Supported Studios: Possibility and Potential
Museum of Contemporary
Glenn Barkley, Senior Curator, MCA
"THE END OF OUTSIDER ART"
GLENN: The first thing, I just want to acknowledge all of the amazing people that
are here. And, you know, I've sort of been invited to get up and speak, but I feel like
I'm a bit out of place because it's a really great audience that Josie and her team
have managed to get together. So thank you to the guys at Accessible Arts.
I think it's really good to just sort of think about things, and I definitely don't
want to stand here and tell you something. I want you to tell me something. And
these things work infinitely better if people yell out, and if they disagree, and if you
ask questions while we go, that's a much better way to do things for me, than me
stand here and tell you what you think or what I think and what you should think,
because I don't know.
I also think it's really interesting - you know, we talk about the end of outsider
art, or we talk about outsider art in general. The museum sector, I think, has gotten
into a position where everything turns into marketing.
Now, do people know where the term "outsider art" sort of came from? There
was actually a marketing decision by the editor of Roger Cardinal's book. He wanted
a catchy title for the book. And the catchy title was "Outsider Art", which is
interesting that now this marketing term, which is what it is, has been sort of picked
up.
I suppose for this talk to make sense I'm going to have to tell you a little bit
about myself and my own sort of background and why - you know, why I would get
up and speak. I mean, I work here at the museum obviously, but why I would be
someone to get up and speak; but the first thing I'm going to do is - and I said this to
Lucas this morning. I've resorted to my default poem, which I really do love - how
long is this microphone - which is by Claes Oldenberg.
The other default position is everyone should shut their eyes and think about
which member of the Beatles they might be. I always think people like to think
they're John, but it turns out they're Ringo. So just think about that. And then I
was - because I was thinking about pop artists and what pop artists might be. And I
think Okdenburg could be George Harrison, or he might be John Lennon, I'm not
sure. George is the one you want to be actually, not John.
And this is a poem that he wrote sort of in the early '60s about what he sort of
thought art should be and what he thought people should look for when they look for
art. And also sort of pointing out the obvious, is that when you walk around outside,
there's art everywhere. Art is - you'll trip over it if you're not careful. It's out on the
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street. It's everything. And he sort of came up with this poem, and I'm going to read
you a bit because it is quite long.
So here we go:
I'm for an art that is political, erotical, mystical, that does
something other than sit on its arse in a museum.
I'm for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, and art
given the chance of having a starting point of zero.
I'm for an art that embroils itself with the every day crap and
still comes out on top.
I'm for an art that imitates the human, that is comic if necessary
or violent or whatever is necessary.
I'm for all art that takes its forms from the lines of life itself, that
twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips and is
heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.
I'm for an artist who vanishes, turning up in a white cap,
painting signs or hallways.
I'm for an art that comes out of a chimney like black hair and
scatters in the sky.
I'm for an art that spills out of an old man's purse when he is
bounced off a passing vendor.
I'm for an art out of a doggy's mouth, falling five storeys from
the roof.
I'm for an art that a kid licks after peeling away the wrapper.
I'm for an art that joggles like everyone's knees when the bus
traverses an excavation.
I'm for an art that is smoked like a cigarette, smells like a pair
of shoes.
I'm for an art that is put on and taken off like pants, which
develops holes like socks, which is eaten like a piece of pie or
abandoned with great contempt like a piece of shit.
I'm for art covered with bandages.
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I'm for art that limps and rolls and runs and jumps.
I'm for an art that comes in a can or washes up on the shore.
I'm for an art that coils and grunts like a wrestler.
I'm for an art that sheds hair.
I'm for an art you can sit on.
I'm for an art you can pick your nose with or stub your toes on.
I'm for art from a pocket from deep channels of the ear, from
the edge of a knife, from the corners of the mouth, stuck in the
eye or worn on the wrist.
I'm for an art under the skirts and the art of pinching
cockroaches.
I'm for the art of conversation between the sidewalk and a blind
man's metal stick.
I'm for the art that grows in a pot that comes out of the skies at
night like lightning that hides in the clouds and growls.
I'm for an art that is flipped on and off like a switch.
I'm for an art that is combed down, that is hung from each ear,
that is laid on the lips and under the eyes; that is shaved from
the legs, that is brushed on the teeth, that is fixed on the
thighs, that is slipped on the foot.
That's a great poem. And that's what art is all about, I think. People lose sight of
those things.
These are my notes. The first note says "talk about yourself". I suppose the
thing I do want to talk about is in terms of - and I'm going to keep saying "outsider
art" even though I hate the term, and we'll get to a point where I sort of talk about
that a bit more, but in terms of my sort of relationship with artwork, this sort of
marginal artform, I'm not sure what people want to call it, but I've always been sort of
interested in those things. I think I'm a collector and I think it comes out of collecting.
I think I came from Wollongong, which is the ultimate outsider position. As someone
from Wollongong I can say that. If you say that about Wollongong I'll poke your eye
out.
But it sort of culminated for me with an exhibition that I did called "Home
Sweet Home" with Dr Deborah Hart from the National Gallery of Australia, and it was
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works from Peter Fay's collection. So Peter's a collector here in Sydney. And Peter
had a philosophy of sorts about mixing insider and outsider; and that within his
home, when you actually went there, there was quite a lot of confusion about what
artists were insiders, and which ones were outsiders.
Now, of course, it's never perfect. I think there's sort of relationships that
anybody can build up that become sort of power relationships, or it's actually about
introducing people to the art world. And those sort of things they can be
really - that's really tricky terrain. And I think that some of the terrain that you guys
might actually be working within is how you actually operate at this sort of film
between two different worlds. And the art world's not - you know, I'm in the middle of
the art world, but I can tell you now, it's not a great place. Your world might actually
be a better world.
Now, the National Gallery of Australia - I suppose you can sort of hold it up as
say the key collecting institution in Australia. It's got a collection that goes - started
in the 1960s. They've collected really widely. It's probably the biggest collection of
material.
And one of the things about the NGA is they were open to it, which I thought
was really compelling. They liked this mix of things. And Peter, as part of that
exhibition, actually offered them the whole of his collection. That was part of the
project. And they - I think they sort of cherry-picked it a bit. If I had of been a curator
there, I maybe would have tried to get the whole lot as almost like a capsule, but
they sort of picked through it, which I think museums have a right to do as well.
That sort of led on to doing a show called "Without Borders", that Peter and I
did, and which was called - it's full title was "Without Borders - Outsider Art in an
Antipodean Context".
Now, that show was just what we call outsider artists. And I swore at the end
of that show I would never do another outsider art show again. It felt that I had sort
of had my way with it and it was over, we were going to split.
A number of reasons is I sort of became sick of trying to deal with it. And its
funny, you need to sort of sell it somehow. So you sort of fall back on these terms
like "outsider" - it becomes a sort of default position. And after a while I got really
sick of it. I actually just thought - and Peter always used to have this - I don't want to
say rhetoric - but would always talk about, like, you know, there's no such thing as
outsider or insider, there's just art. That's actually a really nice idea. Whether that
idea exists or not is another thing altogether.
But I just thought it was really funny that in a way it felt like outsider art when
we were at the National Gallery. There was a sense of sort of storming the citadel.
And there was a really telling moment when one of the preps, who had been to art
school, was an artist, showed with an important commercial gallery, had an
established career as a professional, came up to me and told me how appalled he
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was by the show; that he was disgusted that these artists, who had no formal
training, could end up in the National Gallery of Australia; that it was actually - you
know, that's a real issue, that's an issue here.
And I thought, well, yeah, like, "Get lost", firstly, but then you sort of think
about that idea and you think, well, yes, that's one of the things I think people find
appealing about outsider art. It seems to be going against this increasing
professionalisation of the industry. And when I say "the industry", I mean the whole
of the art world. I think - and this is where I get worried about things being
recorded - and, Lucas, my apologies before I say it.
I'm not sure whether artists having PHDs is the right thing to do. When I look
at someone like Ken Whisson, who, I think in a way, in a funny sort of way is as
much of an outsider as anyone else, Ken told me, like, art school's - and very
adamant and very emotional in the way that Ken gets. He said, "Art school is
terrible. They, like, crush people; you know, they're the most awful places in the
world." He went to art school for a month and then he walked away.
And then didn't you find it quite provocative last year, that when - I'm trying to
think what was happening. The TAFE system was collapsing; that there was all of
this issue about the TAFE becoming unobtainable and students not being able to go
to TAFE, which I think coming from a place like Wollongong actually probably has a
bigger effect than people coming from Sydney. TAFE was a gateway for people in
regional environments, which is - you can't just sort of throw that out the window; but,
anyway, while that's going on, both of the major museums in the city - Francis Bacon
is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Ken Whisson is at the MCA. Both hated
art schools. They protested outside the Art Gallery of New South Wales at the
Francis Bacon opening. Now, Francis Bacon probably would have been at the
protests protesting to shut it down as much as anything else. Both classic
outsiders - if you want to take a definition being that the untrained is somehow part of
that.
But along with the professionalisation of artists there's also this
professionalisation of curators too. And they seem to be sort of disappearing up
themselves. So, sorry, Lucas, I'm going to put the boot into myself now. This idea
that curators are sort of disappearing up themselves and they're just sort of
anthropologically studying other curators, which is boring as bat shit, because
curators aren't that exciting, and curating is not art. That's the thing that people need
to realise. There's so many books now about curating. Who cares, really?
It's a secondary creative form. It's not a primary form. Artists create primary
forms. Curators just manage those forms.
The other interesting thing too about - if you go back to that Ken
Whisson/Francis Bacon idea, and this idea of the outsider - I think the general
public - and to go back even to marketing - the general public, when they come to
museums, they would probably find the so-called outsider more compelling than the
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insider. I mean, if you stick a Van Gogh up on the wall, people will run to see it.
They may not think much about the art, but I know it's a cliche, but they know about
him as this mad, crazed artist. Like, that idea still has a lot of value.
A lot of artists I know, and contemporary artists - and you could say this about
curators, you could say it about anybody - are quite normal, boring people. They're
not this sort of crazed person. They're not ostracised from their communities.
They're part of their communities. They're - I'm not going to say they could be
bankers or, you know, tax agents, but they could be, you know.
So I think that narrative of the outsider still really appeals to the general
public. So I think having these interesting things happen, and this whole talk will just
be one about hypocrisy on my behalf, and contradictions, because on one hand
you've got this professionalisation, and all of the artists have to get PHDs, and then
on the other hand you've got an audience who want to see the artists who aren't
actually interested in artists with PHDs, they're interested in this sort of idea of art as
this sort of old-fashioned idea.
Now, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the Venice Biennale, which is on
now. And this is when you really do sound like a wanker - "Now, when I went there".
I found it really compelling. And, like, some of you might know that this year's Venice
Biennale, the Roman Pavilion and then the (inaudible) is curated by an Italian curator
who is based in New York called Maximillio Gianni.
Now, he has done an exhibition which combines this sort of insider/outsider
idea. And I think he's sort of looking at obsessions as well. I think obsessions is the
thing that he's really interested in.
Now, I'm not sure what his show is going to mean in the long-term and what it
might reveal. I think there's been a whole series of exhibitions going on at
institutions where they've started to sort of stick their toe into outsider art. But I think
it's a cycle. I actually think we're coming back to the - well, maybe we're coming to
the end of a cycle. When it sort of ends up at the Venice Biennale, in a funny way
you know it's over. It's finished. Yeah. And that the art world will just move on to
the next victim that will be the next Venice Biennale.
And I just want to say, the funniest reaction that I heard. Because it's, you
know, I didn't go to the opening, because I generally don't sort of like openings, but it
would have been a great one to go to because there was a lot of artists in that show
that he did that I knew of, and there was a lot of people who came back and sort of
said, "Oh, you should go, you know, you'll really like it."
But the funniest reaction was a fairly senior collector here in Australia said
that one of their colleagues at a major collecting, a major commercial gallery in
America was appalled with the show. And I thought, "Well, of course, they were
appalled, because it was against the market." That was the other thing that was
happening, and we sort of haven't spoken about, is the art market sort of sits on the
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top of the Venice Biennale and everybody tries to deny it, but this show, in a funny
way, was against the market.
It actually showed a whole lot of work that wasn't about spectacle, that wasn't
about buying things. A lot of it was already in museums, it wasn't for sale. So of
course someone from a major commercial gallery in the States would have hated it,
because they couldn't sell anything out of it. And the best thing you can do then is
start to sort of run it down.
I think my problem with the show - and I do sort of recommend to people if
you can, is to look at the catalogue, because there are artists in that show who work
in a sort of assisted studio situation. My problem, I think, with the show was it was
about history too much. And then as a curator who is interested in this area, there
was a lot of work there that was really fantastic to see it, and it was great examples,
but it seemed as though a lot of it was about this history of outsider art, and history of
that material, and things in museums that were made maybe 50 or 60 years ago
rather than what was happening now. Because there's so many compelling things
happening now, and when you saw work that was made now, that was the really
exciting work I think.
So that was its weak point, but I think the good thing that happened was that it
was there. You know, when a collector sort of says to you this thing about the art
and, you know, that the gallery dealer didn't really like it. I hope that makes people
think about what art might be. And to actually sort of expand their thinking a little bit.
It seems as though the art world and the art market is controlled - I can only say in a
place like Sydney maybe - by a bunch of sort of conservative art consultants who
never venture outside of about three or four different galleries.
I hope they go to something like the Venice Biennale and actually just start
looking at more stuff in general, not just artists from marginal positions, but crafts
people. If you want to talk about outsiders, crafts people are the ultimate outsiders
of the Australian art world.
Do you know that Australia - I always harp on about this, and I'm going to do it
again. Australia has the best glass artists in the world. The best artists working with
glass in the world. Australia - fantastic. Amazing. You know, when I say the world,
I'm sort of maybe blowing it out of proportion, but they are world-class, let's say,
which is a terrible term. But the thing that's really interesting about a lot of those
glass artists is that they actually go outside of Australia. Their market is in America
and in Europe, because the Australian art market is so unsophisticated that they
don't know how to deal with it. And you go to collectors' houses and you go to
places and they've got the worst glass in the world that they've probably spent a
small fortune on, and you think, "What are you doing?" Like, there's incredible things
here.
And, look, I am going to reference Ray and Evan Hughes in the Hughes
Gallery. And, look, they're one of the few galleries who have picked up a glass artist
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and actually shown a glass artist as an artist, not as a crafts person, but just as a
really great artist.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible).
GLENN: Yeah, yeah. Don't buy the Royal Dolton, go to Tom Moore or -AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible).
GLENN: And so I just wanted to talk a little bit about my experience here at the
MCA, and a few sort of moments where insider/outsider has sort of slipped into the
dialogue in a much more - into a sort of hidden way, which I'm really thrilled because
I sort of did say, "Look, I don't want to deal with this idea of outsider art", but I feel
like I'm in a safe space, because we're all wrestling with the same dilemmas.
How am I going for time - because I have a rant at the end. No. Am I running
out of time. Okay. All right. Now, look, I'm just - can we just go back to the first
slide.
This is the work of Dion Beasley. And Dion, some of you may know, is an
artist who's based in Tennant Creek. He's deaf. He also is in a wheelchair, and he
makes these incredible works about cheeky dogs. So if we just sort of flick through.
And this is an image of Dion's that he had in last year's Primavera. Now, I
think this was a breakthrough moment. And I think one of the really great
breakthroughs about it, is there was never a big deal about the fact that Dion had
special needs. It was actually - it was there. Sort of if someone wanted to know, you
could find out about it, but if you didn't want to know, it wasn't being sort of flashed
up in your face.
I think Anna Davis, who was the curator, tread - trod a really fine line and she
solved it. It was a really great moment in the MCA, and one that I felt was a big bit of
a breakthrough actually, to have an artist - a great artist like Dion in Primavera. And,
look, this is in part of my rant about Primavera is a really problematic show, I think,
because sometimes people's careers work in funny ways, and that whole under 35
thing is really odd. And I think it's great because Dion sort of cracks it open in a
whole lot of ways, but Indigenous artists - almost as a rule - are marginalised when it
comes to something like Primavera.
Okay. Let's flick through. So these are Dion's pieces, and these are about
the dogs all fighting. And here's the dogs running. So he comes from a community
where there's a whole lot of these sort of cheeky camp dogs that are out of control.
And Dion has almost created situations which I think he's sort of
making them - they're quite human. He's treating them quite...
And the other great thing that's happened is Dion's work is actually - we've
just purchased a group of works, and we've just been gifted a group of works of
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Dion's that are coming into the collection. They're just little things. Now, this is the
amazing work of Miles Howard-Wilks. This is as it was installed, so sorry it's not the
greatest image, because it's actually an image of a video projection. It's a piece of
his called "Chocolate Land".
Again, just to give you a little bit of background about this piece, I worked very
briefly for a collector called Henry Ergas, who built a collection up, and this is one of
the works that we purchased for that collection. When I started work here at the
MCA, Henry dissolved the collection and he gave a number of works to the MCA.
So I had to give a presentation about what was there, and this was one of the works
that everybody responded to, and that actually came into the collection.
And, look, just sitting in a meeting like that is interesting, because I never
mentioned the words "Arts project." I thought it was important actually not to say it,
and just for the work just to be considered on its own merits. And then when it got
through, I think that was fantastic.
This was included. Can we flick to the next slide? Included in an exhibition
that David Elliott did for not the last Biennale but the one before, for a collection
show called - we call them "pirates" out here. And, again, David picked it on its
merits. So I think that's a little sort of breakthrough.
And I just, at the risk of sort of being controversial, have included some
Aboriginal work into this slide show, which is difficult. And a really difficult topic to
talk about; so, look, can we just look at the next slide.
These are works by the Tjanpi Weavers. It's the Seven Sisters story. And the
reason why I think it's difficult is for too long when people think about "folk art" or
"outsider art" or "naive art" - they think of it as something stupid. It is not stupid. It is
incredibly complex, and it's a reflection of the culture from which it comes.
I think there's a little breakthrough. And I think in the past there's been sort of
distancing where people will say, "Oh, your work is like outsider art", and people will
think, "What are you saying, I'm an idiot." Whereas now I think that's actually sort of
breaking down. There is so many contemporary artists who are just buying books on
outsider art and basically just ripping it off. You can sort of track what people are
doing through outsider art.
And I'm not saying that these guys are doing that, but I think it's really
interesting when you apply those sort of standard rules, if such things exist, about
what outsider art might be, and when you sort of look at Indigenous communities, it
works out that they actually do - all those rules sort of fit.
So one of the reasons why I really love and respond to Aboriginal art is the
fact that it's sort of like prizing the museum open completely, because this is a show
of artists who, for a long time, probably never practised as artists, who work within a
community. And the whole thing that's as important as the work is the actual
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conversations between people. They make this amazing artwork, but it is that bad
word "craft". "Craft" has snuck in to the museum. And it was a whole show about
textiles, which could be the worst craft of all. There's a bit of clay work downstairs,
so it's starting there. There are all these little breakthroughs happening at the
moment.
So let's just flick to the next slide. But such amazing work. And I can't help
now when I was looking at this morning, comparing it to the work of the incredible
American artists from Oakland, Judith Scott, who some of you might know. Look,
those artists would never have seen one another, but there's that same intensity in
the making of it. It's really compelling how similar they actually look.
Okay. Next one. And I just wanted to drop this in. And this will be something
that you'll all have to deal with and you'll have to work out a way to deal with. When I
started to do the string theory show - so it's the show that's just finished. I would
spruik the catalogue, but it's sold out, soon to be reprinted. So you can do preorders
down in the shop.
Too many shows about craft have stupid pictures of people's hands on the
cover. And when it came to do the show I said, "Whatever you do, I don't want
someone's hands on the cover. I don't want anyone's hands inside. I don't want
hands anywhere." Of course, someone sends you a photo and there's this amazing
photograph of someone's hands, like holding a piece of string. I said, "Well, that
one's okay, so that can go in", but we managed to avoid the cover.
And an image like this, which is actually reproduced in the catalogue - this is
where it comes to this sort of contradicting myself. I find that really hard to deal with.
I actually look at this book sometimes and I think, "Why did I do that?", like, you
know. But I suppose it's what the artists decide to do. And if any artist decides, you
know, they're happy with a photograph of themselves in the studio, they've had a
look at the pages, they know all those things, then you have to just go with it. You
can't sort of start sticking your own sort of beak into what's going on and telling
people, "Well, you know, no hands. You got to get rid of that. And no baskets and
no string." Because, I mean, it sort of reflects what the show is.
And this work is so much about those people coming together to make the
work and those artists working together that to deny it, in a sense, is an untruth. But
these were all just little things that you have to wrestle with when you're dealing with
art in general, life maybe. It's nothing special. Art's nothing special.
And then these are the Narrogin Dolls, which are from West Australia. And,
again, another idea about this work sort of appearing in the Museum of
Contemporary Art. And, look, up until maybe two or three years ago, a lot of these
people never - a lot of these artists - and they are artists - never considered
themselves artists. They considered themselves part of a community. They
considered themselves someone's sister or someone's mother or someone's
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daughter, but the idea of being an artist - that may never have sort of figured into
things; but they make amazing art.
All right. I better get my rant in.
Ray Hughes once said to me that art students now are trained to make work
about something, rather than it being something. I think that is such a clever idea,
and it is so smart. I want the art world to stop paying lip service to difference, to
community engagement, to access, to equity and to actually - I want it to change. I
want them to do these things and to be these things. I don't want these ideas to be
marketing terms or part of a funding arrangement or a clever way to leverage money
out of corporate or governments. I want them to mean something, and I want them
to be something.
I want to imagine a show or a series of shows that do not say the word
"outsider" or, for that matter, "insider"; that instead seeks to show everything equally;
that deals with difference in a pragmatic way; that looks at the unloved, the unknown,
the known, the amateur, the professional, the beautiful and the terrible in a fair, equal
and, most importantly, ethical way.
I want the art world to stop paying lip service to difference, to community
engagement, to access, to equity, and to actually change.
Thank you. That's my rant.
(Applause)
GLENN: Questions?
FEMALE SPEAKER: Any questions?
KEVIN: I think the outside art you could - you don't have yes/no art.
GLENN: "Yes/no art". And you can change on the day, whether it's a yes or a no.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah. Anyone else? Yes.
ANNETTE: Hello. I just wanted to make a comment. I worked at the National
Gallery when you had your "Home Sweet Home" -GLENN: Okay.
ANNETTE: -- and I was an educator there. And it was a breakthrough moment,
from lots of different directions. And not least with the security, who had difficulty
with public not knowing who was an outsider and who was not.
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But, also, I spoke with Peter Fay afterwards and I was interested - he had a
letter from James Malleson after the exhibition, and he wrote to him and said that if
he had been director at the time, he would not have allowed it, but he would have
been wrong.
And I thought that was a really quite profound statement. And I would
suggest that you wouldn't have "Home Sweet Home" at the National Gallery in
Canberra now.
GLENN: No, you wouldn't. I'm actually a big fan of Brian Kennedy, going against
the grain. Brian Kennedy, I know, had a lot of difficulties, and his tenure is there, is
looked upon in sort of positively and negatively.
ANNETTE: You walked past the Jahuli.
GLENN: Yes, but I think he was probably the only director that would have taken
that show. And it was just this window. I mean, sometimes you have to understand
how museums work too. Sometimes a little - and you would know - sometimes a
little window might open up, and you've got to be ready to sort of chuck the thing
through the window, you know; that you have to be prepared that a moment might
open up where something radical can happen, and that's where you need to, like, lob
the thing in.
ANNETTE: No, it was brilliant and it should happen again. And that's the issue.
You talk about curators and directors who have this kind of feudal control over those
institutions, which is why you have a limited opportunity to get those sparks. And
that's a shame.
GLENN: I think that departmental model of museums should be turned on its head.
ANNETTE: Absolutely.
GLENN: Yes.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Anyone else?
JOSIE: I have a question. When you spoke about the Venice Biennale and the sort
of outsider art content, saying that most of it was sort of in existing collections and
sort of older works. Why do you think that the curator didn't access more recent
works, or why do you think that was the case? You were saying there was lots of
sort of older works, but you -GLENN: I think he wanted to tell this story with the show about obsessions and
grand obsessions, and I think that was the work he was interested in, yes. And that
was work that he saw, too. And I suppose I can tell you a little secret.
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I have a sense, I know - or I have a sense of what he may have seen that
came from Australia. And I think the biggest mistake that was made is he didn't see
Arts Project, or he didn't see any number of artists or artist assisted studios, because
I think that's actually what he was looking for. And I think an opportunity may have
been lost, which was a misreading.
JOSIE: And how would, say, the cycle come back again in 50 years time? How
would you kind of - how would sort of this - how would we capture that opportunity,
do you think? Or, you know, who is the person that leverages that?
GLENN: I don't know whether I can say that publicly.
JOSIE: Okay.
GLENN: I do know how to solve that.
JOSIE: Okay. All right.
GLENN: Yes, but I - well, what can I say. I think it's really important when curators
and visiting arts professionals come to Australia that they be shown as diverse a
range of artwork as possible; that it not be limited to a very narrow band.
And I think the people organising these trips and, look, to sort of back them
up, I think they get given these things on short notice, then you have to come up,
and you can get in touch with certain people, you know they're always going to be
very professional and they're going to deliver, and that, you know, that will happen,
and then other things are difficult, but I just think because something's difficult
doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Yes, you should do it.
That's actually more reason to do it. Art is - art can be difficult, yes. It
doesn't - it shouldn't be easy all the time.
JOSIE: Thanks.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Last question from Kevin - or comment, is it?
KEVIN: (Inaudible) sweet no degree art. Sweet, no degree art.
GLENN: No degree art. Yes, yes, I'm all for that.
ELLEN: Okay. How can something be considered outside art and inside art? Why
is it not just art?
GLENN: Yes, sorry, I can't answer that question. I wish I could answer that
question. I wish that it was easy enough to do that, but I think what happens - it's
like - I suppose the great example is Jackson Pollock. And Jackson Pollock you
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would think of - he went to art school, he was part of the New York art world, he's an
accepted part of the Canon. All of those things.
Now, you can go and look at "Blue Poles", and you can respond to it - it's an
amazing picture, and it's an incredible work. It has a physicality about it that's really
quite amazing, that you can sort of step into it. But then when you sort of start to
hear all those things about, you know, Jackson Pollock urinating in the fireplace, and
being a drunk, and all of those things, it makes the work more compelling. It doesn't
make it less compelling.
So I think that's where an artist like Dion Beasley's really interesting, because
you have to find the balance between being patronising, but also being honest, yes.
ELLEN: Yes, but where does the concept come from? Like, how come its called
that, you know?
GLENN: I think the art world needs to put people into boxes. That's where it comes
from. I think that is one part of a definition, yes.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible) workshops or working for the artist or (inaudible).
What sort of training (inaudible).
GLENN: No, you're right. You're hitting on something that -AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible).
GLENN: Exactly. Yes. And I think what you're saying is - I agree with, in that no art
exists in a vacuum. Nothing comes out of nothing. Nothing comes out of something.
I mean, something always comes out of something. Nothing comes out of nothing.
Yes. Does that make sense?
JOSIE: And in your show bag there's an essay by Colin Rose titled "The Alternative
Academy", which talks about that, and the kind of - he kind of really bridges that
thing between outsider into supported studios, and talks about that.
GLENN: We should wrap up.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Yes, thank you. Thank you, Glenn.
GLENN: Thank you, Glenn.
(Applause)
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