a multicultural History of Australia
Making multicultural Australia
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Period: Transforming Multiculturalism »
Commentary on: Arts for a multicultural Australia »
Prof Andrew Jakubowicz.
Text Commentary
Advocating diversity...
The meaning of arts for a multicultural Australia for all - artists and audiences - no matter the background
This painting, National Park on Fire, by Sydney artist Tie Hua Huang is a fine example of how artists from diverse backgrounds are enriching the arts in Australia. But this contribution is not always readily recognised.
It goes back to one of the big questions about multiculturalism - what is the "culture" in it actually about? Culture has many meanings, and it is useful to spread these out and understand what lines of thought each stimulates us to follow. Culture can include language, rituals, ways of life, values and beliefs. In all societies these many meanings of culture are given expression through creative activities - music, poetry, performance, painting, sculpture, storytelling, and so on - what we call the "arts" (though many societies do not have a separate category for this sort of expression, as the arts are integral to everyday life).
As Australia has developed as a multicultural society, many of the issues concerning cultural diversity have been taken up by communities and individual artists as they try to come to terms with a new environment, different values, challenges to their ideas and previous experience. When the first Europeans settled by Sydney Harbour in 1788, their artists used their British repertoire of ideas and vision to try to make sense of what they saw and experienced. It was many decades before the landscapes created by European artists began to reflect the local environment rather than replicate European landscapes transposed to the southern continent.
So the interaction between past and present, between a life experienced in another place and a present reality in Australia, underpins the nature of art in multicultural Australia. And the issues of assimilation, exclusion, participation and engagement which have been so much part of the many other areas of Australia’s development are present too in the world of the arts.
As multiculturalism has gradually gained acceptance, Australian society has opened up to the rich diversity that the country’s many ethnic groups have to offer. But how is this diversity reflected in the arts?
Artists in all art forms, regardless of background, have to work hard to have their work recognised. Inevitably, some degree of subjectivity is present when people judge artwork to decide who should receive funding, what kind of exposure the work deserves, what the critics will say about it. The very concept of "excellence" as the basis for judgment is problematic - one can only judge excellence on the basis of knowledge of the implicit rules of the art form, the possible range of its qualities, and the meanings embedded in its nuances. These are cultural skills, which have to be learned and developed over time. Judging expressions of cultural diversity is always a challenge to those who have a limited experience of other cultures and are not attuned to their complexity and subtleties.
Thus when they enter the Australian art world, many artists of non-English speaking background feel it’s harder for them, that they and their work are misunderstood, and sidelined or rejected because they’re different.
Since it was established in the early 1970s, Australia’s major arts funding and advisory body to government, the Australia Council for the Arts, has tried to engage with these problems, producing policies that attempt to redress the balance. You can have a look at its efforts, by referring in this section to documents the Council produced in 1992, 1993, 1996 and 1998. The Council also has a web-page at URL - http://www.ozco.gov.au.
In 1998, its policy statement reaffirmed its commitment "to recognise cultural diversity in the arts. The Australia Council’s Arts for a Multicultural Australia policy… is based on principles of access, diversity and participation in the arts." (Arts for a Multicultural Australia: Australia Council Policy on Australian Arts and Cultural Diversity, 1998.)
But whether or not the Council is successful in translating this ideal into reality is a topic of constant, passionate debate within the artistic community.
Policies and funding programs at local and state levels of government are also constantly open to debate, with different areas in the country receiving very different levels of support, both material and moral. Even the existence of such programs is often questioned, with some wondering whether they provide an excuse to marginalise artists of culturally and linguistically diverse background, catered to by their own structures.
Many would agree that this country has an enviable opportunity in the arts. Fostering a range of artwork that embraces our huge diversity can only help in the emergence of a truly unique body of Australian art.
But there are many indications that there’s still a long way to go in achieving a mature understanding of what Arts for a Multicultural Australia really means - for instance, arguments over the idea of "authenticity", and what place traditional folk arts have in modern Australia.
All these issues and more are explored in the Festival of the Arts section of Disc B (CULTURE). There is also a wide range of examples in this Festival of the Arts of the sorts of work that artists in all the art forms, and from many backgrounds, have contributed to Australia. Launch Disc B, and there you’ll find a fascinating taster of the visual arts, film, music, dance, theatre, poetry, and fiction, and so on, that our multicultural society is producing - enriching the Australian arts and all of us.
Further reference:
Gunew, Sneja and Rizvi, Fazal, (eds) Culture, Difference, and the Arts, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1994.