Research Abstract

Artist-led approaches to new forms of social & economic organisation in the visual arts sector

This research project shines a spotlight on the practices of Australian artists and the multifarious creative forms they devise to make change within the visual art sector. The project examines the social and economic implications in terms of Australian arts policy, advocacy and research, to provide context for a parallel analysis of forms of artists’ self-organising, practice-led labour politics, and alternative forms of teaching and learning. The project will assert that traditional career pathways for visual artists are increasingly untenable for the majority of working visual artists in Australia. In identifying, articulating and advocating for new forms of social and economic organisation, this study will demonstrate how developing new and evolving strategies are a necessity for artists and are a natural extension of their artistic activity.

Bio

Channon Goodwin is an artist and artsworker whose work engages with collective, collaborative, and artist-run practice and forms of artist-led organisation building. Channon is the founding Director of Composite Moving Image Agency & Media Bank, and Convener of All Conference, an organising network comprised of 17 artist-led, experimental and cross-disciplinary arts organisations from around Australia. From 2012–2021, he was Director of Bus Projects, one of Narrm/Melbourne's longest-running Artist-Run Initiatives. He aggregates his various collaborative and independent videography work under Fellow Worker. In 2019, Channon was awarded an Australia Council for the Arts International Residency at ACME in London, where he examined the lineages of artists’ video and filmmaking cooperatives. He also edited Permanent Recession: a Handbook on Art, Labour and Circumstance (2019), published through Onomatopee Projects. This book is an enquiry into the capitals and currencies of experimental, radical and artist-run initiatives in Australia and the labour conditions of working artists.

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