How collaboration through alternative spaces changed art in Australia in the seventies | Susan Rothnie

Summary: Collaborations in Modern and Postmodern Visual Arts | Susan Rothnie The seventies decade in Australian art history is often dismissed as the ‘anything goes’ period. Characterised by the rash of anti-establishment arts ‘movements’ that suddenly appeared, it has been seen as a transition period between Modernism and Postmodernism. The idealistic cultural, social and political impulses which were sweeping the West around this period profoundly affected many artists. Encouraged by promise of change offered by ‘alternative’ culture, they experimented with new modes that challenged traditional art categories and the Modernist art narrative. Their aim was to fabricate a new cultural paradigm which recognised the existence of multiple valid alternatives. Operating collaboratively and collectively was essential for artists wishing to explore and assert new concepts of social subjectivity at this time. As a profusion of interest groups surfaced, from political to environmental to feminist, they were sustained by the emergence of a vast array of art spaces, often collectively run. Alternative and experimental spaces such as Pinacotheca and the Ewing and George Paton Gallery in Melbourne, the Tin Sheds and Inhibodress in Sydney, and the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide, the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane and Praxis in Perth encouraged collaboration between like- minded artists, who sought both to cut through traditional frameworks and hierarchies, and to express their regional identity. Their facilitation of the production of new work and its critical reception helped reconfigure the art scene. This paper will examine the way in which collaboration and collectivism in the art scene in Australia in the seventies contributed to a fundamental shift in the way art functioned. It will also demonstrate how that shift foreshadowed the inclusive attitudes which typify the processes of art making today, and contributed to a fundamental change in the way Australians view themselves. Susan Rothnie has completed degrees in art history and visual arts. She is currently undertaking her PhD at the University of Queensland, researching Australian art in the 1970s.