Eugenia Lim, performance documentation from The People's Currency (2017), Federation Square, Naarm/Melbourne.
Commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art for AsiaTOPA 2017. Photo by Zan Wimberley, courtesy of the artist and STATION.

Sustainable strategies for the Australian visual arts and craft sector
Visual Arts Work: sustainable strategies for the Australian visual arts and craft sector aims to strengthen the industry’s ecosystem. In a context where artists’ incomes are low and falling, commercial galleries are financially vulnerable, and public galleries face funding challenges, this project addresses barriers to the sector’s economic health and the challenge of improving artists’ and arts workers’ incomes.
 
While the value of art ‘work’ has typically been understood in economic terms, we also recognise the need for greater insight into the social, cultural, and political values found in the negotiations and mediation of art to the public. Our approach recognises the diversity and hybridity of visual arts and craft work to include digitisation, internationalisation, community based and intersectoral partnerships.
 
The project will combine an analysis of art world value chains and emergent forms of economic, cultural, social and political organisation with quantitative and qualitative insights. It will propose interventions for arts industry and government policy to improve the economic, social and cultural standing of visual and craft artists and arts workers.  
 
Visual Arts Work is an Australian Research Council Linkage project led by researchers from RMIT University and The University of Melbourne, and industry partners the National Association of the Visual Arts (NAVA), and the Australian Museums and Galleries Association (AMaGA).

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Eugenia Lim, performance documentation from The People's Currency (2017), Federation Square, Naarm/Melbourne.
Commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art for AsiaTOPA 2017. Photo by Zan Wimberley, courtesy of the artist and STATION.
Visual Arts Work acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct our work. Visual Arts Work respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. Visual Arts Work also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we live and work. ​
This research is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council's Linkage Projects funding scheme (project LP200100054). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian Government or Australian Research Council.
​Updated 13 December 2022