To show, or not to show?
Hello everyone,
This week I want to focus on my own art work - rather than the work I’m doing as a publisher/educator.
As most of you know, I’ve been making a big messy project about Dingoes, the Dingo Proof Fence and the ways these things intersect with policy, history and conservation.
I’m feeling really ready to put the work out into the world and have lined up three exhibitions and a book release over the next 7-8 months. However, one of these exhibitions is proving quite tricky, and it’s that trickiness I want to spend some time sharing.
So, last year, I pitched the work to an artist run gallery in Broken Hill. After they read the pitch and consulted their committee they were really keen, telling me they saw the work as a cornerstone of their 2025 programming, and I was chuffed. A big part of what we wanted to do together was find an interesting and engaging way to display the work and have a range of talks/events about the ecology/history of excluding the dingo. Broken Hill is, in many ways, a hub of anti-dingo work as it’s a big town from which much construction of new fencing is done. The government of the area has committed several hundred million dollars to continue to build 100s of kilometers of new fencing - all of which have massive repercussions for every animal and plant living in the area.
This fencing program is a great example of trophic cascades - a term used in ecology to describe when one decision leads to a near infinite number of unexpected changes. For example - building a big fence to keep out dingoes means that emus can’t travel dry areas to find water, so the emus die, it also means that dingoes aren’t around to prey on goats, foxes and keep cats away - so now there are more of these invasive animals, killing and out competing local animals, and munching everything in sight. Very quickly the animal and plant make up of the area drastically changes.
Anyway - I was excited about this exhibition but, over the 6+ months I’ve been working with this gallery, a lot of my enthusiasm has eroded - and I’m asking myself if it’s worth doing at all.
There’s a few reasons for this change in emotion.
First of all: the gallery and I are working in different ways and, at times, that’s really demotivating. For me, I look at the space, I look at my work, and I start to plan what a cool exhibition could look like. I really want to include sculptural elements and use the big room on offer to bring photos off the wall and get some depth going. I proposed taking old fence posts (which are left to rot), leveling them with a saw, and turning them into plinths, installing 40 plinths and then having photographs sit in grooves on top of the plinths. It’d be like a big statement, anyone walking past would see these uniform 40 withered posts and it’d be cool.
The gallery didn’t like that.
I proposed using temporary fencing to create a replica of the dingo proof fence, with one half of the gallery displaying what’s excluded (dingoes), and the other showing what happens in the exclusion area (killing, trapping, poisoning, cats, foxes, goats). The gallery felt temporary fencing didn’t speak to the permanence of the real fence. Ok, fair enough, but what am I going to do? Build a real fence for a temporary show?
Most recently they sent me a series of long emails asking me to declare my bias as an artist and consider how the community would receive my work. To me, this was really frustrating as I’m thinking about things like ‘how can I make this look amazing?’ and they’re sending me articles about property as white violence - we’re just on different pages.
At the same time, I’ve been looking for guidance - ok if my ideas aren’t landing, that’s fine, what are theirs? They haven’t shared any.
So I get to this point where I feel we’re spinning our wheels. We’ve got an agreed to date and show, but little that’s planned. They are worried the community won’t respond well to the work, and aren’t providing any concrete ways to do something more appropriate, and my suggestions are going nowhere.
So I come back to this question: is it worth it?
For me, exhibiting is a chance to really show off what I can do as an artist. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate my creativity and, for years afterwards, offers the chance to show other galleries, festivals, grant bodies, etc, this is how good my work can be. But with this specific gallery I don’t know what we’ll do, so it’s hard to get excited that I’ll be showcasing.
Exhibiting can also be a good professional experience. Some shows come with a budget, and there can be a good process of making things within the artist fee paid. But there’s no artist fee at this space (to their credit they did try to get a grant but were unsuccessful, which is totally fine). So I don’t get paid (I lose money, money I sort of don’t have).
Then, as I said, I have other exhibitions lined up. Both are in spaces where people are much more open to experimentation and much less worried about how communities will receive the art. There’s no nervousness about if a member of the local area doesn’t like it, whereas in Broken Hill that seems to be a big worry. In smaller places, grievances can be very harmful - I understand that and need guidance to overcome it.
Where I land is:
I can do two shows that are exceptionally cool and seem a lot easier to get done
I could use the 10 days I’d be in Broken Hill to earn some money, or continue working on the book of the work
I could get rid of the frustration and effort of fitting a square peg in a round hole and just let it go
I would lose the opportunity to create something unique and amazing in a town that is central to the work and the issue, and is a really big room to play with
I potentially lose out on a lot of learning
It would cost me money to do this exhibition
On balance it seems like it’s probably not worth it. I think many of us are so excited when we lock something in that we don’t always return to ‘ok, is this still a good idea?’ - but as this show has ground me down a bit I really don’t think, as it stands, it’s worth it.
I’m going to leave doing anything until after the weekend, just in case I change my mind, but I wanted to share some of the struggles of being an artist. I’ve spent maybe 10 days working with this gallery - days - I even went to Broken Hill (1.5 day drive there, 1.5 drive back, 6 days in town), went to an opening, met the people that run the space, and still we don’t have a floor plan shared, or a path forward. Sometimes the ratio of effort to outcome is just out of whack.
Anyway, I’m substitute teaching a ton the next 3-4 weeks while prepping for the next big book thing. I hope you’re all well.
Till next week
Matt