Brisbane’s artist-run scene in the 1980s
When speaking at a public forum which accompanied the Ephemeral Traces exhibition at the University of Queensland Art Museum, artist Brian Doherty described the profound cultural shift that has occurred in Brisbane since the 1980s by remarking ‘well just being a young person back then was somehow threatening…’ This comment vividly captures the atmospheric change like none other because it describes both the push and the pull of attitudes and perceptions. Being young or a student, being an artist or an intellectual, was politicised without you having to go to rallies or print posters or join public campaigns. Just hanging around in a public place or driving a car, generally doing life, you would encounter a regular level of police harassment and public scorn. It is a far cry from the brave new world of today that welcomes youthful nimble creatives to invent their opportunities and carve their entrepreneurial pathways. While an artist’s path is, in many ways, as precarious today as it was then, this is undoubtedly a shift for the better and Ephemeral Traces is an important exhibition for provoking such reflection.
Curated by Peter Anderson, Ephemeral Traces surveys artist-run practice in Brisbane during the 1980s, focusing on five key spaces—One Flat, A Room, That Space, The Observatory, and John Mills National. This period was of course the final decade of the conservative Joh Bjelke-Petersen government which was ultimately exposed by the Fitzgerald Inquiry to be corrupt, violent, discriminatory and unprincipled. Commentators such as Liz Willis have argued that ‘[Bjelke-Petersen’s] almost twenty year reign also produced a magnificent by-product: a remarkable oppositional culture manifested in music, theatre and art; media, comedy and satire’.1 And while this exhibition