances in which Western Australian artists are living and working may in fact be quite distinct from those experienced by artists living and working in Sydney and Melbourne, and perhaps other east coast cities.

Such differences are not really registered in important national studies, such as those commissioned at intervals by the Australia Council for the Arts since 1983, in each case led by the cultural economist Professor David Throsby of MacQuarrie University with different co-authors. The most recent of these is titled “Making Art Work” and was published in 2017. These influential reports have sought to document and develop an understanding of the economic situation of artists working across different artforms across Australia as whole.

The reports seek to make distinctions between the circumstances of artists living in capital cities from those artists living in the regions — in cities, rural and remote communities. But they do not distinguish between the capital cities that are established artworld centres — Sydney and Melbourne — and those that are not. Furthermore, the 2011 report, entitled “Do you really expect to get paid?”, states that a total of 212 visual artists were surveyed, and that 10.5% of the whole sample (across all artforms) were Western Australian artists. So we can calculate that the national understanding of the economic circumstances of artists presented in this report includes data from only about 22 Western Australian visual artists.

While all this sounds a little sobering, it was in pursuit of better documenting these local differences that I undertook my PhD research.

We have heard first-hand from Tony Jones tonight about his experiences of making a go of art practice here in WA over a long career of making great work and supporting the great work of others.

The twenty Western Australian professional artists I interviewed for my PhD back in 2011/12 listed a range of reasons why they chose to live and work in Western Australia, rather than pack-up and move interstate and overseas.

For some artists decisions to remain and practice here were acknowledged as trade-offs, with environmental factors, lifestyle and family commitments being prioritised over the pursuit of a national or international artworld career.

For some artists, their decision to remain in WA was linked closely to both creative and business considerations. Some of the artists’ practices involved sourcing materials and engaging with the landscape and environment of the South West of Western Australia, so being here is fundamentally important to what they do and make. Other artists observed that Western Australia was a more affordable place to live and work than Sydney or Melbourne, and/or that they had an established market and place in the local artworld that worked for them. One artist even felt that the lack of a market in WA was advantageous for his practice as it meant that he cold develop his work without some of the pressures that follow from commitments to galleries and clientele.

In one case, Oron Catts was very successfully pursuing and maintaining an international contemporary art practice with SymbioticA based in Perth, despite a lack of interest from and connection to local and national markets. His observation was that from Perth anywhere else was a trip, so that “what’s interesting about Perth being isolated is that the world is yours… It’s looking at the world and basically trying to do stuff where it can be.”

Many artists talked about the isolation and smallness of the WA artworld as something that resulted in interesting and distinctive work that was not so influenced by trying to impress people in other places, and was a product of resourcefulness and getting on and doing it despite the constraints.

So, clearly, there are opportunities to be had and opportunities to be pursued and created as an artist in WA. If you set your sights on an international career, it may be that you will follow that dream interstate or overseas, as others have done.

But I think that there are also a few positive take-aways and learnings for Western Australian artists from taking this kind of sociological perspective.

Firstly, it is worth observing that none of the world’s major art world centres became major art world centres by accident. The artists of the Italian Renaissance are important to us because Giorgio Vasari wrote the foundational work in art history about their lives and work (including his own). Artists in Paris in the 17th century took it upon themselves to establish the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture following earlier Italian models, and over the next 200+ years established a local monopoly in France and established Paris as the premier centre for art and artists in the Western World until the early 20th century. And in the middle of the 20th Century, and with Europe in turmoil, a proactive program of collecting, exhibiting, touring exhibitions and promotion of new forms of modern art by institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art helped New York challenge Paris as the world’s most important Art Centre. So there have been changings of the guard in the International Art World. We only have to look at initiatives like the Asia Pacific Triennial at QGOMA in Brisbane, the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart and locally at the Indian Ocean Triennial of Art here around Perth to see interesting efforts to bring together new artworlds, informed by different rationales and centred on different places and parts of the world.

Secondly, it is significant that Becker’s book is titled “Artworlds” — plural. So whilst there is a predominant international artworld and art market, there can be, and there are other artworlds within which careers are made and markets formed. So there are opportunities within the local field of cultural production to create and sustain art practices — as participants in the Alternative Art School have been learning from Paula Silbert over the last couple of weekends.

Lastly, I think it is important to remember that for every Michelangelo, Constable, Van Gogh, Picasso or Damien Hirst, there are thousands of artists who had a career and made good work in their time and place, but didn’t make it onto the list of “greats” that we now remember. In fact, as Bourdieu says, the select few are “great” only because they have been selected over the multitude of others that history has judged to be less significant. And we should remember that for some us who will never be great artists, there are important roles as the support people that contribute to realising the potential of the work of local artists.

We need ambitious artists, writers and curators to leave and make their mark in other art worlds, and we need them to remember to glance back and look west and bring some of the international artworld here and to pursue opportunity to feature Western Australian art practice in other artworlds. And we need our public galleries and private collectors to take the initiative and buy, exhibit and tour the best of local practice both here and in other places.