It's often wondered how a city like Canberra seems to punch well above its weight when it comes to the quality and diversity of contemporary visual art.
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For a first-hand insight on the industry, we asked three visual artists to discuss their experiences of working and studying in Canberra and how the city has helped them establish profiles interstate and overseas.
The artists – sculptor Jacqueline Bradley, photographer Mark Mohell and multi-disciplinary artist George Rose - have, over the past few years, all attracted widespread attention for their work. The three artists studied at the Australian National University School of Art, the Canberra Institute of Technology and the University of Canberra, and have had diverse experiences across the local visual arts landscape.
Despite being offered places at art schools in Sydney and Melbourne, Canberra-born sculptor Bradley decided to stay in her hometown where, through the School of Art, she completed an honours degree in 2007, majoring in sculpture. Bradley says she had a "fantastic" experience at art school, and attributes this to both her teachers and the Bauhaus workshop model.
Bradley sees the ANU, where she is currently undertaking a PhD, and the Canberra Contemporary Art Space as portals through which the rest of the country view the visual arts in Canberra. Both institutions have supported her career. She was given tutoring opportunities at the ANU the year after completing her undergraduate degree, and is currently lecturing in the sculpture workshop. In 2011, she held a solo show at CCAS, and her work was recently featured in the group exhibition Obnoxious Ladies in the Australian Landscape. The CCAS exhibition program, Bradley notes, plays a role in connecting Canberra artists like herself to interstate practitioners, bringing their works to the attention of different audiences.
Bradley's current work forms part of her PhD research and engages with the landscape of the 'bush capital' by creating fantastical wearable artworks inspired by the idea of offering physical protection from the outdoors. They are made out of second-hand objects that appear familiar yet are given new functions which add humour and a feminist perspective to the works. Growing up by the base of Mount Ainslie informed Bradley's interest in the Australian landscape.
"Canberra is surrounded by domestic, suburban space but it still feels like an amazing outdoors environment," she says.
"It always felt like a really good place to imagine things".
At a point when she is attracting national attention, Bradley has no plans to leave Canberra. The power of the internet means that she can remain here and be connected to the broader national and international art communities. It's an opinion of Mark Mohell too; he initially planned to move elsewhere, but now believes that "you can create your own world wherever you live" and decided to make his here.
Mohell, who was also born in Canberra and is a dual Finnish-Australian citizen, has a photographic practice that focuses on a meditative engagement with the Canberra suburban landscape. He describes his practice as being "all about observation and thought", and makes narrative images that have synergies with film stills, encouraging the audience to create a story. He works in black and white using traditional film-based processes. This enhances the beauty and arresting sensibility of his photography, with many of his works featuring urban and industrial subjects, as well as the natural world.
After completing a Diploma in Photography from CIT, Mohell did a Bachelor of Applied Science in Environmental Design at UC. As a student, he enjoyed access to the great collections of photography housed in Canberra, some of which now include his work. By day, he uses his photographic expertise in a role at the National Portrait Gallery, making him one of the many local artists who bring their skills and experience to the national institutions.
Mohell is also a member of the Photography Room in Kingston, which is the only commercial gallery in the Canberra region that focuses on photography. He is one of the more than 20 practitioners involved in the commercial gallery, which promotes local photographic practice. In May he held a solo show at the gallery, and exhibited works from his Under Power (2013) and kerbside (2014) series.
The get-up-and-go of Canberra-trained artists is something George Rose has come to admire. "What I've noticed from people who trained in Canberra is that they have a stronger work ethic," she says. It's about the size of the community and the fact that there aren't as many options when compared to larger cities as contributing factors. Resilience, versatility and boldness are characteristics Mohell and Bradley also cited as setting Canberra-trained artists apart, leading them to create their own opportunities and to support one another.
Rose's career has been remarkable to watch. The concept of living off one's art practice is an unreachable dream for most, but a hard-won reality for Rose. It is something she herself once thought was only a dream.
She is currently focusing on large-scale murals (mostly commissioned projects) that have a vibrant quality drawn from the language of street art and signwriting. Rose has also worked in illustration, graphic design, ceramics and painting. Despite always wanting to be an artist, she thought it unlikely that she'd be able to make a living out of it.
When she finished school in Canberra, she was drawn to art and was determined to make it a practical career path. She chose to study graphic design at the UC over visual arts, a decision she doesn't regret. "But I was never a designer," she says. With the encouragement of her lecturers, she spent the last year of university on exchange at the ANU, where she studied ceramics, drawing and painting.
After graduating, Rose worked in graphic design, yet the urge to make art was always there. So too was the desire to travel. She decided to move interstate to engage with a different art community. Despite having moved to Melbourne four years ago, Rose has a itinerant practice that sees her regularly work across the east coast of Australia, and recently won the Liverpool Library's inaugural Borrowed Wall Art Prize. She is now "starting to dabble in the international circuit".
Canberra continues to be a big supporter of her work. In 2013 she was the first artist to exhibit in the Nishi Gallery with her debut solo show Anger Management & the Importance of Personal Hygiene. She has more plans to come back, and is keen to explore the possibility of painting large murals on what she sees as the "pristine and clean" walls of Canberra buildings – something she'd like to change.
Despite Rose's enthusiasm for Canberra, she thinks the rest of the country doesn't "get it". For outsiders, it can seem like the art scene is centred on the national collecting institutions, whereas, she explains, "there are so many other things going on below the surface". Mohell made a similar observation, saying that he doesn't believe people outside Canberra realise "how strong the local art scene is".
Bradley, Mohell and Rose's largely positive experiences go some way to explaining the richness of the visual arts in Canberra. Recurring themes throughout conversations with these three inspiring artists were the high standard of work produced by Canberra-trained artists; the close-knit, nurturing community; and the view that local artists have access to opportunities that might be much harder to access were they living in bigger cities. Judging by the experiences of these three artists, the visual arts in Canberra is a thriving, innovative and supportive industry that continues to produce practitioners whose works have significance that extends beyond the ACT.
Grace Blakeley-Carroll is a PhD Candidate in the Centre for Art History and Art Theory at the Australian National University
