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Sydney v. Melbourne v. Brisbane v. Adelaide

Guest Post by Marcus Westbury August 22

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This week, I’ve been discussing the respective state of cultural life in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide and been amazed at the passionate vitriol that comparisons provoke. It seems we love taking potshots across state lines. In Perth this week, the shadow arts minister took a swipe at Melbourne by declaring that premiering Bran Nue Dae at MIFF would place it at the 'arse-end of a lesser, to be honest, film festival'.

Yet I’d like to think there is some value in genuine comparisons. I’ve spent nearly a third of the past year on the road, working on festivals, new cultural centres and other projects in different Australian cities. It has given me a chance to reflect on the creative dynamics of Australian cities and to realise that they are constantly changing and evolving.

The old stereotypes that Brisbane is a big country town, that Sydney is all commercialism, that Adelaide has festivals to die for or that Melbourne is the leader on most fronts, are misleading. They’re not without a grain of truth, but the way that Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide are developing is far more interesting than that.

It pains me to admit it, but Sydney is becoming a really interesting place. The city has woken up with a hangover and the mess of a party that finished years ago. Yes it’s broke, and sorry for itself, but it’s just had that life-changing revelation that it’s time to make amends. After decades of complacency and entropy, Sydney feels like a city with zeal and curiosity again.

While the arts and cultural community is probably the least of NSW’s problems, it is pleasing that they are suddenly part of the solution. New things seem possible. The pressure is palpable for small venues without poker machines, for new ways to access space, and new ways of thinking about the city. The Vivid Sydney festival — an initiative of Events NSW and not the Arts Ministry — shows that other parts of the NSW bureaucracy have realised that culture might be a potential solution, in part, to the malaise.

Sydney is also blessed with the most dynamic and interesting underground arts scene in the country at the moment. Melburnian artists rarely need to fight for much. Sydney, meanwhile, has reacted to a culture of stifling stupidity by becoming a city of speakeasies, unlicensed venues, barely legal festivals, and guerilla events. In coming years, the energy that has created these things threatens to be transformative.

Further north, something equally interesting is happening in Brisbane.

Compared with its complacent southern sisters, Brisbane feels young, dynamic and eager to try things. Brisbane is well beyond aspiring to be Sydney or Melbourne and is becoming a city that connects with Asian centres to the north and across the Pacific archipelago. Signature events such as the Asia Pacific Triennial, Multimedia Art Asia Pacific and programs of Chinese and other Asian art at the Gallery of Modern Art all reflect this.

Brisbane is also home to a creative tension and fusion between art and pop culture, culture and technology — itself reflective of an Asian dynamic — that makes for distinctive creative ground.

My recurring frustration is with Adelaide. The city that surged to the head of the pack in the Dunstan era suffers because too much of its cultural thinking is still back in 1975.

Aside from a genuinely impressive film festival, too much of Adelaide is stuck somewhere between the 1890s and the 1980s. Adelaide’s love of big institutions and imported major events has created a top-heavy culture dominated by too many too big things. Many of Adelaide’s best and brightest, its young and its innovative, its creative and keen, find the opportunities at their level disappointingly poor.

Next year I hope to spend enough time in Perth and Hobart to get beyond their cliches. Both wrestle with the challenge of isolation yet offer potential for distinctiveness.

Here in Melbourne, I fear a danger of complacency. Few doubt that Melbourne has created a rich culture, the envy of others. It has become a magnet for many creative types. It is blessed with impressive institutions and layers of small and vibrant scenes in music, performance and the visual arts.

Yet Brisbane and Sydney remind me that there is something to be said for the hunger, for looking to the next opportunity and not sitting comfortably on the last one. I’m reminded that you can’t take assumptions — particularly the one that Melbourne is Australia’s cultural capital and will remain so — for granted.

Cultures, like cities, are constantly changing.

Cross-posted from my life. on the internet


 

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Comments

by Paul
23 Aug 09 at 17:34

Very refreshing article. I enjoyed it a lot.

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