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Positioning Artists Internationally 1.00 Introduction This essay discusses an art-based practice as a way of exploring how a dealer gallery can work with artists to position their entry and participation in the international art world. The following is an edited version of an MFA dissertation documenting the author’s practice. Working with two New Zealand artists, Scott Eady and Darryn George, the author as Director of RH Gallery, New Zealand, undertook a number of interventions to advance each artist’s practice from an established national practice, to an international one. The interventions by the Gallery resulted in the artists exhibiting at the Melbourne Art Fair 2012 (George) and the Gwangju Biennale 2012 (Eady). In September 2012, RH Gallery was invited by the Global Arts Affairs Foundation to submit proposals for New Zealand artists to exhibit in the Personal Structures exhibition at the Palazzo Bembo, an official collateral event of the Venice Biennale 2013. Proposals for both Scott Eady and Darryn George were accepted. RH Gallery, worked intensively with both artists, undertaking a variety of initiatives to brand both them and the Gallery. Interventions included securing financial backing; achieving art sales; gaining private patronage, public grants and funding; networking with art professionals; setting up and managing the exhibitions; and developing publicity materials - including advertising and exhibition catalogues. These interventions taken fell within a specific trajectory that characterises interventions taking place at the high value, high profile, ‘spectacular’ end of the international art world.1 The utility of conceptualising the art world, through this and similar paradigms, has been considered by multiple writers and is discussed below. The terms ‘art world’; ‘art market’; and ‘contemporary art’ are explored before turning to consider an institutional approach to understanding the art world, and why an institutional theory of art is of particular relevance to this study. Major issues relating to Agency and the primary roles of the participants, artists and gallery are considered. A wider understanding of the economic and political global system is also examined; how this underpins the international art world, determining how it operates, who participates and what the outcomes are; and ultimately, who benefits. Also discussed are the alternative options for artists operating internationally; whether or not these are realistic options; and is another art world possible ?

                                                                                                               1 Terry Smith, What Is Contemporary Art? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 7.  The ‘Spectacularism”(original emphasis) of the top tier of the art world includes the extravagant, overstated and monumental manifestations of museums, art auctions, art fairs, biennales and other institutional structures.  

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2.0 Background: Broad Theoretical Approaches: Institutional and Art Historicism /Aestheticism

2.1. Institutionalism; and Key Terms

Arthur Danto’s “The Art world”, provides a useful starting point. In defining “art"2 Danto first proffered the notion of the "art world" - a philosophical definition proposing that this world provides theories of art; which participants assume in order for there to be objects considered ‘art’. 3 Dickie’s institutional theory of art expanded on Danto’s ideas.4 The importance of Dickie’s and similar theories are that they are concerned with how art becomes art and that art and its value are separated. This provides a useful notion of the art world as a political, social and economic network that as with all networks, generates external forces, or network effects. There are more incentives created by the art world to be connected with the disincentives than not to be connected.

Howard Becker expands on Dickie using a sociological methodology to define the “art world”.5 With recourse to ideas of “collective activities” and “shared conventions”, Becker defines art by the collective activities that constitute the production of art, rather than by the artwork as the end product.6 He also describes art world participates or members who cooperate to create and expand a aggregated art world system. It is the system not the individual that constitutes an art work. Becker’s ideas are useful as an elaboration on Danto and Dickie to the effect that an art object, as such, can only derive its existence from within a social system.7

A theoretical approach that allows space for the existence of (sub) art worlds within the greater art world, as well as the way their existence affects both the production and consumption of artwork, is directly relevant to the experience of how the two artists in this study participated, produced and exhibited their work for national and then international consumption. Eady and George produced artwork as part of a network of co-operating participants, all making contributions to the final result.8 As the artists participated in this network, becoming more involved and dependent on it, so too did they become constrained by it – to comply and conform to its norms.

                                                                                                               2 George Dickie, "Defining Art," American Philosophical Quarterly 6, no. 3 (1969). 3 Arthur Danto, "The Art world," The Journal of Philosophy 61, no. 19 (1964). An example

provided of Danto visiting Andy Warhol’s exhibition of Brillo Boxes at the Stable Gallery in New York. He asked himself: What made Warhol’s Brillo Boxes different from commercial Brillo boxes? His answer was - the Art world.

4 George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974); Art Circle: A Theory of Art (Chicago: Spectrum Press, 1997).

5 Howard Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 1; "Hypertext Fiction," in Cultura & Economia, ed. M Lourdes Lima dos Santos (Lisbon: Edicões do Instituto de Ciências Sociais, 1995), 3-5.

6 Art Worlds, 25-30. 7 Ibid., 29; and "Hypertext Fiction," 3. 8 Ibid.

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Becker elaborated on the conventions that play a major part in regulating the relationships between artists, the audience and other players; and the rights and obligations of these parties9 While Becker points out that these conventions make it possible for ready and efficient coordination of activity between artists and other art world participants such as their dealer or a curator, the opposite is also true.10 Becker illustrates a hierarchy of art worlds and the close and extensive relationships that operate with the other art worlds from which they try to distinguish themselves. Discrete art worlds share sources of supply with others, recruit personnel from them, adopt ideas that originate in them, and compete with them for audiences and financial support.11 All of which can lead to friction and inefficiencies in coordinating activity.

Expanding on the above, and Pierre Bourdieu's sociological and economic analysis 12 Julian Stallabrass, Ian Robertson, Terry Smith, Don Thompson, Dianne Crane, write about contemporary art, the contemporary art world and art market, and some of the critical issues facing this sector. They apply a broad spectrum approach to their analysis, covering global art movements and trends, and employing a wide range of documentary evidence to do so: from interviews, newspaper accounts, reviews and critics, to catalogues and records from primary and secondary sales sources. Drawing on these, they are able to outline the generalised factors that shape ideas of what art (and art history) is – including world political, economic and social trends.

2.2. The Value of an Institutional Approach – Accounting for Complexity

In terms of this practice, Smith’s taxonomies, especially his “world currents”, and specifically the top level current, provides a useful context as to how the art world as a network and hierarchy of players operate: as movements and within institutional frameworks. The notion of the “art world” and its constituent parts, including the art market, help to contextualise this practice and provide a valuable resource in terms of understanding institutional, economic and political forces at play, and how to respond to them.

The three currents are as follows. First, the Global, or top end of the art world, including associated sub-currents. This is a mix of the spectacular and avant-garde shock gambits, re-modernising, and retro-sensationalism. 13 The second current, labelled the

                                                                                                               9 Becker, Art Worlds, 29. 10 Ibid., 30. 11 Ibid., 36 12 See Pierre Bourdieu and Richard Nice, "The Production of Belief: Contribution to an Economy

of Symbolic Goods," Media, Culture & Society 2, no. 3 (1980). See also Pierre Bourdieu, "The Historical Genesis of a Pure Aesthetic," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46(1987): 201-10. In his critique of naïve relativism, formalist aesthetics, and philosophical aesthetics, Bourdieu writes, at 208-209, “the social conditions through which the social conditions of freedom from regard to “external determinations’ get established: that is, the process of establishing and relatively autonomous field of production and with it the realm of pure aesthetics or pure thought whose existence it makes possible.”

13 Ibid., 265.

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postcolonial, is defined by diversity, identity and critique.14 The third refers to small-scale, modest, local and grass-roots level artist initiatives, encompassing the modest counter-culture, and counter-institutional artist-run collectives.

Smith’s current of contemporary art at the global level is a definitive force in the art markets and the museums of the major art centres. Since the 1990s it has become a global phenomenon as art worlds have connected with each other. New communication technologies and escalating social media are continually shaping the future of contemporary art and expanding possibilities and opportunities.15 It is within this first current, the top-tier, that this study has sought to participate and define its results. Smith’s taxonomies of sensationalism and spectacularism16 explain the trajectory of the biennales in which Eady and George participated, past iterations of which have included spectacles like Marc Quinn’s Alison Lapper Pregnant, 2005; and Quinn’s major exhibition on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venezia for the La Biennale 2013.17 Quinn’s art was spectacular in that the number and material value of his sculptures up staged most if not all of the official national and collateral events, were situated in the most prominent public entry points by air and sea, and were of a scale that ensured they were a spectacle for all to see.

To summarise, there are a number of reasons why the institutional art theory approach is relevant to understanding the art world and this study. Firstly it provides a way of describing the social, economic and political conditions that make art what it is today. Secondly, it provides a framework for the analysis of art as being encompassed by a complex field of forces that are not visible in the artwork itself. (This, of course is the main focus of this study, rather than detailed analysis of artworks with which aesthetic critics might be more concerned). These forces provide the means or the conditions of possibility for art to emerge, without which it simply might not. Thirdly, it contextualises art - its making, exhibiting, collecting; and the sub- currents like the art market - within a larger social and economic field of interdependent networks of participants whose relationships, exchanges and working agreements constitute the entire art world. Even if, as Bell18 and McNamara19contend, Smith ill- defines 'contemporary art' relative to (post)modern art; he nonetheless provides a compelling account as to how art is produced, consumed and traded in the post-1990 period with which this study is concerned.

                                                                                                               14 Ibid., 252. 15 Smith, What Is Contemporary Art?, 267 16 Ibid., 265 17 Alison Lapper Pregnant, 2005 was a huge purple air inflated sculpture dominating the entrance

to Venice, for the duration of the 2013 Venice Biennale. Quinn’s solo show, curated by Germano Celant, including sculptures, paintings and other art objects, provided an extensive retrospective exhibition of more than 50 works, including 15 new works.

18  Gerry Bell, "Terry Smith - What Is Contemporary Art? (Review)," accessed March 25, 2014, http://capscrits.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/terry-smith-what-is-contemporary-art.html

19 Andrew E McNamara, "What Is Contemporary Art? A Review of Two Books by Terry Smith," Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 12(2012): 252-58.  

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The art world’s top tier manifests a monumental phase of modernism that is usefully expanded by others. Robertson holds that it is the ‘tax havens’ and the ‘free ports’, which reflect the movement of global surplus capital, that are determining which cities will become the future centres for contemporary art.20 James Henry traces the world economy and private offshore wealth creation with the vast amounts of untaxed income that it produces. This is the stuff of which collectors are created. They then seek commodities with ultra high price tags. Henry states the rationale behind these tax havens, why they exist and why there is so much surplus cash available in the world to spend on luxury goods such as contemporary art in these terms: “A significant fraction of global private financial wealth -- by our estimates, at least $21 to $32 trillion as of 2010 -- has been invested virtually tax-free through the worlds still- expanding black hole of more than 80 offshore secrecy jurisdictions”. 21 The distribution of wealth in a global economy is crucial as to why there are super-rich collectors who can spend so much on art, build such huge museum edifices and create such a demand for contemporary art. Thompson provides an economic analysis behind the art market and the branded artists, museums, collectors, dealer galleries, art fairs, biennales and auction houses.22

3.0 Agency

3.1 Artist Agency

The global art world presents a hierarchical and institutionalized setting where the behaviors and actions of a few very powerful participants affect the opportunities available to artists at regional and national levels. The differences in power and cachet at the regional and national levels are magnified in global art world activities. At stake are the economic rewards that take precedence over symbolic rewards as seen in the kinds of culture that circulate in this world and the ways rewards are produced and accessed. This art world is described as a ghetto “powerless in its confinement” –and in terms of artists’ agency (and other participants) - “Its functions: to soothe the loss of capacities, autonomy and experience; to gather and channel the pressure for change; to neutralize the desire to actualize the promise by actually changing life.” This art world continues, “so long as capitalism calls the shots”.23

How does the artist know they have made it ? A few numbers of individuals and organisations from a select group of countries dominate the global art production and the dispersion of culture. Their activities affect the opportunities for artists, galleries, and collectors at the provincial (regional and national) level. The global art world sanctions sites for art world activity so that artists, galleries, exhibitors and collectors can assemble and advance a consensus around what is being produced and who and what is the best. Art fairs have assumed a major role and take up temporary residency in primary locations across the globe, with venues reused in successive years. The crucial                                                                                                                20 Iain Robertson, A New Art from Emerging Markets (Surrey: Lund Humphries, 2011), 192-96. 21 James S Henry, "The Price of Offshore Revisited," accessed March 22, 2014

http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Price_of_Offshore_Revisited_1207226 22 Don Thompson, The $12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark; The Curious Economics of

Contemporary Art and Auction Houses (London: Aurum Press, 2008) 23 Gene Ray, “Avante-Gardes as Anti-Capitalist Vector”, Third Text, vol 21 issue 3 (2007): 242.

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difference between regional and national art worlds compared to the global art world is the extent to which the latter focuses on achieving economic rewards. In terms of the artist’s agency, this benefits a few branded artists. The majority of artists are excluded. As the extremes of neo capitalism concentrate ever-increasing wealth in the hands of a diminishing few, so the global art world grows more dominant, controlling the production, sales and profits of art.

Artists (along with other art practitioners), appreciative of this global context, are faced with limited choices. Ray suggests there are three.24 They can opt to participate (as this study tried to) and depending on the levels of success or otherwise, journey “back and forth between the inside and outside”, as opportunities arise and allow. They may go several rounds before they give up.25 There is a remote chance they may be selected and become a branded artist.26 If they do, this will not be of their own making; nor have much to do with the quality and sincerity of their art making.27 Alternatively artists may choose to remain inside the art world (to a lesser or greater degree - depending what they can achieve), and settle for adding more critically affirmative art to the quantity of commodity driven international art styles. Thirdly, they can attempt to remain outside the system and operate in alternative nodes of art activity.28 In reality, as artists lack any real self-determination over whether they are in or out, option one and two are the same. Eventually they realize that “Working with the capitalist art system is necessarily a losing proposition”.29

Options one and two only reward the branded artist, branded galleries and branded collectors. For the rest, there is little but accommodation and resignation to the neo-liberal global art activities. Artists such as Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami are entrepreneurs producing art priced to match the pockets of their collectors. They are more concerned with building their brand, their name and reputation (superstar status)30, than producing original work with their own hands.31 They often direct the production of art work which is undertaken by large teams of artists and the assistants they employ. The kinds of spectacular wow-factor art they produce requires significant financial investment by branded galleries or collectors.

                                                                                                               24  Ibid.,254  25 Terry Smith, “The Provincialism Problem”, Artforum, vol. XIII, no. 1 (September 1974): 57 26 Don Thompson, The $12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark; The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art and Auction Houses (London: Aurum Press, 2008), 64 27 ibid., 58. “Those who have broken the bind have done so largely because the system is structured so that several artists every few years have to break the bind.” (italics original) 28 Diana Crane, Culture worlds: from urban worlds to global worlds, (October 14, 2010). ESA Research Network Sociology of Culture Midterm Conference: Culture and the Making of Worlds, (October 2010): 2, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1692092, accessed 27/6/2014. Whereas Crane (referencing Batheldt and Schuldt (2008: 864-865) refers to nodes in respect to trade fairs, in terms of “a temporary microcosm of an entire industry-“, Smith applies the nodes to areas of activities where artists make their accommodations, adapting and trying to survive outside the global art world. Terry Smith, “Contemporary Art: World Currents in Transition Beyond Globalizaton”, The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds (German: Center of Art and Media Karlsruhe, 2013), 186-192

29 Ray, ibid.,254 30 Thompson, ibid., 64 -65, and 80-91 31 Crane, ibid., 7 .

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These artists get to make what they like, choose which museum they will exhibit in, which branded gallery they will work with, or whether they will work with any, and increasingly, which auction house they will access in order to sell directly to the public.

For the vast majority of artists who do not achieve the branded-artist level of agency, the opposite in opportunities, rewards and status, is true in every respect. The gallery chooses them, the museum exhibition opportunities are rare and cherished, introductions to wealthy collectors never happens, sales and publicity are sought-after, and sales of their art by auction houses signals waning collector interest and falling prices. Thompson provides a template of how to become a ‘hot’ artist. They need to pass the first level of gatekeepers – to be shown by a mainstream gallery; then move to a branded gallery; represented by superstar gallery; cleverly marketed in branded collections and with branded museums; and then have work placed in evening auctions with Christie’s or Sotheby’s.

Meanwhile artists not at the exalted level content themselves with trying to get included by making it – at a lower level art fair. Here symbolic rewards are traded off in favor of financial gains. The agency of the artist, to exhibit, is compromised. At the Melbourne Art Fair 2012 one NZ dealer gallery (which also represents Darryn George) opted to exhibt all their artists with paintings of a uniform one meter square. These covered the walls from top to bottom. The aim was to maximize sales, by providing convenience (price and size) to collectors. Art sized for cash and carry, hence optimizing the costs of the booth. RH Gallery opted to represent George as a solo artist, exhibiting paintings with an overt regionalist content. Hence the Gallery financial risks were high.

A fourth possible option (refer Ray above), is where artists remain inside the global art system but attempt to resist or change - for ethical and not artistic reasons - some of the control and influence of super-rich patrons. A recent example of this is the nine artists boycotted the Sydney Biennale 2014 forcing the resignation of director Luca Belgiorno-Nettis as the Biennale Chairman. They also forced withdrawal of the major sponsor Transfield Services (owned by the Belgiorno-Nettis family) because of their contracts operating the Manus Island and Nauru detention centers.32 Stallabrass’s comments on this corporate sponsorship migrant link33, as driven by the globalization of the art world.

3.2 The relationship of the artist and their dealer gallery - how they work effectively together – and the extent to which they retain agency

                                                                                                               32 Mike Seccombe, “Biennale of Sydney patron Luca Belgiorno-Nettis under fire”, The Sunday Paper, 28 February 2014, http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/society/2014/02/28/biennale-sydney-patron-luca-belgiorno-nettis-under-fire/ : accessed 21 July 2014. “In one day this week, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis made more money than most of us will see in a lifetime. The share price of Transfield, the company his father started, soared almost 25 per cent. The spike on Monday followed the announcement that the company had won a $1.22 billion, 20-month contract to take over the running of the Manus Island immigration detention centre, in addition to its existing contract, entered in 2012, for the centre on Nauru” 33 Stallabrass, ibid.,4 “The daring novelty of art, with its continual breaking with convention, is only a pale rendition of the continual evaporation of certainties produce by Capital itself, which destroys all resistance to the unrestricted flow across the globe of funds, data, products and finally the bodies of millions of migrants.”

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The branded dealer often undertakes extensive marketing campaigns for their best artists. This includes public relations, exhibitions, museum loans, publications and advertising. In representing George, RH Gallery followed this model. Following George’s Atua exhibition in 2011, and leading up to the Melbourne Art Fair 2012, the Gallery developed a dedicated branding and marketing campaign. This included all the above; not for the purposes of sales, but to build the brand of the gallery and the artist. This was intensified when the gallery confirmed representation for George for the Venice Biennale. At an international level there are some critical departures from the above model. As Thompson notes, given the levels of financial investment required to represent an artist internationally, no branded gallery will undertake this unless they have sole representation of that artist. This was not the case with George, and as discussed in Chapter 3, the results were damaging to the Gallery.

George’s response to pressure from his multiple NZ dealers was to distance himself from RH Gallery’s brand and attempt to represent himself at Venice.34 When this was rejected by RH Gallery (See Chapter One, p17-18) the artist- dealer relationship became increasingly fraught and eventually broke down. The opportunities for RH Gallery to market and promote its brand, and that of the artist, was greatly diminished and then faltered altogether.35 Consequently there were no art sales, placement in resulting international museums or international dealerships. With no written contract, the parties were reduced to disputing their verbal undertakings and severing their ties.36

3.3 The pressures of operating internationally - the relationships as they unfolded

Given the levels of investment required by branded galleries to achieve international status for their artists, it is not surprising that a small and under resourced gallery failed to achieve this. R H Gallery resorted to an extensive patrons campaign in order to finance George to Venice.37 This took considerable time, resources and energy that would have otherwise been directed to marketing and branding campaigns for both artists. The last three months prior to the biennale were crucial to making media contacts and connecting with international collectors. The Gallery’s attention to this was severely compromised by the size of its operation. In the case of George, success became even more problematic as the dysfunctional relationship with RH Gallery intensified.

3.4 Art fairs Expanding on Becker’s38 influential writing on art worlds and Bourdieu’s notion of

                                                                                                               34 ibid., 51. 35 Ibid., 51. “Artists may think there is an incentive to sell through multiple dealers, because competition would improve the terms offered by each. They quickly realise that without exclusive representation, a dealer’s promotional efforts would also benefit any other dealers handling the same artists – and so no dealer would do any promotion.”  36 Thompson, ibid., 49 37  Given the costs of his exhibition, and support from patrons, trust and his employer it was not necessary to organise a patrons campaign for Scott Eady. 38 H.S. Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley, University of California Press: 1982). Refer Chapter 2.

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symbolic capital, 39 Crane explores the premise of two art worlds, one global and the other urban.40 These differ in a number of ways –how they affect opportunities for artists, sellers and collectors; the characteristics of their participants; where the locations of activities occur; the nature and production of the material that is created for display or sale; and in the reward systems offering varying levels of symbolic or material rewards. Crane examines artist motivations in terms of symbolic and material rewards hypothesising that power and prestige at the national level are magnified at the international level where the global economics financial system dictates that economic rewards take precedence over symbolic rewards.41

“I define a global culture world as one in which a small number of organizations from several countries dominate the global production and dissemination of culture. Their activities affect the opportunities for creators, sellers, and purchasers at the urban level. Global worlds need places where producers, sellers and buyers congregate and in the process develop a consensus about what they are doing and who is doing it best.42

Central to this global art world system is the function – role, activities and location – of the art fairs43, and in particular the top four of these, Maastricht, Art Basel, Art Miami, London Frieze. 44 Art fairs take place in temporary locations but most are repeated annually or biannually in the same location. Over the past 1o years the number of art fairs have increased incrementally such that by 2012 there were more than 180 art fairs occurring world-wide and throughout the year.45 Competing with the two top branded auction houses, Christie’s and Sotheby’s they are a must attend for the top branded galleries as they draw the best and richest of art collectors.46The rich collectors visit because the superstar dealers are exhibiting their superstar artists.47 Georgina Adam 48, cites the reasons for the proliferation of fairs as: 1) the need to offer a buy-it-or-you’ll-lose-it situation to challenge the auction houses; 2) a way of extending a gallery’s global reach; 3) a way of making contacts with both artists and buyers around the world; and 4) the need to be part of today’s event-driven culture. As only a minority

                                                                                                               39 Bourdieu, Pierre, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (USA:

Columbia University Press, 1993 ) : 40 Crane, Cultural worlds: from urban worlds to global worlds:1 -2 41 Crane, Culture Worlds: From Urban Worlds to Global Worlds, 1 42 ibid.,1 43 ibid., 2 44 Crane includes the New York Armory Show and FIAC in Paris, but excludes Maastricht). 45 Georgina Adam. Market, Issue 236, June 2012 http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Fair-or-foul:-more-art-fairs-and-bigger-brand-galleries,-but-is-the-model-sustainable?/26672, accessed 9 July 2014 “The explosion in the number of art fairs is the most significant change in the market since the turn of the century. The numbers tell the story: in 1970, there were just three main events (Cologne, Basel and the Brussels-based Art Actuel). But the number has mushroomed in the past decade: from 68 in 2005 to 189 in 2011.” 46 “Air Service Basel handles record aircraft numbers during Art Basel 2014”, in http://www.businessairportinternational.com/news.php?NewsID=60115, accessed 9 July 2014: Recording over 300 private jets handled at the airport during the 2014 Art Basel art fair. 47  Don Thompson, The $12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark; The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art and Auction Houses (London: Aurum Press, 2008), 101 Thompson lists the top 20 wealthy active collectors.  48 Adam, Georgina, “Fair or foul: more art fairs and bigger brand galleries, but is the model sustainable?”, The Art Newspaper, Market, Issue 236, June 2012,

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of commercial galleries in New Zealand participate in the secondary market the first of her reasons is not relevant to this study. But the other three are and provide a major impetus for an increasing number of significant galleries to participate globally. A fourth more pertinent reason for New Zealand commercial galleries is that their artists want to participate internationally, for 1) monetary gain; 2) exhibitions in international locations both public and private 3) inclusion in international collections public and private; 3) international publicity, critique and acclaim. For the more established artists, producing art with higher price tags, their galleries have to operate where the customers have larger wallets. 3.5 Biennales The global art world accentuates the importance of economic rewards over symbolic rewards. Powerful participants from a few countries dominate the production, exhibition, sales and profits. Fuelled by increasing income disparity concentrated in fewer yet highly mobile hands, High Art has become a vehicle conferring cultural credentials, prestige and sophistication on the one-percent, which form the economic hub of their countries. As art fairs have grown and proliferated to support High Art excesses and dominance, a corresponding development of biennales has evolved with counter exhibition activities that support another parallel art world (or worlds), in international communities across the globe. “The tension between the homogenising and anti-homogenising forces of globalisation is captured in the biennial, as it foregrounds both international and local art, and highlights the complex relays between them.”49 Over the past 30-year biennales and triennials have become a major force evolving as a structural exhibition option, in their own right. Smith’s applies a continuum of sites for contemporary art exhibitions with biennales falling somewhere between institutionalised structures such as museums, to more specialised exhibition venues such as single artists or period museums, university gallery or research collections50, and the open ended art projects like Oda Projesi – Room Project51 (NZ examples, et al or Pacific Sisters52). The important point here is that with the more experimental structures undertaking exhibitions as part of their research, educational activities, temporary and virtual initiatives, the focus shifts – and the "event and the image prevail over the place and duration". 53 At one end of this spectrum biennales offer an open-ended statement clear of curatorial control. They are experimental, radical and innovative, and they challenge new                                                                                                                49 Terry Smith, "Biennales and Infrastructural Shift Part 1", Art Asia Pacific, 79 (Essays Perspective - USA Jul/Aug 2012): 3. 50  Examples of single artist collections - Gore Gallery (Hotere collection) and the proposed Len Lye Museum in New Plymouth. Also foundations which include exhibitions as part of their research or artist programmes i.e. Hocken Library, University of Otago, and Wellington City Art Gallery or Dowse Art Gallery specialising in exhibiting changing and special travelling and co-shared curated exhibitions.  51    A collective of women who staged community art projects between 2000 and 2005 in Istanbul 52  A collective of Pacifika artists staging events and art projects during the between 1998-2004 in Auckland 53  Smith, "Biennales and Infrastructural Shift Part 1, 1-4. Smith's uses as an example Oda Projesi's "Room Project", a collective of three Istanbul based women artists who staged 30 between 2001 and  

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directions for future art practices. The art is more likely to be critical, drawn from symbolic and expressive practices, and displayed via new technology, video, cinema and social media platforms (You Tube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.,). Biennales often fill backstories for artists thinking, art production, and display which might otherwise remain invisible. They facilitate communication exchange and connectivity between local, urban and international communities dislocated and unheard in the global art world. They are less likely to be tied up by High Art dictates and art market forces, themes, definitive displays and strong curatorial control.54 Biennales such as Venice55 or some Asian or Middle East biennales (Art Dubai), fall more in the spectacular, High Art institutional end of the spectrum. Others, Sao Paulo, Havana, Manifesta56 Documenta and mostly, Gwangju 57are formed around the interconnectivity of local and international communities. There are however, complex diverging undercurrents to how biennales develop, deviate and evolve. Pre 2000 Venice demonstrated greater global outreach and was freer from institutional bureaucracy to experiment with curatorial arrangements and exhibition structure than it has since58; Gwangju 2010 took a step back (refer footnote 78), as prior to this editions had been directed by younger, more philosophically, ethnically and geographically diverse curators; and in 2012 Sao Paulo, retreating from the influence of the international art world, moved from debating political/artistic debate an inquiry (2010) to a ‘safer’ exploration of poetics.( refer also footnotes 40,43 and 44) 3.6 Other options for the regional artist in a changing global art world Are there other ways for artists to work internationally? Artists who are unable or unwilling to pursue the High Art world? Artist residences, crowd funding, new technologies and new gambits by institutions such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid) and the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), are put forwards as examples. Claire Bishop contends that along with initiatives such as “L’Internationale” (including five institutions - Van Abbemuseum, Ljubljana’s Moderna Galerija, Antwerp’s

                                                                                                               54  For example Massimiliano Gioni’s preference for definitive and theme curated exhibitions as Director of the Venice Biennale 2013 and Gwangju Biennale 2010. 55 The primogenitor of biennales, the Venice Biennale began in 1889. Over the decades since it's inception Venice had offered a global reach and a degree of freedom from institutional red tape and historical baggage. However, critics observe that since 2005 Venice has become more institutional in its approach. Over the past three decades the other biennales (and triennales) that have followed have a very distinctive format departing from the spectacular and the grand national, collateral and private events that now sprawl across the city of Venice for its six months duration. (also refer footnotes 43 and 44) 56 The nomadic biennale, changing location as it is intended to engage countries at the volatile boarders of the European Union. 57 Founded in memory of the repression of the Gwangju Democratization Movement in 1980 when over 3,000 people we killed, wounded or went missing, the Gwangju Biennale has had a mixed history of being one of the more experimental biennales (with innovative curators such as Charles Esche, Hou Hanru, Yongwoo, Okwui Enwezor). Gwangju like Havana, Taipei and Istanbul take place on the margins, “where the economic stakes are lower but where the intellectual and the political stakes have never mattered more.”(refer footnote 44 Claire Bishop, 3). 58 Claire Bishop, “Venice’11 : Safety in Numbers”, Artforum, (2011), http://artforum.com/inprint/issue=201107&id=28835, accessed 23 July 2014, 1-3.

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MuKHA, Barcelona’s MACBA, and Bratislava’s Július Koller Society) that share their collections, questioning centralizing master narratives of art history, and investigating new paradigms of translocalism, offer real alternatives. She argues that these institutions are asking the “big questions - regarding our relationship to history, our consumption of images, the production of meaningful connections between different generations and geographies, and the envisioning of new social and political possibilities.” 59 Describing themselves as nomads of contemporary art, who travel the world from one residency to another, there are artists who exchange their services and art production for accommodation and a studio. Art residencies first began to emerge (1960s) as a vehicle for artists to resist the exchange value of art. Given that these residencies mostly focus on the production of site specific art work it is arguable whether they do not in fact form part of the global art world hierarchy.60 However, often residencies are linked to biennales or art projects. Thus the status of the residency contribution, as an alternative, according to Smith’s spectrum of institionalised infrastructure to “open-ended inventiveness”, will depend upon which biennale, museum or project they are assigned to.61 Smith refers to the “under- the –radar proliferators”, which fit into the third current of his spectrum, along with interactivity as alternative spaces and temporary settings. 62 These alternatives are all constantly changing and developing, and are all ‘entirely experimental’.63Smith argues that in this current – accessing new technologies etc., - although not necessarily the case - are the curators (and artists) most likely to be turning their backs on the global art world.

Smith’s conclusion on the role of biennales is pertinent here. In naming new technologies as a structural medium for subversive potential –is “this mistaking a medium for a subject?”64 This is an essential point. Whether the medium is biennales or new technology, it is the substance of the art making that matters most and this includes the ability for artists (and other art practitioners) to gain symbolic and financial rewards other than those dictated by globalism and a commodity driven High Art world.

Discussing resistance to art world servility and the predicament of global art and institutionalised practices (of museums, art fairs and some biennales) Julian Stallabrass argues that as long as capitalism is the dominant world system, art will be forced to toe the line.65 Smith’s optimism in asking the question – “can curators best advance innovative art by investing their energies in creating new kinds of infrastructure ?’ is rebuffed, convincingly. Stallabrass argues that the material forces driving biennials are the same as those driving the expansion of museums and other global art world institutions. Spectacular cultural events and institutions compete globally for investment, sponsors and tourists. Dominant art forces prevail and – “Just as business executives circled the earth in search of new markets, so a breed of nomadic global

                                                                                                               59 Claire Bishop, ibid., 3 60 Hans Belting, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel, ed, “Lost in Translation: New Artists’ Biographies”, in The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds (Germany, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, 2013): 432-35. 61 Smith, ibid., 4 62Smith, "Biennales and Infrastructural Shift Part 1", 2  63 ibid., 64 Smith, ibid,3 65 Stallabrass, Art Incorporated :The Story of Contemporary Art, 193-5

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curators began to do the same, shuttling for one biennale or transnational art event to another, from Sao Paulo to Venice to Kwangju to Sydney to Kassel and Havana”66 Like branded artists, seeking celebrity status. Curatorial collaboration was key for the ‘linkages and collisions’ of ROUNDTABLE, the theme for the 2012 Gwangju Biennale. This formed the title and a metaphor to describe the working relationship of the co-directors, as well as their expectations for discourse and interaction at the event. While a pair or trio of biennale co-curators is common with biennales, Gwangju, with six curators broke new ground. 67 They selected artists, art works, event design, projects and programmes that would allow for the creation of a unique condition in which dialogue could be furthered around six key sub-themes. With the emphasis on experimenting with the notions of connections as well as collisions (of social, geographical, political and personal histories and experiences) among the co-directors themselves as much as the selected art works and artists, it was not surprising that the co-directors, not the artists or their art work dominated the show. This was confirmed by the experience of Eady.

4.00 Globalisation, the Global Art World and a Preferred Response 4.1 What is meant by globalisation in the context of this practice? A discussion about art and the global art world the term ‘globalisation’ requires some clarification and definition. Some theories take the perspective of transformation, others a clash. Weibel argues that the economic and political forces that led to the hegemony of the West i.e. the nation state and capitalism, is being threatened from within, by ‘creative destruction’ and ‘innovation’.68 Furthermore, that globalisation is giving rise to the spreading of territorial system of nation states and with the breakup of Western domination, they will eventually be included, not excluded from a contemporary global art. This, he argues, is an opportunity – an alternative – for re writing art, political and economic history on a global scale.69

Globlisation theories e.g Hardt and Negri70, hypothesis about global domination with diminishing boundaries - and that the emergence of an international contemporary art world has erased the impact of geographical prerequisites as a determining factor in the construction of an artist’s success. Biennales serve the medium of exhibition for this development (Smith71, Crane72). Resulting global dissemination and the evolution of the biennial model from exhibition (based on national representation), to invited artists,

                                                                                                               66 Stallabrass, Art Incorporated :The Story of Contemporary Art, 33 67 Nancy Adajania (India), Wassan Al-Khudhairi (Qatar), Mami Kataoka (Japan), Sunjung Kim (Korea), Carol Yinghua Lu (China) and Alia Swastika (Indonesia).    

68  Peter Weibel, “Globalisation and Contemporary Art”, in The Global Contemporary and the Rise of the New Art Worlds (London: The MIT Press, 2013): 20  69 Ibid.,27 70  Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2000).  71  Terry Smith, "Biennales and Infrastructural Shift Part 1", Art Asia Pacific, 79 (Essays Perspective - USA Jul/Aug 2012): 1-4.  72  Diana Crane, Culture worlds: from urban worlds to global worlds, (October 14, 2010). ESA Research Network Sociology of Culture Midterm Conference: Culture and the Making of Worlds, (October 2010): 1-2, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1692092 accessed 27/6/2014.  

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represents the internationalisation of the contemporary art world (Smith73, Weibel74, Belting and Buddensieg 75). This alternative model covers all countries and enables widespread and non-discriminatory (race, nationality, gender, etc.,) artist participation and recognition. Belting writes, “ More than on hundred biennials, in which traveling curators operate as global agents, present packages of international plus regional art to cosmopolitan audiences in ever-new venues. This is the quintessential constellation of art’s globalisation,”76

This view of globalisation is world encompassing and is thought to lead to the heterogenisation, or diversification, of art. It assumes that globalisation reflects a decline of the pre-eminence of the West and the emergence of countries previously excluded, including China, India, Africa, Cuba, Brazil. Countries which have not only gained a presence in the global art world but that their visibility is held to be more equally distributed, inclusive, and eventually, will come to the fore (Roberston77).

Robertson provides a more nuanced view on cultural globalisation and its effects, open to combining elements of the different theories and alternative viewpoints, to simple distinctions of the local vs. the urban.78He refers to the effects of urbanisation and mass communication, and stresses in particular the capacity of people today to transition between local, national or global orientated levels and thus their involvement in different spheres”. Further, he questions the tendency to consider local and global culture separately and as being in conflict.79 However, as argued by Crane, Stallabrass, Ray, et al., increasingly it is the economic power, of wealth generators (Hong Kong), 80 and free ports (tax havens), 81 – as a storage for wealth (London, Dubai, Singapore), that determines which nations or cities as Free Zones (Beijing),82 that make themselves the dominant centres for art buying collectors.

Crane proposes four models of globalisation– cultural imperialism, cultural flows or network, reception theory and cultural policy. Each of these reflects a specific view on how globalisation has shaped the production, distribution, reception and consumption of

                                                                                                               73  Smith, ibid., 3.  74  Peter Weibel, “Globalisation and Contemporary Art”, 20-21. 75  Hans Belting, Andrea Buddensieg, “From Art World to Art Worlds”, The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds (Germany, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, 2013): 28 -9. 76 Ibid.,29  77  Roberston, A new Art from Emerging Markets, 196-7  78  Ibid.,53.

79 Ronald Roberston, “Glocalization: Time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity”, 34. As underscored when discussing cultural flows theory, new cultural forms may emerge as a consequence of the mixing of global and local culture, called hybridisation. The two notions sometimes overlap and represent what is referred to as the particular in the universal. As an example, Robertson refers to the nation-state, which is universal in its organisation yet clearly marked by its unique or particular features. Accordingly, Robertson proposes considering globalisation as ‘glocalisation’, in which the global and the local are combined.

80 Iain Robertson, ibid., 193-4. 81 Ibid.,194-5. 82 Ibid., 195-6.

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culture over the last 20-25 years.83 These four models reflect a current approach to the cultural globalisation debate and usefully clarify and qualify the effects of globalisation on the contemporary art world as a whole.

4.2 Contemporary art as a product of the globalisation of economies

In order to explore new possibilities Crane, Stallabrass, and Ray et al., critique the wider power structure of the capitalist system itself, as one which underpins globalism and the micro worlds that operate within it, including the global art world. Rather than accommodating globalism and working within it, they stand back from it and examine alternatives for art in anticipation of a new system where capitalism is replaced by something else. As a consequence, opposition to the status quo is necessary and provides a valuable perspective for critiquing it.

Art production can be explained in terms of the business model of modern branded dealer galleries and their commercial goals of creating scarcity by limiting the supply of art to only the wealthiest collectors. Branded artists respond to dealers and collector demands and this reflects in the art produced. Art is commodity, with exclusivity, novelty and luxury the key elements of this business model. Art becomes a positional good. While status spending is not a new phenomenon (refer Veblen’s concept of “conspicuous consumption,” 1889)84 “recent appropriation of a portion of society’s creative culture to the status of a positional good, affordable to a minuscule fraction of the world’s population, is inherently limiting and elitist”.85 This is the stereotype model of cultural consumption of the local by the economic imperatives of capitalism. Alternative and subversive models propose bottom up initiatives based on local initiatives where images, meanings, spatial concepts, aesthetics and values associated with specific localities are produced and distributed within the global art economy.

In summary, a macro definition of globalism, as supported by an understanding of how capitalism works, as the preferred critical theory to analyse global art production. Further, that it is Marxist theory which provides the most comprehensive and sustained critique of capitalism, and is therefore essential to a full appreciation of globalism and by implication, the global art world.86 While Keynesian economic theory also offers a critique of capitalism it is still in favour of capitalism as the preferred economic system. So for example, Tony Judt’s applies Keynesian economic theory (as opposed to Freidman libertarian economics), as a moderating force to limit some of the excesses of neo capitalism.87 His economic analysis of the failings of neo capitalism as it has given rise

                                                                                                               

83 Diane Crane, 'Culture and Globalization: Theoretical Models and Emerging Trends', in Global Culture: Media, Arts, Policy, and Globalization, eds. Crane D, Kawashima N and Kawasaki K, (New York: Routledge, 2002): 1-25

84Veblen, Thorstein, Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (NewYork: Macmillan, 1899), 3.

85 Ibid., 48  86  Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right ((London: Yale University Press, 2011), 7-8. 87  Judt, ibid., 44-58.  

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globalisation, opts to critique it from within rather than abandon it in preference of an alternative or something new.

4.3 What are the determinates that support the global art world Power and prestige at a national level is dominated at a global level in a centre-periphery model in which a few nation states, and more lately, a few private individuals within those states, control and dominate the production, sales and profits. The current world order operates as a capitalist economy and since the 1970s this has continued to transform along with globalisation. In the past 40 years the West has undergone vital changes including shifts “to a ‘post-industrial’ culture of consumerism, communications, information technologies and the service industry. Small scale, decentralised, versatile, non-hierarchical enterprises were the order of the day.”88 Deregulation, repression of workers organisations and transnational corporations, growing with the aid of new technologies and communications, followed. Manufacturing was increasing outsourced, and investment followed the search for the cheapest source of labour. Then came the mass international migrations to wealthy economies, sweated labour and land acquisitions in poor unregulated countries, and privatisation of public facilities and slashed welfare in developed countries.89 Eagelton notes that all this occurred in response to international competition forcing down profits. What followed was “The displacement of investment from manufacture to the service, financial and communications industries – as a reaction to a protracted economic crises- .”90 The overall effect of this globally is that capital is now more concentrated and predatory than ever before. Developing a case for why there is such extreme wealth in the hands of a few - no-longer the 1.0% - now estimated at 0.1%91; and why the disparity in the distribution of the world’s worth continues to grow, James Henry writes - ‘A significant fraction of global private financial wealth -- by our estimates, at least $21 to $32 trillion as of 2010 -- has been invested virtually tax-free through the worlds still- expanding black hole of more than 80 offshore secrecy jurisdictions’ -. 92 Henry explores ideas on the scope of the political and economic forces that operate to expand globalisation, as the macrocosm which envelops and provides the favourable conditions, which support and grow the global art world. The global art world does not operate in isolation. It is part of a much wider global economy which is in turn determined by global political forces that support polices of wealth creation and distribution. 4.4 The international trade of contemporary art drives the content, or

                                                                                                               88Eagleton, ibid., 4 89 Ibid., 3-5 90 Ibid., 5  91  Andrea Fraser, “1% Art” Who are the patrons of Contemporary Art Today ?”, Are We happy Yet?, vol 100 (2012): 1-4, https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/100/1-percent-art.html , accessed 4 August 2014.  92 James Henry,“The Price Of Offshore Revisited *New Estimates For Missing Global Private Wealth, Income, Inequality, and Lost Taxes”, Tax Justice Network (2012):

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cultural diet of the world’s wealthiest of art collectors.?

Globalisation enables the extreme wealth of buyers in emerging economies to purchase contemporary art produced in the West just as the super wealth buyers from Europe and the United States buy art produced in emerging art worlds.93Apart from the auction houses, the art fairs have played a key role in matching global demand and supply. European and American fairs have seen new participants and visitors from emerging markets, while a host of fairs have been established in emerging art capitals such as Shanghai, New Delhi, São Paulo, Moscow, or Abu Dhabi. For example, Art Basel recognized the long-term potential of the Asian art market when it announced the acquisition of Art Hong Kong (2011). The profit motive of artists reflects in the art they make. The art content has to be easy to recognise and digest, with iconic or provocative images. Such images are frequently borrowed from popular culture. A significant part of the artist’s art work is produced for one or two art fairs. To increase production, artists organise their studios with large numbers of studio assistants in order to free up their time for marketing, or exploring commercial ventures, and maintaining a strong presence in the media.

Iain Robertson develops an argument for free ports, which become localities, as art markets where accumulated wealth is spent by art wealthy collectors. Capitalism nurtures an ever widening gap in the distribution of wealth and resources.94 It expands the wealth into the hands of a diminishing few. The global contemporary art world has become a product of our politically determined economies where the individuals and corporates reside in free trade zones to accumulate more wealth (Henry95), and where contemporary art can be bought and sold without restrictions. “This means that super-rich individuals are increasingly acting as citizens of multiple jurisdictions at once, even though they may be resident nowhere for tax purposes; that they are able to relocate quickly across borders; and that they are able to acquire representation without taxation, the ability to exert local political influence in multiple jurisdictions, independent of whatever taxes they pay in any particular jurisdiction.”96 Roberston suggests that China, India and the Persianate will eventually come to dominate the international art markets to the eventual exclusion of Western taste and sensibilities and with their own cultural tastes determine the content of international art.97

4.5 The options – what are they? In ‘This Way to Exit” Gene Ray considers the writing of Stallabrass’s Art Incorporated

                                                                                                               93  Sotheby’s and Christie’s organize sales dedicated to art from India, Russia, China, or Latin America, and have opened branches in the Middle East and Hong Kong. In 2010 the auction market for fine arts in China surpassed the American one, accounting for 33 percent of the world’s auction revenue. In 2013, China accounted for 24 percent of the market, a 2% decline from 2012. www.bloomberg.com%2Fnews%2F2014- accessed 4 August 2014.

94 Judt, ibid., 12-21.

95  Henry, ibid., 40 “- that less than 100,000 people, .001% of the worlds population, now control over 30 percent of the worlds financial wealth.”

96 Ibid., 41 97 Roberston, ibid., 196-7

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and concludes that, of the four options Stallabrass proposes as alternatives to participating in the, global art world, it is the fourth that offers the most promise. The second and third options include political activism and the linked exploitation of technology mediums to side step the global art system.98 These are problematic. While biennales and exhibitions apply thematic and curatorial approaches that explicitly criticize neo liberalism, they are invariable neutralized by the institutions which host them. If nothing else, the very act of exhibition ‘conventions of passive and isolated spectatorship’ neutralize them.99 While new technologies, such as the Internet provide a medium to exit the gallery or museum, and have democratised artists techniques of appropriation and displacement; they are not without their problems. They too can succumb to passive and isolated spectatorship as well as consumerist activity contrary to the desired politicized participation. Stallabrass’s fourth option Ray explains as - ‘to challenge the illusion of art’s uselessness by producing world of explicit use’.100 Here Stallabrass means to attack art’s autonomy, as upheld by institutional and global art world hierarchies, by reviving avant garde options to relink art with the everyday. A revival of the avante gard anit-capitalist struggles on a global scale is advocated as feasible given current resurgences of political and economic struggle, aided by qualitative increases in global connectivity, e.g social media. Stallabrass references Hardt and Negri’s Empire to support his hypothesis. Ray takes Stallabrass’s ideas to organise the avant garde to neutralize and resist art world institutions, a step further suggesting ‘deliberate rupture’.101 As Ray points out, this cannot be achieved by individual artists working in isolation. It will require collective action by artists (and other art world participants), and there will need to be a critical mass of support. Furthermore a call to act collectively, cannot be isolated to the art world. It must extend beyond and link to live struggles and social movements across the globe. Both Stallabrass and Ray are responding to struggles that are arising worldwide in response to the 2008 global economic crises; collective movements and resistance that have arisen since then, - e.g ‘The Arab Spring’ - and the use of technologies and social media to communicate and organise this. Buoyed by the global justice movement, Ray proposes a scenario for resistance and rupture. Firstly, to understand the current situation, artists (and other art practitioners) educate themselves about art under capitalism. Which also means getting acquainted with Marxist theory, as arguably this is the only comprehensive critique of capitalism. Then, with processes of ‘continuous discussion and debate’ and a vision for rupture, exit will provide direction for animated forms of living and values102. These values will be defined in ‘negating contrast to those that currently dominate the art world”103The first phase will require a “selective and progressive detachment from the most corrupted and neutralising institutions (galleries, magazines, art fairs, the worse museums and

                                                                                                               98 Julian Stallabrass, Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 188 99 Gene Ray, ‘This Way to Exit: On Julian Stallabrass’s Art Incorporated”, Third Text, 21, 4 (July, 2007): 392 100 Stallabrass, ibid.,195 101 Ray, ibid.,394  102 Ibid., 395 103 Ibid.

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biennials),” and ‘counter-institutions’ to be organised.104Then, phase two will continue to evolve on that development, along with the support of collective movements and struggles, to entice more wide spread participation in a ‘virtuous circle of collective (self) production.”105 4.6 Is another art world possible ? Opposition to globalisation and capitalism will require a rethink of political agency and collective subjectivity. Marxist theory, as the major contribution to theories critiquing globalisation will be central to this; as will theories which have since appraised and expanded on Marxist theory.106 As discussed above, their conclusions point to the necessity for liberation from the nation-state and old forms of sovereignty and global domination in order to create new forms of community and cooperation.107 Networks of alternatives and avant garde gambits will link up to form collective movements of resistance, which will subvert, and disrupt states apparatuses, and force transformation.108 Drawing heavily on Hardt and Negri’s Empire, Ray hypothesizes on two ways that current oppositional art practices are linking with activist networks of the global justice movement. Firstly he cites Critical Art Ensemble109 and Baghdad Snapshot Action Crew110 as a collectives of artists who carry on the battle of images and representations; actively engaged in experiments developing oppositional practices, and applying digital paradigms, technology and new media.111 These have been effective interventions that Ray points to as crucial ‘forms of contestation’. The second direction addresses art as commodity production and non-alienated productivity. Ray terms this “catalytic art" (borrowing Mel Chin’s term).112 Again, drawing on Hardt and Negri, Ray references their ‘biopoliticial’ activists who understand the workings of capitalist processes and respond by developing subjective forms and sophisticated strategies to avoid and bypass co-operation with constructions of commodity labor. Artist Mel Chin’s catalytic strategy, including a series of virus infiltrations of a television soap opera, were created in order that they could be subsequently reactivated by events and in unpredictable ways. Ray appreciates the value of Chin’s project as eventually having impressive results when this ‘viral infection of the ‘global electronic net’ becomes a model (along with other models), of new collaborative forms and strategies. The aggregate of these two models of resistance, as they link up with networks of resistance beyond the art world, become rhizomatic113 Paradoxically, they mimick and

                                                                                                               104 Ibid. “-reinvention of previous models of radical culture: collectives and cooperatives, online journals and podcasts, arts of living and modes of making).” 105 Ibid. 106 Gramsci, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Michal Foucault and Hardt and Negri. 107 Hardt and Negri, Empire, 346-7 108 Ray, ‘Avant Garde as Anti-Captislist Vector’, Third Text, 21, 3 (May, 2007): 244-5 109 http://www.critical-art.net, accessed 26 July 2014 110 http://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000168.html#000168 , accessed 25 July 2014 111 Ray, ibid.,568 112 Mel Chin, “My Relation to Joseph Beuys Is Overrated.” in Joseph Beuys: Mapping the Legacy, ed Gene Ray (New York: DAP Ringling Museum of Art, 2001):133-7 113 Hardt and Negri, ibid., 152-3. Ray also applies this terminology.

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adopt the strategies of capitalism itself; applying complex strategies of doubling and masking, as evident in corporate organizational theory. “By doing this, by overcoming their isolation through productive practices of collaboration based on solidarity, the subjects of postmodern work are actively producing the desires and forms of subjectivity that push beyond capitalism and can eventually destroy it.”114 Ray’s two models overlap, and become increasingly subtle and intensive; and more pervasive. He urges oppositional practices and rhizomes of resistance to become more militant so as to put an end to the capitalist world system. This is a discourse proffering hope, that another art world is possible. While it supports Stallabrass’s model for change, as outlined above, it goes beyond by advocating an end to capitalist domination, of not just the art world, but the economic and political world systems, of which this is apart. To respond to this challenge artists will require considerable of courage. They will also need to be well informed and have a commitment that extends beyond their own self interest. In Ray’s words, their ‘delusional individualism, toxic careerism, submissive opportunism and impotent cynicism”.115 The choice to abandon a trajectory in the High Art world, offering rich financial and symbolic rewards, as sanctioned by the institutionalized art hierarchies, is a difficult one. If the opportunities present, as they did with Venice, the slim odds of succeeding are unlikely to deter artist fro their intent to try. Being marginalised at a local or regional level looms as a far worse option. For those troubled by ethical considerations (or raked by conscious by any of the above), any dilemma they have is likely to be overtaken by pragmatic choices to earn a living, produce art, secure opportunities to exhibit and achieve acclaim. 6.0 Conclusion This practice set out to examine how two regional artists working with their gallery could exhibit, sell art and develop careers internationally. Ironically, the trajectory of it’s success, including securing exhibits at the Venice Biennale, has taken this from being an exercise motivated by two regional artists marginalised and longing for international representation, to one that critiques the logic of the cultural, political and economic hegemony dominating the global art world and causing that marginality. This shift gives rise to an opportunity to question this marginalisation. In trying to understand how the global art world works, this practice has provided the impetus to explore alternatives for artists, galleries, and other art practitioners to develop strategies to exit what is essentially an ethically corrupt and bankrupt art world system. Given how the global economic system works, how wealth is derived and distributed, and who benefits, major ethical considerations confront the artists and their gallery on whether or not to participate. Despite claims to the contrary, Art and the art world should not act as amorphous autonomous entities that absent and shield artists and their dealers (and other art professionals) from political acts in pursuit of their art-self interests. Ultimately it is political decisions which determine the structure of the global economic system and it is this in turn determines the nature of the international contemporary art world, how it operates, who participates and who benefits. With this in mind, it is hoped that this writing informs a critical, political and ultimately an ethical decision whether to participate - with eyes wide open to both the dilemma of

                                                                                                               114 Ibid.,571 115 Ray, “This Way to Exit: On Julian Stallbrass’s Art Incorporated”, 387.

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our current circumstances and the opportunities to change this. It remains to be seen whether the options for change proposed by theories presented above will eventuate, but it is the commitment of this writer to participate and contribute to this change as it unfolds and the opportunities present. Rebecca Hamid MFA, PG Dip Art History, BA Hons

This article was presented at Art and Money Symposium Dunedin School of Art, 30 October 2013. It has been published in Art and Money (Chapter 7), in a publication of the Dunedin School of Art, 2015. It is a summarised version of the author’s Masters Thesis, published in October 2014, available from the Bill Robertson Library, University of Otago, Dunedin.

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