Our agile and innovative artistes

antarctic dancerFiguring out just how much the typical family pays in taxes can be a bit nebulous, what with deductions and all, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that $30,000 dollars dispatched every year to the ATO sounds about right. And let’s also accept that, when a new bridge or the like goes up, families contributing a large piece of their earnings to the common good are entitled to look upon that structure with proprietorial pride. That’s our bridge, Mum and Dad might say as they drive beneath it on their way to work, whence the earnings that pay those taxes flow.

If bridges are not to their taste, not to worry, as there are other endeavours in which Canberra invests taxpayer money. Government spending is always “investment”, don’t you know, and some of these expenditures undoubtedly hold greater appeal to citizens of a more artistic bent. One such example might be the project now being undertaken by choreographer James Batchelor. That’s him above, demonstrating a rubber-limbed intimacy with the bollards aboard the CSIRO’s RV Investigator, currently en route to the Antarctic. The ABC has the scoop (emphasis added):

James Batchelor believes science and art can work together, and he has hitched a ride to one of the most inhospitable places on the planet to prove it.

Contorting himself around Australia’s new Antarctic research ship RV Investigator, the performance artist is giving scientists new insight into the world of dance during the 58-day sub-Antarctic voyage.

He has travelled 4,000 kilometres out to sub-Antarctic Heard Island, an Australian territory taking performance art to new extremes.

“It’s quite different, and I think also for the crew and the scientists are not used to having a dancer on board,” he said.

“So they might walk into a room and I’m on the floor, so it’s quite an eye-opener for them in terms of what dance is and where it takes place.”

The Canberra choreographer is one of two Australian artists on the ship; South Australian visual artist Annalise Rees is producing work at part of a PhD.

And that $30,000 mentioned earlier? It’s a number of very nearly as much significance to Batchelor as to the families from whom it was extracted in the name of the nation’s betterment. Without two recent Australia Council deposits in the dance maven’s bank account totalling precisely that sum, it is unlikely Batchelor would have polished his art to the gleaming degree now on display somewhere in the Southern Ocean. Indeed, who knows where his career might have stalled without the assistance of an enlightened government and its arts bureaucrats? Why, he might have remained a self-funded nonentity, condemned to writhe in obscurity beside lamp posts, trees, traffic signs and other inner-city fixtures! His handouts are listed below. (click to enlarge the image)

snot of the antarctic IIA quick check via the Australia Council’s “awarded grants” search page suggests fellow seagoing artiste, Annalise Rees, has not yet bagged any taxpayer dollars to support “her practice”, as the creatively subsidised like to put it. But going by one of her polar-themed “installations” (below), she would certainly make a likely candidate. Those bits of paper jammed into tall glass jars are entitled “7/8 Lay Hidden” and should be taken, perhaps, to reflect her thoughts on the nature of icebergs. Probably climate change, too, but that goes without saying.

iceberg artAs an artist yet in the early stages of her career, Ms Rees still has a some skills to master. Were she to stuff a sheet of dark paper into the work above, for example, it is entirely conceivable she might be eligible for an Indigenous and Torres Strait Arts grant, many of which seem very generous indeed.

Taxpayers of Australia, know that you are blessed indeed! Now stop gawking and get back to work. An entire population of people who wear only black is demanding  your support.

The ABC’s story on the uses to which public monies are put can be read via the link below. Somewhere on one the ABC’s many websites there may also be a story about whether the current deficit is the consequence of a spending problem or a revenue problem.

— roger franklin

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