The Australian art market has been having me scratching my head for the past couple of years. I was at a Gallery in Hawthorn, Glenferry road, Melbourne. Now if you don't know, this would be one of the most probable areas in Australia that you should be able to see artworks. The Gallery owner is well known in the industry. Yet, she told me that people do not like the 'cool' art. They go for safe, traditional art. Apparently resin coating puts most wealthy people off. It had me absolutely puzzled. How is it that people can be so uncool? Now, money is certainly not a measure for coolness, and therefore I recon this is a show of where Australians are at. I am generalising here, for argument's sake. I have felt this in general as we have been going to many galleries and you see SHIT art flying off the walls for $2-3k, yet some emerging artist producing amazing work for less than $1k would not sell at all. This would probably be because the patrons 'have not seen this before'. How often have I heard this phrase, and in Australia, that is a bad thing, not a good thing.
I hope that Australians can propel ourselves into a culturally developed society. We might be living in a first world country, but the way we treat our indigenous people, art, theatre and just culture is lacking. I think partially because of the way our cities and suburbs have been developing, makes interaction difficult and people tend to live in isolation more than what I have been used to before. We all know that Australia is a great country, but are we a great people? I hope that people can answer yes to this. However, until we can treat our Indigenous Aboriginal people with respect and dignity, we should hang our heads in shame. The fact that our Government is denying that Global heating is real, simply because we need to do coal mining... what a disgrace that they would take us for such fools!
Please excuse my rant. Back to the Art. I do believe that we have amazingly hight standards in our art world especially here in Melbourne. it would be great if more people here had the ability to realise that.
I hope that Australians can propel ourselves into a culturally developed society. We might be living in a first world country, but the way we treat our indigenous people, art, theatre and just culture is lacking. I think partially because of the way our cities and suburbs have been developing, makes interaction difficult and people tend to live in isolation more than what I have been used to before. We all know that Australia is a great country, but are we a great people? I hope that people can answer yes to this. However, until we can treat our Indigenous Aboriginal people with respect and dignity, we should hang our heads in shame. The fact that our Government is denying that Global heating is real, simply because we need to do coal mining... what a disgrace that they would take us for such fools!
Please excuse my rant. Back to the Art. I do believe that we have amazingly hight standards in our art world especially here in Melbourne. it would be great if more people here had the ability to realise that.
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