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).