The Scottish Artists Union has sent an e-mail of support from Scotland to our colleagues
down-under.
Their contact email is : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ARTISTS SIT-IN TO STAND UP FOR CONTEMPORARY VISUAL ART IN AUSTRALIA
>
> Visual artists and sympathisers will SIT-IN to STAND UP for
> contemporary visual art - nationally - on Saturday, 14 August 2004 in
> major public art galleries throughout Australia.
>
> Why? For acknowledgement. Its present lack is causing increasing
> poverty for visual artists (see statistics*). Alarmed by this crisis,
> the Federal Government in July 2001 commissioned the Myer report to
> recommend solutions (submitted in June 2002). In response the Federal
> Government has provided $6 million a year in extra funds, matched by
> state and territory contributions. Of the resulting amount, by
> 2005-2006 $5.1 million (per annum) will be spent on making the visual
> art/craft sector's infrastructure more robust - which is commendable -
> when only $2.1 million will directly flow to visual art and craft
> practitioners (in the form of grants). Divided by the number of
> practitioners that make up this sector, the increase averages out to
> be less than $100 per artist. Hardly a baby bonus, nor what's needed
> to alter artists' dire poverty. So why commission a report to address
> artists' poverty only to address all that which surrounds it - but not
> it? Infrastructure is important, but isn't artists' poverty more
> pertinently so?
>
> The Sydney Art Seen Society has formed in urgent redress of the
> current decline of standards in the professional environment of
> contemporary visual art in Sydney, where the production of visual
> culture is being more and more determined by art-institutional
> programmes rather than these programmes being determined by the art.
>
> By facilitating a meeting place for artists to discuss, debate and
> discern solutions to the prevalent issues hindering progressive visual
> art here at present, the Sydney Art Seen Society aims to stimulate the
> development of a more vigourous and potent contemporary visual culture
> in Sydney, based on the vital and critical practice of visual artists.
> VISUAL ARTISTS say NO TO NOTHING but YES TO ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
> National SIT-IN same day, same hour (real time)
> on Saturday 14 August 2004: Adelaide (1:30pm), Alice Springs (1:30pm),
> Brisbane (2:00pm), Canberra (2:00pm), Darwin (1:30pm), Hobart
> (2:00pm), Melbourne (2:00pm), Perth (12:00noon), Sydney (2:00pm)
