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In years to come, when the corks are popping at gallery openings around the country, and the connoisseurs gaze casually at the bottles of rouge and blanc turning slowly in their hands, they should remember 1987 as an erratic year. Certainly not a hot year, at least in Brisbane anyway, where "hot" is a word definitely out of favour. Hot or not, since history only remembers those who speak in its own tongue, one must be thankful that no journals or papers were written about those past attempts to shoot Brisbane out to space in an expressionist time capsule. One need only cast a cursory glance around the local gallery circuit to see a very lively and diverse range of work.
The Brisbane art community has never looked so good. The commercial gallery scene has recently spawned new growth downtown, in the form of the Bellas and Roz MacAIIan galleries. Soon to come: James Baker's gallery In South Brisbane. The noncommercial sector is as powerful and stable as ever, with the Queensland Art Gallery and the Institute of Modern Art enjoying their respective figurehead status. Meanwhile, That Contemporary Art space and John Mills National, both in Charlotte Street, are the only galleries In Brisbane that are artist-run. The co-operative basis of the artist-run spaces plays the vital function of encouraging the interaction and involvement of younger and emerging artists.
Both in artist-run spaces, and in experimental projects, many of Brisbane's most Innovative artists have had to work without an established support structure. Since the early '80s, sustained performance work has come from One Flat and O'Fiate, Tim Gruchy, Zip, Virginia Barratt and Michelle Andringa who have had to create their... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline