Art Work is Real Work is Art Work is Real Work

At the time of writing, I had been trapped in this cycle for months –

1. I want to write
2. Where do I start
3. When can I write
4. For whom do I write
5. Why do I want to write
6. Repeat

I think it has always been for me – to write that is. To map my reflections, my version of the story, my way of making meaning – to have a process that is more than a/the project; to articulate a practice. And I appreciate it being read and witnessed; it is a validation. It has some kind of an audience, and that makes me feel good. But if it is for me, then what is this urgency I feel when I haven’t written (and published on this blog) in a while? 

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Miki has started daycare and she is loving it. For three days a week, she is at what is essentially a free range chicken coop for pre-school children living their best lives. So I’ve claimed some structured time back for myself, for my creative endeavours and for my professional pursuits – but I’ll be honest, it’s not quite enough. 

I want to do more. I am hungry. And I want more. 

But what can more look like in this truncated work week? What have I learnt about how I work, and subsequently my relationship to work – that would inform how I want to work now? Financial/survival needs aside, what have I learnt about my practice, about art making, about what I care about etc. to consider how I would make whatever I am going to make next? In context, what have I learnt about the sector, the world, the climate — its realities and how fraught and challenging, and at times really disappointing; as well as what is emergent and exciting and galvanising — that would intrigue and inspire me? What paths are closing or opening ahead of me? What directions can, should and will I take? 

I mostly emerge from these reflections with more questions. “Questions beget questions” is in fact a saying I hold on to dearly. So here, I map some of the learnings and questions that I have been sitting with across the various streams of my life practice:

On Parenting

1. I am surprised by how much I love being a parent. And whilst I appreciate taking care of this child is an intrinsic part of this job description, I do not enjoy child caring as much.
2. I feel so much pride and joy encountering Miki when she is with and around other people. Whilst we do have influence on her being, this is when you witness who she is — her own person independent of us. And I love getting to know her. I love her. 
3. Somewhere in my early adult years, something clicked, and I recognised how much of a gift my parents gave me, whether consciously or intuitively — the freedom to be who I am. Everyday I hold on to that gift and hope that J and I can offer her that same assurance. So far, I think we are on track, and that comforts me. 
4. I have not felt ‘mom guilt” and I am grateful for that. I value the balance of being the best version of myself when I am with her; of being as fully present with her when I am with her; and quality over quantity. That means trying to carve out a world for myself in which I am meaningfully and realistically able to take care of myself and nurture my own pursuits, desires and ambitions. That feels like a constant struggle.
5. That struggle is not mine alone – it is a struggle for J, a struggle between J and I, and a struggle J and I share to work through all at the same time. 
6. Lastly, there could be a category on our relationship – but that feels like such a dynamic and amorphous reality that it would be unwise to put words to it just yet. As parents, we are lovers, best friends, partners, room mates, ships in the night all at once, and often these realities can change within minutes. Yet, in spite of the emotional fluctuations coloured by exhaustion, lack of space and time and conversation, and having a lot of our shared attention on this child – J has been a tether, and this relationship grounds me, even when I’ve felt like a feather carried away by the wind. 

On Making Art

1. I am deeply frustrated by the structures within which we make and present art. I am dissatisfied by the gaps at every stage of the process. The model is broken, it has already been said. And it feels immovable. But I want something else. 
2. The time it does take to seed, iterate and grow a work is longer than we first think. So how can we more realistically, better nurture that process? 
3. For a work to be a good match for the right presenter is a matter of alchemy; of great ideas and rigour sure, but also of relationship, timing, funding, chance – which for the most part, is outside of your control. What then, is within your control? How then can I consider my agency and autonomy in how I make what I make? 
4. Stamina, stamina, stamina. The difference between a good idea and a great idea, is how it simmers away over embers and keeps you motivated to keep tending to that fire to keep it going. 
5. And for who do we make with and for? I’ve been hungry for a living practice, entwined and embedded in the real world. Hypothesis and provocations to seed the ideas, and then tangible modelling for real world impact. What can this look like? 

On Working — Arts Organisations, the Sector and Management

As I officially signed out of Next Wave in late 2024, I wrote: 

It is a lonely job, it has often been said — I get that now.

No one else has the full picture. The more you explain, the more you risk being misconstrued.

The less you say, and you risk being misunderstood.

There are situations and conversations I wished I had moved slower through.

And there are situations I wished I had persisted harder, and with more urgency.

Operations was a huge personal learning curve.

And the constant curveballs from the world that got served was relentless.

And so my biggest lesson is that I should have reached out more. (this is a me problem, not a other people problem)

It was truly a right time right moment job back in 2021. 

I am not particularly interested in being a “career CEO” – or necessarily in any role in an arts management context. The model is broken, it has already been said. And I was interested in the opportunity to try something, anything with the platform that was Next Wave, in what felt like a time of change across the sector. I remember saying to friends and peers that I was curious about what I could do with a “platform, the resources and the power” to change the way we thought about art making and artist development etc. 

(I feel like I should preface this now – I think we did our best. I did my best. With what I had, and what I knew. And I had/have gaps in knowledge, capability and experience. I sure as hell have decisions I would now make differently. And I am accountable for it all. The rest of these reflections do not discount my understanding of my role and accountability. Nor does it diminish the efforts and impact of what we did manage to achieve as a team. We had really great people. We also existed in some really challenging times.)

I say now, most earnestly – not a lot. 

Not in the framework that is a small-to-medium arts organisation in the sector in the way that we know. And probably not in the political climate and risk appetite of the sector, and the government at large. 

I wanted to write in dot points like I did in the other two sections. But it is hard to distill these thoughts. That is because I have big questions like:

1. How do we really slow down as arts organisations?
2. How do we push back when funders, and your sector peers are expecting output? 
3. How do we work with and reconfigure the funding cycle rhythms and the ways we demonstrate output, outcomes and reflections/learnings/failures? 
4. What is an arts organisation’s core purpose and mission? Like really, really, at its heart – what it should do, what it says it wants to do, and what it does do? And how can we really, really do that? 
5. How can we genuinely, meaningfully, invigoratingly – play outside of our known spaces? Break our own expectations? Surprise ourselves even! 
6. How can we truly get to know our audiences? Do we even really want audiences? Or do we say we want audiences, but what we really mean is we want attendance to quantify engagement and ticket sales to make income so that we can argue for our relevance? 
7. For a climate this fraught in political will and funding structure (much less dollars), how do we actually back the work we do in the sector? 

Continues ranting and throwing fists at clouds…

–

I don’t have answers. And I don’t think I am near finding them. But I seek clarity in –

1. What am I excited by?
2. What do I care about?
3. What do I not yet know?
4. What is a story only I can tell?

And so, here are some of the things I am currently putting my time and energy in: 

On Governance

I have been properly thinking about governance and Boards since 2014/15. In fact, my relationship with Nicole Beyer and TNA started back then because I started a self-driven residency to uncover for myself what governance really means when you’re an independent artist, so distant from where big decisions are made that so directly affects you. Nicole was the first to say yes when I approached her to mentor me and to let me sit in on TNA’s board meetings. I take good governance seriously, and whilst it is still working within the model, this is where I feel the strategy and model conversations can be (though not always actually done) really interrogated. Or at least, where I can best support an organisation to function.

1. VicHealth – I’ve just been reappointed to a second term. I love the cross-sector, cross-portfolio premise – we are in the shared business of community. In the world of public health, VicHealth is a health promotion organisation – it is communications, storytelling, culture building, advocacy. I love the long arc of thinking through a ten-year strategy. I am invested in this strategy that I have been privileged to have been a part of building, with a focus on systems change. I’ve also appreciated the feedback from my colleagues, about the way in which my insights and ways of thinking / processing information have impacted their work outside of the Board room. I am increasingly curious about these spaces outside of the arts where I could have a stronger working relationship in and with.
2. NAVA (National Association for the Visual Arts) – I did not anticipate the Co-Chair appointment when I first joined the Board in October, but it was an opportunity to step up. It is a way for me to stay connected to the sector at large, to apply some skills and to stretch some others. I love the whole sector approach. I love the work NAVA has been focused on in recent years such as the Code of Practice – that has tangibly changed the ways in which artists and organisations have thought about their conditions of engagement, and paid and been paid. And in case it needed to be said, the whole lot of work that happens behind the scenes – member support, government relations, letters and submissions and more. And in recent months, the more public call-outs defending artistic integrity and freedom of expression. I’ve been a proud member, and now a proud Board director. And not taken lightly at all – a proud Co-Chair.  
3. Creative Recovery Network – Scotia who is the CEO was one of the first friends, that primary five pal who showed me the ropes at the school canteen in this art sector. Her stories and her experience which she shared as generously as her home and her friendship offered me the insights and courage as I navigated leadership in the same playground over the years. The organisation is unfunded. It desperately needs to find a way to exist, to function, much less thrive. And yet the work is terribly urgent – the role of the arts and culture does and can play as we navigate the increasing demand on communities in the space of disaster recovery and preparedness! She has spent years cultivating strong relationships with communities across the continent, but it is a field that cannot seem to find a clear foot in both the arts sector or in the emergency management sector. I am challenged to look outside of these conventions. An unfunded organisation has not much to lose – and it is surely possible to find other models here! 

On Art Making

I reckon it will be a while before a completely new idea will come about. There isn’t a lot of dreaming time in this parenting life. But also, there is a backlog of work to complete! 

1. Sincere Apologies – a work that was seeded by David Williams and Roslyn Oades; Dan and I were invited to come along on the journey as part of a Vitalstatistix Adhocracy residency in the 2020 lockdowns. The work premiered at Frankston Arts Centre in May, and will have a few more outings this year. It has been a pleasure to work differently with new collaborators; to return to the theatre space as a maker; to not play the role of a producer but be a lead artist; and to be able to finish a work. A work that thoroughly needs its audience to finish it on the night of its performance. A work that will change with its iteration, and over time. A work that says as much in the things it does not say as in the things it does. Whilst the making has finished for now, I am curious about its future iterations and how that collaboration, translation and rewriting can work. 
2. The Last Day of Summer – on finishing projects, this feels like the project that just cannot find a finish line. And yet, I want so much to see it come alive. Seeded back in 2018/19 with Dan, we had some funded development time earlier this year which was great to bubble away at my long-term relationship with Dan, and find new rhythms together in this art marriage, as much as it was to build the work. All we need is an actual outcome for it! More about this work in another post I reckon. But if you’re a presenter, or love the beach, or working in radio, or have funds to give – come and chat! 

On More than Art Making

Parts of these ideas have been sitting in the mental filing cabinet of ideas since around 2015. And it really is worth investing in relationships because it is in the growing friendship with Lichen that these ideas are culminating into something tangible and possible. This very tangible, possible thing looks like a 3d Ocean Farm and Artist-led Marine Research Lab. There are seaweed, oysters, artists and scientists coming together, hanging out by saltwater, a way to actually clean and cool the ocean where we live, agency and autonomy to research, experiment and create, and there will be a lot of swims. It is early days, but there is a very strong current and we are moving with it. If you are into clean oceans, farming, impact investment, blue economy, oysters and seaweed enthusiasts, food and hospitality – we want to chat!

On Finances and a Job

Time is running out for this financial buffer period I set myself. And maybe I am also craving a little more structure – driving all these projects independently is its own kind of tiring. Sometimes working for someone else is a different kind of surrender. 

I am open. But I want to be honest. I toggle between the idea of a job (any job) that I can switch off from when I am home. But I am acutely aware of the person that I am. And I am certain I will find some way of involving myself more because I want to try and make something out of an opportunity, or identify some gap that I could help fill. But if I were to consider leadership roles, I am also acutely aware of what that means – what are the compromises I am willing to make? The practical, philosophical and the ethical ones! 

So I am asking: What do I miss? What do I have capacity for? What work can I do? What work am I prepared to do? What kind of income do I really need?

And yet, what jobs are really out there?

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The odd thing about this parenting life is how little time you have for yourself, yet how much time you do spend with your own thoughts, in your own head. And perhaps the biggest tension in my first question – of feeling this urgency when I haven’t written in a while – is that I write to contain all the thoughts that whirl about in my mind, to tame it so it doesn’t overwhelm me. And given the length of this piece, it’s clear that if I didn’t get to writing this any sooner – then I was going to really float away in the wind. 

In our work conversations – Lichen is always asking “what are our elegant next steps?” Indeed, what are some of my elegant next steps? 

And what is the one next step? 

I really don’t know. 

An old post-it note surfaced in tidying up the study this weekend. Between the baby, house packing and moving and all, I didn’t expect to see this post-it at all. But I remember it. It was something I wrote as I was on the phone with Clello whilst we were in lockdown. 

Radical kindness 

Urgent optimism

And then I added later on –

To walk backwards into the future. 

I might have to sleep on all these some more.