New ideas

Over the past two years I have been on a committee that awards funding grants to creative individuals including artists, musicians, dancers, film makers, writers, performers etc. twice a year. There are always many more submissions than can be supported from the small pool of money available.

As we know, ‘creatives’ are some of the hardest hit by the current crisis with limited opportunities to pursue their careers and minimal support available. This week I have reviewed around 40 submissions for some recently released additional funding targeted towards the effect of coronavirus on our creative practitioners. Once again, I have been overawed by the ideas people in the community have come up with, and the small amount of money they are seeking to realise them. Unfortunately, only about half of these ideas will get the funding sought.

How have people reacted to the crisis and what sorts of things have they been thinking about?

Many of the projects have responded to the social isolation people are experiencing, with plans to enable ‘connection’ in simple but powerful ways in local communities. There has been particular awareness of the social and emotional issues confronting culturally and linguistically diverse populations, as well as the very young and very old, and groups who have been marginalized from the mainstream (especially First Nations people, recent arrivals, intellectually disabled and gender diverse people). The projects have included regular streamed music and dance experiences, story-telling forums and craft-based interactive learning environments. Often these projects have secondary functions including the acquisition of new skills and/or the reinforcement of healthier ways of living.

Other projects have looked at how communities can be revitalized by animating places within the local environs.  The idea of maintaining a ‘local lifeblood’ through coronavirus-related street art, and video projections in closed or vacant retail spaces has been very popular.

Some artists are using the ‘pause’ to reflect on broader existential issues including death, dying, loss and grief, contagion and isolation. There has been a resurgent interest in vanitas themes and also apocalyptic anxiety, and these are being expressed in a range of different media – from painting and photography to film and theatre and even in soundscapes.

A number of artists – often from a personal perspective – are confronting specific themes including the covert and overt racism that has emerged. While others are looking for broad links that connect contagion with climate change concerns and with consumerism, in socio-political endeavours.

Finally, there has also been an interest in mining history to find correlations between past calamities and the present crisis. Connections with the past are interesting and meaningful ‘hooks’ and are relevant for local history, for education, for empowerment and for the provision of hope. Many of the works that explore this, focus on the ‘little details’ of lockdown life in a narrowing down, or focussing in, that privileges the specific rather than the general.

Being on the committee that awards the funding is both a privilege and problematic. It is a constant reminder of the extraordinary number of talented individuals who are striving to make our city a better place…  And it always feels like Sophie’s choice …

As I was taking some ‘time out’ from the grant proposals, I came across two other endeavours that speak to creativity at the moment. 

The first is from San Francisco and is one of the many quirky ideas that address social isolation. It is called ‘QuarantineChat’ and is the brainchild of a pair of inventive tech savvy artists (Max Hawkins and Danielle Baskin) who have invented a creative way to serendipitously connect people who are self-isolating. The call service ‘QuarantineChat’ links people randomly around the world for ‘a chat’ about anything. It runs via the Dialup app, costs nothing, is encrypted and anonymous, and operates globally in a range of time zones. It also has an element of humour which includes ‘elevator music’ at the beginning of calls. If you are bored, lonely, don’t mind talking to a stranger and game for something different have a look at the website: https://quarantinechat.com/.

The second is from Melbourne-based creative, Dodi Rose.  She says: “As I am self-isolating in my apartment, I am learning the art of (sock) knitting – a skill I had not acquired. Grace Cossington Smith’s painting of her sister Madge knitting socks for the troops in the trenches of WW1 displays a deep concentration of a largely private domestic subject matter. The quiet stillness of the painting helps me adapt to this new reality of self-isolation and social distancing of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The painting with its thickly applied areas of paint, vigorous brushstrokes and broken colour is an amazingly accomplished work for a 23-year-old student – and showed what was to come.  Unlike my attempts at sock knitting, which remain rudimentary!!

I noticed that the Art Gallery of New South Wales has another painting by Cossing Smith from the following year. Do we think that the sock knitter has given up knitting or is she now studying a pattern for a fairisle sweater as her next project?