1 day Ago By Hannah Story
Artist Madeleine Thornton-Smith was working as a ceramics tutor in Melbourne when she first started calling out the poor health and safety conditions in her workplace. She'd noticed the arts centre where she worked had inadequate precautions in place to mitigate the risk of silicosis, a preventable lung disease caused by inhaling silica dust found in clay, sand and other materials used in ceramics. "I got very much targeted and bullied for being the whistleblower," she says.
At the same time, she was on a "sham contract" — having to invoice for her labour rather than being on a payroll, she argues so her employer could avoid paying her entitlements like leave, superannuation and insurance. When she asked on Instagram, "Who else has experienced really unregulated conditions working in the visual arts?" she received more than 100 responses, mostly from young women. She found the issues she encountered around both pay, and health and safety were widespread.
"I got somewhat radicalised, realising how many people were like me," she says. Thornton-Smith's experience is reflected in a new study of the incomes and career stages of more than 900 Australian visual artists and arts workers, released today. Thornton-Smith's experience led her to making work about artists' labour — a theme she explored in group exhibition Real Job.
(Pictured with Arts Minister Tony Burke at Real Job.) "Artists and arts workers really represent a very precarious and financially vulnerable group of workers in our economy," the study's lead author, Professor Grace McQuilten, says. "They're really falling through the cracks of the system and are left largely to fend for themselves.
" 'People are really struggling' Researchers at Melbourne's RMIT University and the University of Melbourne found artists were among some of Australia's worst-paid workers, earning an average income of $13,937 from their arts practice. The national minimum wage is $915.90 a week, or an annual salary of about $47,500.
New research on more than 450 visual arts institutions shows the Australian art world still has a problem with gender equity. Brisbane-based artist and musician Amy Sargeant says her income does not reflect the labour that goes into making her art, which includes sculpture, audio and video. "The hours you may be paid for individual shows do not cover the years put in to produce individual work and exhibitions," she says.
In RMIT's study, 63 per cent of artists and arts workers reported feeling very or moderately stressed about being able to pay for essentials, including food. "The cost-of-living conditions are so bad that people are really struggling," Penelope Benton, executive director of the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), says. The study also found unpaid work, volunteered time and self-employment were widespread.
Sydney artist and organiser Rafaela Pandolfini describes artists not being appropriately paid as "rife" in the arts industry. In response, she set up arts platform and gallery Suite 7a, which aims to pay artists fairly and break down traditional hierarchies between galleries, curators and artists. "It's a privilege for people to show with us," she says.
Like most artists, she makes ends meet through more than selling her art, including working at a university and as a documentary photographer. RMIT's study found 45 per cent of artists also worked in the broader visual arts sector and 36 per cent outside the industry. Only 25 per cent of artists worked full-time in their practice, it found.
Pandolfini's gallery Suite 7a in Sydney hosts "uncompromising work". Suite 7a was borne out of Pandolfini wanting to stop other artists from having the same "crappy experiences" she had, including the industry failing to accommodate for motherhood. She recalls landing an exhibition at an artist-led gallery in 2013, when her daughter was one year old.
Her partner had a show on at the same time, and a "struggling" Pandolfini asked the gallery if she could move her show. "There was just no flexibility whatsoever," she says. "There was no understanding.
It was just: 'Do the show or lose it.'" That was the moment when she decided to put on her own shows and provide opportunities for young and under-represented artists. The report found the average annual income for artists and arts workers was even lower for women — who make up 74 per cent of the workforce surveyed — at just $12,330, compared to $23,130 for men.
While Professor McQuilten acknowledges low rates of pay in the sector have long been known, she was shocked to find a distinct gender pay gap: of 47 per cent for artists, and 23 per cent for curators, gallery staff and educators. The report also found significant barriers for artists and arts workers with disability, and from culturally diverse backgrounds. What next? The report calls for a boost in funding to federal arts agency Creative Australia and to arts education at all levels; long-term funding for small-to-medium arts organisations; a trial of a living wage for artists; and the creation of more grants where the funds go directly to artists, rather than institutions.
At best, the starving artist trope is a manufactured aesthetic of suffering. At worst, it's a convenient way to excuse the poverty many artists throughout history have endured. It also recommends measures to improve both artists' wages and their access to secure employment, including by expanding and improving industrial award coverage for arts workers, and making adherence to NAVA's Code of Practice for Visual Arts, Craft and Design a requirement for publicly funded arts programs.
To address barriers to participation for culturally and linguistically diverse artists and arts workers, the report stresses the need for paid mentorship programs, representation in paid leadership roles, and cultural competency training for all arts organisations. For artists and arts workers with disability, the report advocates for improved accessibility and flexible work arrangements, as well as for representation in paid leadership positions. Both Pandolfini and Thornton-Smith have flagged the possibility of a union for visual artists as a way forward.
"Of course artists can unionise," Pandolfini says. "If everyone or the majority or our big-name artists demand better working conditions and actual artist fees, then this situation improves. "We need to put the spotlight back on artists and say, 'You know about this.
Your friends all have the same shitty experiences. What are you going to do about it?'" Benton describes the report as an important blueprint for change in the visual arts industry. Benton says the report confirms what artists have recognised for years: "Arts work is work, and it deserves proper pay and protections and working conditions like all other work.
" "We need to stop romanticising the struggle of what it is to be an artist," she says. "[Artists] play a major role in shaping and enriching public life, but it's time we make sure they can afford to live." Why it matters The arts are the "heartbeat for our culture", Professor McQuilten says.
Professor McQuilten says the RMIT study is the largest ever undertaken into the visual arts industry in Australia. "It's helping us to sustain a vibrant democracy; to express our cultural identity in all of its diversity and complexity; to ask critical questions of the world. But not paying artists properly limits the art we get to see — and the ability of art to represent the broader community.
"Without appropriate support, we run the risk of losing the diversity and vibrancy of the sector," she says..
