COLLABORATIVE ART IN A STAGNANT CULTURE
TO NAME SOMETHING IS TO ASSERT POWER OVER IT, to fix and trap it within a pattern by establishing a self-fulfilling prophecy. An analysis entitled "Brisbane Conceptualism" or "Brisbane Minimolism" would assert - in much the same way as the title "Brisbane Dodo" - a common identity unifying art practice in this city. The outstanding characteristic of Brisbane art, however, as anywhere else, is the artists' individuality, locking any overall qualities which would designate a "Brisbane" style. Many different external influences hove affected it, some from the history of modernism, others from contemporary trends, not just a concern with the immediate personal, social and political situation in Brisbane.
However, there ore contextual peculiarities of art production in Brisbane. It is worth establishing these within a tighter theoretical structure. They parallel the environment surrounding the Dadoists of the First World War in central Europe. In particular, the amount of collaborative interaction among the- young artists in Brisbane is a similar response to the destructive political situation and the inheritance of a stagnant culture.
This situation is not readily comparable, except superficially, to that of other Australian state capitals similarly placed on the peripheries of the cultural determinants centered on Sydney and Melbourne. Brisbane's rural conservatism and the recent opportunistic, urban, economic-exploitation imposes a paradoxical mentality onto the younger artists in particular. This is a condition of seige in which the walls seem on the point of imminent collapse, alternating with the opposite numbing effect of a seeming removal from active reality; both anxiety and vacuity in on abse9ce of historical temporality and the accompanying possibility of change. It is an acute problem in Brisbane to reject surrender to extremes of anxiety... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline