All in a day's work

Entrance to Mossman Gorge Centre

Wow! Crazy times! I am in the middle of the biggest three weeks of my annual work calendar and tomorrow it is only two weeks until I get married. I have so much I want to write about and absolutely zero time to write about it (except for these precious few moments tonight before I pass out cold on my bed).

This weekend is the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF). My organisation historically does three months' regular trade in a week during this time. The amount of work to prepare for and clean up from such intensity is immense, but it is very rewarding and it's great to catch up with so many people in the industry and see what artists have been working on since last year.

The two artists we are presenting in our galleries have absolutely knocked it out of the park: both have developed the work in their exhibitions as a result of residencies and both have reached a new level of technical mastery and clarity of self-expression. I'm really happy for both of them and proud to be able to sell their work, although, really, it's selling itself, I'm just holding on to my hat trying to keep up with demand! We were also beyond privileged today when Seaman Dan offered to sing a song as part of the opening ceremonies for the exhibitions. He's just released a new CD at age 83, so much for his plan to retire from singing at 80! He was amazing, of course.

In the lead up to CIAF I went on two great road trips. One to the Girringun Art Centre in Cardwell, and another to the recently opened Mossman Gorge Centre, which is an initiative of the Mossman Gorge Aboriginal Community and employs 80% of the community.

Sugar mill, Tully

The trip to Girringun is three hours' drive each way, into the coastal country south of Cairns that was so devastated by Cyclone Yasi in February 2011. The Girringun artists were in the pre-CIAF production frenzy and two workmates and I went there to bring screenprint editions to the artists to sign. I won't post photos from the Art Centre because every which way you turned a photo opportunity would be a breach of artists' copyright since they weren't all there to ask permission of; however, the mood in the Art Centre was uplifting—everyone was excited about their work and there was a lot of playful teasing going on between the artists, making for a fun and funny working environment. It was also a perfect Far North Queensland mid-winter's day and it was sugar cane harvest, so the air was thick with sweet smoke and dust, and the steam plumes coming out of the sugar mills along the way were beautiful in the afternoon sunlight. It was one of those days in life that is just perfection in every way, right down to working on the tan during a late lunch of barra burger on the beachfront with a view over to Hinchinbrook Island.

Cardwell looking to Hinchinbrook Island

Cardwell

Mossman is another sugar town, but an hour and a bit to the north of Cairns. It is one of my favourite towns in the region. The Visitor Centre is the culmination of 20 years of work from the local Indigenous community to make their vision of a sustainable way to have tourists come to view their Country a reality and provide jobs for the community. As a $20M development, it is a massive achievement for the community and their funding partners and has consistently hosted 800–1,000 visitors a day during the two months it has been open—that's equivalent to a CIAF a fortnight! The Centre is environmentally and culturally sensitive and stunning and will disappear into the rainforest in a few years as the forest regrows from the reclaimed sugar cane field the Centre is built upon. It was a very happy day. 

I may complain about a lot of things in this life, but a boring job is never one of them.

Mossman Gorge Centre

Sugar cane field near Mossman

Can too much freedom be a bad thing?

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it yet, but I work for an art gallery. Last night we had an opening and it was gooood—one of those that feels more like a big party than a formal event. I prefer to keep my working life and personal life separate these days, which is hard in a regional centre when you can't help but make friends with artists because they are hands-down the most interesting people around, but this post blurs that line a little—it's a rare occasion.

Of all the many conversations I had last night, one of the most interesting was with Mark, of The Stylus, but then that's pretty much business-as-usual for a conversation with him, they're always interesting. Apart from being a kick-arse artist, Mark is also a teacher at a school that partners with us on a project that is one of the things I have been most proud of in my seven years working for the gallery (we do more than just put pictures on the wall, obvs!) That's all I'll say about Mark, because he likes to compartmentalise like me, too, but the gist of the conversation was this: do boundaries and limitations make for better creative outcomes?

Talking about this blog got us started: I referred to it as a discipline. I knew that I wanted to write from a more personal perspective than the writing I do for work, but I just wasn't getting my thoughts digitised (no point in kidding anyone and saying "on paper"). I knew that setting up a blog would give me a sense of...obligation, in a way: if you start putting it out there you have to keep putting it out there. But still, it took being confined to my house for seven weeks to, perversely, give me the freedom to set up my template and really give thought to the focus of this blog. Not only is a blog a discipline in terms of regularly contributing to it, but it also a discipline in focus so your blog has some sense of cohesion for you and your audience if you are lucky enough to attract one. Even apparently random brain farts can have some sense of order to them.

As an arts administrator, I have seen time and time again that better creative outcomes seem to be achieved when the artist has some boundaries. The boundaries may be self-imposed, thematic, temporal or site-related. Having to problem solve leads to creative solutions, whereas open slather can waffle on forever because there is no sense of point of completion. Examples?

I have seen an artist with an international career not be given a due date for delivering work and as a result just not know when to stop adding to his sculptures. When they eventually turned up they were massive to the point of impracticality for clients and the exhibition space, so thick with paint and varnish I don't think those suckers are dry yet four years later and, of course, he could never put a price on them that would reflect the true amount of time he put into them. I think he only stopped because he ran out of room at home: a site-related limitation, too, I guess.

Our most recent installation was fraught with mini-disasters—work was sent from an overseas gallery, but that gallery didn't include all the connector parts of the slot-together sculpture, there was a communication mix up and one whole piece didn't get freighted from Melbourne, the video work had all sorts of technical issues and the artist wasn't sure how to fix them. The outcomes were: the artist got much more physically connected to his work, which he hadn't laid eyes on for well over a year, because he had to quickly re-fabricate the missing pieces; our curator and the artist got to learn a whole lot more about the technical aspects of the video in order to get it to function and that is going to serve them both so well in their future work; and the exhibition looks much better for the extra breathing space created by missing a piece—it would have been too much if it had arrived and gone in the show. Our beautiful curator, after two weeks of intense stress, commented last night on how much she had learned through the process and how much better she felt she had become at her job as a result. The exhibition looks perfect, too. Wins all round!

I used to have a friend who was an artist, and oh, how he railed against exhibition thematics. "Why do I have to have a theme for my show? I just want to paint whatever I want to paint and put my work up on the wall." Y'know what, I don't know why he bothered to complain about this because he didn't start a show the whole seven-plus years I knew him. His choices were just so vast because he wouldn't set a theme, he didn't know where to start, let alone stop.

Even my work writing I view as improving my writing style. I write a lot of grants and acquittals and inevitably they have a word or character count. Get the crux of your project across in a 40 word project description—go on, I dare you! Think about it real hard now so you cut right down to the marrow of it. It's difficult, but it makes you more succinct. Four hundred words to explain the purpose of your organisation when you do a gazillion things? Again, what is most important? What's your message? Do seemingly disparate projects actually relate to each other somehow and can be summarised together? I'm such a nerd I find it fun.

Artists, writers, and creative types in general will always have boundaries imposed upon them. Whether this is lack of money to fabricate their vision, the cost of basic materials, the need to keep a day job to support their personal responsibilities, people just not 'getting' them, no gallery space to exhibit in, or no time for creative expression. However, I really believe it is the pushing against those boundaries that leads to better creative outcomes. Problem-solving leads to growth and improves your practice. Fighting against the limitation, or working with it or around it, sharpens your focus and helps you know when 'it is done'.

Anyway, that's my two bobs' worth. (Speaking of keeping it succinct, oops!) Do you enjoy the challenge of finding a creative solution? Or are you sure that total freedom would be better for your practice?