Remarks by Damien Minton at the SAVE TAFE ART
rally held at the Damien Minton Gallery 19 November 2012
To witness a living, breathing 120 year old institution like
the Newcastle Art School being kneecapped by the O’Farrell government is a
scandal.
This act of school yard bully boy violence is distressing as
it has sent the dedicated art teachers, both full time and part time, into
trauma as they scramble to salvage a new structure to stay alive in 2013.
The actions of this NSW government to stop funding the
visual arts departments within the TAFE system from next year shows how we as a
society has slipped back into a new cultural dark age.
As one drives through or visits many regional towns in NSW
there are still stately Victorian era buildings with the words ‘School of Arts’
sitting proudly on the façade.
They symbolise our 19th century great great grandfathers and
mothers developing and maturing an understanding and resolve in placing the
visual arts and crafts shoulder to shoulder with their work ethic of employment
and business.
At the turn of the 19th into the 20th
century there was real pride in using a visual language to inform, define and
articulate community and society.
The O’Farrell decision to stop funding the visual arts
within TAFE illustrates how far we have regressed from that proud stance.
We are back into the cultural dark ages, the neo age of
despots, it is an act of Cromwellian proportions.
Macquarie Street has no understanding or knowledge as to how
the visual arts in TAFE is an essential component of an economic eco system
that circulates well beyond the art school walls.
The vast majority of artists this art gallery presents teach
in the TAFE system, passing on their knowledge and skills for 8 to 10 hours a
week. Without it, their art
practice becomes vulnerable and precarious.
Also, the first solo exhibitions by emerging artists staged
at this gallery have invariably been recent graduates from TAFE.
The eagerness and enthusiasm of the artists’ families and
friends is far more meaningful and infectious than the nickels and dimes that
flow from the red dots on the white walls.
It gives young artists the confidence and possibility of
being productive creative human beings.
The TAFE system provides a ‘hands on’ environment for
creative people to be nurtured and encouraged, a ‘pastoral’ care model of
teaching.
So to suddenly witness these ‘culture houses’ being
destroyed is like watching a You Tube video of an Israeli missile slamming into
its target.
The complicity of the TAFE bureaucracy to step aside and
point at the soft target is cowardly and deplorable.
The art staff involved in this essential part of the broader
visual arts industry now have to gasp for air in order to survive. They are scrambling and stitching
together a new fee structure for students in order to survive, all within four
months.
You may ask yourself, why?
Cutting the funds of Fine Arts in TAFE compared to the
enormity of NSW INC is hardly a cost saving measure.
It is the mosquito, not the elephant, in the room.
These gruesome and lethal cuts stem from the war the
apparatchiks within TAFE have staged for decades.
It is a war against creativity, because creativity will
never fit neatly into an economic determinist excel spreadsheet. The visual
arts is irritating and the word culture immediately makes the eyes roll.
The bureaucracy’s obsession with quantitative data goes
right up to the level of the Bacon and Kapoor shows currently on offer this
summer.
Money spent in the visual arts can be justified if it fits
into an economic strategy.
These people get turned on by balance sheets neatly adding
up, they get orgasmic when red ink turns into a surplus.
So they fear creativity, even within themselves. They don’t understand it, they don’t
want this irritation.
So get rid of it.
Ironically this becomes the main weapon for artists and arts
administrators.
It is something O’Farrell and his dark age Macquarie Street
cronies fear the most … the joy and potency of creativity.
DAMIEN Minton
Director
Damien Minton Gallery
NOVEMBER 2012
