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In recent years the arts sector has been selling itself as an industry that is big. The cultural industry, we keep hearing, is bigger than beer, or footwear, or whatever other slightly smaller industry sector we are able to identify. But we might remember that there are other statistics as well. Like the fact that average Australian household expenditure on paintings and sculpture is less than the amount we spend on blank video cassette tapes. While the size of the culture industry-which takes in everything from television to opera-may well be quite substantial, we need to recognise that the market for visual art and fine craft products is actually quite small. And, as the recently released Australia Council report, To Sell Art, Know Your Market, shows, buying art is not something that everybody does on a regular basis.
In essence, To Sell Art, Know Your Market, is a market research document; a survey of visual art and fine craft buyers that aims to assist those who sell art and craft to better serve their existing markets, and possibly to expand into new markets. The study, conducted for the Australia Council's new Audience Development and Advocacy Division by the research firm Quadrant Research, sets out to "provide a comprehensive profile of consumers and potential consumers of original contemporary Australian works of visual art and fine craft". (p.7) Significantly, the notion of "consumption" at play in this report is focussed on the purchase of works, rather than simply looking at them. While participation in many other areas of the arts does involve buying things-from theatre tickets to books-in the visual arts, it is very easy to be an active consumer without... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline