Changes in challenging times

Artists and dealers are looking for new ways to shore up their future amid the most seismic shifts in the bedrock of the WA visual arts scene for many years — the commercial gallery sector.

Many galleries are diversifying into other “lifestyle” areas such as catering, giftware and travel as audiences and sales decline, forcing artists also to become more creative in marketing their work.

The WA visual arts scene has faced a crisis of confidence for the past few years which led to the recent Undiscovered talkfest at the University of WA devoted to ways to attract wider national attention to the sector.

The dilemma was underscored when the cutting-edge Venn Gallery, run by Desi Litis and Bayoush Demissie, announced its closure after just four years in its Queen Street premises.

Other venues to shut over the past two years have included Melody Smith Gallery, Perth Galleries, Gallery East and Galerie Dusseldorf.

Emerge Art Space recently moved north along Beaufort Street to Inglewood to escape Mt Lawley’s high rents. Turner Galleries faces an uncertain future, with its Northbridge premises up for sale, while Seva Frangos Art in Subiaco and Gadfly Gallery in Dalkeith are changing locations and their working models.

As Merrick Belyea, one of 18 artists involved in the Art Collective WA, put it so sharply in The West Australian recently: “If 80 per cent of coffee shops shut in Perth over the course of five or six years, there’d be a government inquiry.”

One newish cafe is run by Mark Walker, who has returned to his restaurateur roots by adding coffee and muffins to the mix with his Art Starter Coffee at the front of his Harvison Gallery in Northbridge.

“To run a gallery in the old model is getting tougher,” he says. “If you think you can sit in a white box and expect people to come into the space and buy work, you are fooling yourself.”

Mark Walker at Art Starter Coffee. Picture: Robert Duncan

Some gallery closures are due to generational change but other factors include shifting buyer habits, the tough economy, more arts and entertainment options, the online sales revolution, the artist resale royalty scheme and tougher rules for self-managed superannuation funds through which many collectors accrue artworks.

“Everything shifted when the super changes were announced, Mr Walker says. “Suddenly I had a number of collectors wanting to sell their collections due to the strict compliance.

Mr Walker set up his coffee shop to encourage people to sit and linger with the artworks.

“People would come to exhibition openings, have a drink and go. Now people sit in the space, see the work and might come back two or three times in a week and then that might capture their imagination.”

Seva Frangos, a former deputy director at the Art Gallery of WA, established her Subiaco gallery in 2006 but is sniffing the winds of change as she contemplates what to do and where to go when her lease expires early next year.

Frangos is mystified by the conundrum of so much extraordinary art available but people seem to have been seduced by other interests.

“There seems to be a sense of affluence in Perth where restaurants and bars are full, people are buying cars and going overseas,” Frangos says. “But there seems to be a bit of a crisis in terms of an audience for the visual arts and people committing to building a collection and not just furnishing their houses.”

Frangos says artists and dealers should be more ambitious about tapping into a wider market by making international connections, echoing the sentiments expressed by Undiscovered keynote speaker Ian McLean. More individuals and collectives should follow the lead of Perth bio-art pioneers Symbiotica who transcended geographic isolation with their world-leading projects, McLean says.

“I have started to look to Hong Kong and a European market but you have to take things a step at a time and get a sense of what the audience might be and how they will respond to work,” Frangos says.

“But it has to be a two-way street which is why I’ve started to show Chinese art in Perth.”

Professor Ted Snell, the head of the UWA cultural precinct, says WA artists also suffer from inadequate exposure on the east coast, hence the title of the Undiscovered symposium.

His proposed solutions include establishing a local arts production unit to promote the work of WA artists through online and other screen distribution networks; more support for the publication of catalogues, books and monographs about WA artists; and a grant scheme like a reverse ArtFlight program to bring critics, journalists, academics and promoters to WA.

DCA director-general Duncan Ord told the Undiscovered symposium that more big-picture thinking could transform the reputation of WA as a great centre for art practise, collection and curatorial excellence.

Ord pointed to the great private art holdings such as the Kerry Stokes Collection, the Holmes a Court Collection, the Wesfarmers Collection and the Bankwest Art Collection, saying that more could be done to get art out of “locked cupboards and boardrooms”.

There is more scope for the tax system to better reflect the value of creative practice, for planning incentives and development offsets to encourage pop-ups and place-making, and support key institutions and artists at transitional points in their careers, he says.

Hybrid models, artist-run initiatives, suburban art trails, pop-up events such as last weekend’s Beaufort Street Art Market, open studios and the rise of online galleries are all part of the evolving art scene.

Raw Artists is an online-based global arts network which frequently organises shows in Perth and other cities around the world.

Nikki Mauri, who has run laneway shows and other pop-up art exhibitions around Perth for several years, is the outgoing organiser of the Perth Raw Artists showcases in which audiences pay an entry fee to watch performances and check out the work of local artists and designers.

Mauri says the shifting landscape is not all bad news as artists exploit new ways to reach new people.

“The logistics of having an exhibition in a gallery is unreachable for a lot of people so doing something collaborative is more effective,” she says.

“The beauty of the Raw showcase is that we don’t have a commission so artists get to sell their work for whatever they want to sell it for and keep all the money.”
While Raw has become a great conduit for emerging artists, some more established figures stranded by the closure of galleries have established their own space in Subiaco under the name of the Art Collective WA.

After 15 years in Dalkeith, Anna Kwiecinska is closing her Gadfly Gallery and moving into the Anglican Church’s share-use Pelican Centre in Swanbourne under the new name of Gadfly Art to reflect a wider mix of cultural and creative experiences.

Anna Kwiecinska and Paul Rowland Bent, of Gadfly Gallery, at their new location in Swanbourne. Picture: Robert Duncan

With her partner Paul Rowland Bent, Kwiecinska has evolved Gadfly into wine, food and art-appreciation sessions, music and poetry events, art and yoga retreats in India and Bali and cultural tours in Italy.

Bent says these are challenging times. “Unless you are particularly inventive it is my genuine belief that you will just go out of business and it is only a matter of time as to how long it takes,” he says.

Trevor Richards is one of several artists who hosted visitors for an art-trail tour of their home studios near the Fremantle Art Centre at the weekend.
He says people seem increasingly more comfortable about visiting a house than a gallery.

“Visitors get a look inside an artist’s house and get to see art as well, a doubled viewing experience,” he says.

“This way of showing art has been forced by the closure of galleries but in our particular case it’s more an opportunity to broaden our viewing and possibly buying public.”

Artsource chief executive Gavin Buckley says galleries and curators have reported a noticeable decrease in sales over the past four years that can be attributed to the self- managed superannuation fund changes which included tighter auditing and storage rules.

“It was clearly a valuable support to the art market. While the regulations have changed in respect of how art is treated as an asset by these funds, acquiring art remains a richly rewarding personal experience, as well as a potential investment.”

Like Frangos, Emerge Art Space director Sherri Staltari prefers to focus on the positives rather than repeat a refrain of gloom and doom.

“As with many small businesses in Perth the tight economic climate means we all have to be flexible and adapt to change,” she says.