By Ruth Skilbeck
Over the last couple of years there have been reports, in the mainstream and even online media, of the supposed demise of arts journalism. These reports have come not only from publications in Australia (homebase of Arts Features International)– which had until relatively recently tended to take the back foot in the art world as connoted in the antipodean moniker ‘Down Under.’
Sure, there have been a number of reports from here about this. But notes of change have also rung out from the former heart of the art world: the UK. A long feature article in The Art Newspaper in 2009 spelt out a mixed prognosis, “let’s be clear: arts journalism has never had it easy.” * What the discerning reader may note in reading these pieces is that they have more in common than the doom and gloom, they were all written in 2009. This was the year of calamity in the world of art journalism, when art periodicals folded all over the place. But now, it seems the winds of changing are blowing back again, and what is returning is a new rush of interest in art writing and arts journalism.
After years of neglect arts journalism is finally making its way into university courses in Australia, as well as in the US, Canada and the UK along with new forms of cultural journalism. It would be even more surprising if it were not so. The meaning of art journalism is wider than art in and of itself; it correlates to art as culture, and art as the new cultural language and form of visual communication in the global art world. Over the last 10 years social and economic changes in the region, around Australia, have seen countries that formerly were hidden behind a curtain now openly participating in the art world, for example as seen in the new gallery scenes, Biennales and art fairs in countries such as China, Singapore, the Philippines.
At the same time contemporary art museums and art galleries around the world have, at least in the fortunate peaceful zones, become cross cultural melting pots and meeting points, safe cultural havens where people of the world can communicate through the medium of contemporary art, and come to appreciate and understand each others cultural heritage (and not seek to blow it up it, as has been a sad warring counterbalance to peace communication in this century).
The spread of Biennale and art fairs, and the ever-expanding programs and institutions of contemporary art museums in virtual and life modes, are evidence of the effects of ongoing global social change and mobility.
Other movements are occurring around the world such as the new mothers art movements (M.A.M) a new form of feminism in arts which rather gloriously continues the work of the Women s Art Movement (W.A.M.) of the nineteen seventies.
These are all positive signs of art as the currency of global cultural communication. And all these rapid changes also bring into focus the incredible need for art writing and arts journalism that is investigative and clear. Not only in reporting on and analysing the new trends but in building up the relational aspects of understanding and cultural exchange through dialogue and discussion which are processes, exemplified in artist and arts journalist interviews.
The doom and gloom reports, in recent media, are however counter-balanced by acknowledging that the demise of arts journalism in newspapers is not a sign of the demise of arts journalism. (If anything it is a sign of the demise of newspapers and their financial inability to support as large a staff in this era of crisis: digitization and cost cutting for traditional media). Moving with the times arts journalism has gone online, as have communities of artists, and audiences of viewers and readers who form the international contemporary art world. Emerging in new forms and modes of online art writing.
As a further sign of the changes of the last few years, that have affected all journalists, and arts journalists in very specific ways, blogging has now been recognised by the UN as a form of journalism.
© Copyright Ruth Skilbeck, 2012
First published in www.ruthskilbeck.com
