The Background of Friends of The National Art School

I have written these notes in response to Deborah Beck’s invitation to make an account of the early history of FONAS. Deborah Beck is Collections Manager at The National Art School.

The Fight for the Independence of the National Art School (NAS) and the formation of FONAS (Friends of the National Art School) 1992-1996.

Michael Snape April 2022.

It is over twenty-five years since the art school achieved independence from TAFE. These events took place in 1995 and directly led to the independent art school that now stands in 2022 as The National Art School (NAS). It doesn’t seem that long ago because nothing much changes in 26 years, no matter how compelling technological and political changes may be. We can only hope that the changes made then, were so deeply rooted that mischief cannot come again to undermine the strength and independence of the school.   

1995 saw the beginning of the implementation of Competency Based Training (CBT) in the Department of Technical and Further Education (TAFE). As part of TAFE the art school was subjected to this curriculum reform.

CBT broke down the teaching of art into discrete units which the teachers ‘knew’ and which the students ‘learnt’. With the accruing of these units of knowledge, the students would then have the necessary tools to make art. That may be the case in a technical school, but this was East Sydney Tech, aka ‘The National Art School’. It was different here.

The approach of the TAFE reformers showed their ignorance of a different culture which had been in place at the art school for generations and had been effective and did not need to be reformed. The culture involved the student being ‘immersed’ in the school culture to find their place and voice within that tradition. Being scant of traditions here in Australia, the artists and art students decided what had accrued needed to be protected at all costs.

What was intrinsic to the culture at the school was the voice of the part-timer, the practising artist, who came directly from their studio into the art school to share their knowledge and experience. This was the strength of the culture, the sharing of lived experience between artist and art student in a studio context.

Making art could not be made out of a set of ‘learning units’, instead it is a way of seeing and being. The role of the full time staff was to facilitate and create the environment in which that process was fostered.

The National Art School had always imagined itself as a separate entity from TAFE, with its own history and philosophy. With these proposed initiatives from TAFE Head Office seeking to undermine that history, immediate action was required to enforce that identity formally and forcefully.

Strangely the voice of resistance to these reforms was so low, nobody heard what was happening at the school. It was critical that the wider arts community understood that this tradition was under threat.

To that end, I took news of these changes at the art school to the broader art world. Most of these people had been to the school or had long-standing associations with it. They included the most respected artists, gallery directors and critics at the time. They signed a petition, ‘Public Notice, the extent of the threat to this valued part of our culture’*. Their response was immediate and strong.

This backing ultimately provided the support to a group of part-time teachers, students and one full-time teacher and we formed Friends of The National Art School. We had found our voice.

Initially the group constituted Geoff Ireland and me, with sculpture students Hopi Steiner, Megan Hewitt and painting student Emma Walker. When Ron Robertson–Swann joined with Jacques DelaRuelle and John Peart we officially formed FONAS, with John Peart being the first president. Kevin Norton, Peter Godwin, Liz Cummings, Richard Goodwin, also joined the group.

(From left) Megan Hewitt, Hopi Steiner, Michael Snape, Emma Walker, Bernadette Boscacci and Gria Shead 1995

FONAS was formally instituted and would become what it remains today.

Our aims were consolidated in the attached statement.**

Being employees of TAFE, the full time teaching staff were not able to speak out against these reforms, with one exception, who was Head of Sculpture, Geoff Ireland. It was the Sculpture Department in fact, who were initially, the strong voice.

The Sculpture Department had enjoyed a proud continuous history of sculptural thinking over the twentieth century. From Bertrand McKennel, Raynor Hoff, Jean Broom-Norton, Lyndon Dadswell, through to Ian McKay, Ron Robertson-Swann, Jan King and Clara Harli, the school had a firm foundation of sculptural thinking that refused to be undone by short term thinking from outside.

FONAS strength grew from this history within the sculpture department to hold the arguments, to bring about change. It was the voice of this history that made the voices loud.

A demonstration by students and staff took place at Parliament House in February, 1995. It was here that the FONAS committee met with the then leader of the state opposition, Bob Carr. At that meeting he made a commitment to make the art school independent from TAFE, should he win the election, which he duly did, on both counts.

Following these events, the struggle was not won, but the weight of argument had shifted. The intervening years have passed to produce the current school, which in 1996 would have been perceived as a most fanciful outcome.  

Michael Snape Personal Reflections and Reservations:

With the new independent art school, the structures of the old school were abandoned and the full-timer took the power the part-timer previously had. Where the strength of the part-timer had been initially argued by FONAS, their role in the new school was weakened. They became known as ‘sessional’ staff, which is a way of silencing those artists and facilitating a precarious relationship between the institution, the artist and the student. They were no longer part of the continuum, part of the culture of the school in the way they had been that was so successful previously. Sessional staff would appear briefly within a set period of time and then leave until another ‘session’ became available.

I was perceived by some of my FONAS colleagues to be an ‘incurable revolutionary’. I continued to be outspoken about FONAS members accepting tenured employment in the new school when I assumed our commitment to the school had been more altruistic. I was also not convinced about the choice of the first director of the school, who ultimately had a short tenure.

The school’s vision was to accrue status and respectability through University equivalence, which I still believe is anathema to art. From my perspective making art has never been an academic activity conferred through undergraduate, post-graduate and research degrees. These are bourgeois aspirations designed to protect the parents of children who might otherwise be devoured by a life in thankless art without a life jacket.

The traditions we had sought to protect ultimately have been eroded by the employment of graduates from university art education and aligning with University practices. The urge to be ‘contemporary’ is not long sighted.

Success is fabulous but usually comes before a fall. I do not wish this but one should be wary.

Philip Cox’ show

Philip Cox Paintings at Simon Chan

Architects imagine themselves custodians of ‘the mother of all arts’. Very few architects dare to apply their thinking outside their chosen discipline. 

A degree of confidence, a calling, will drive results to a degree however, without sufficient experience in handling material, no cohesive visual language will emerge with that intent.

In viewing Philip Cox’s paintings, the viewer is immediately struck by the landscapes themselves but also the way in which those landscapes are viewed, experienced and felt by the artist. 

A painting represents the way in which the experience of looking at a landscape is ‘synthesised’. 

The paintings employ observation which is wrought gesturally. Subject is not spelt out or illustrated. 

The use of gesture allows the artist to be immersed, to be at one, to have surrendered to the landscape as an insider. They are not trying to own it by naming it as their colonising aunts and uncles may have done. 

Philip Cox is not owning this land by painting it. He is listening to it and feeling it.  It is cold or hot, still and breezy. If it is not filled with birdsong one can at least hear the leaves rustling, the distant waves thumping the sand.  

All art stands for what it has achieved. It also acts as a promise for what will follow while the artist remains alive.

‘’Menindi’

This work is courageously unsightly with its crude blue and red sky and land demarcations. The scratchy vegetation shows the determination of plants to leave an unfavourable impression on the viewer. We are grateful for shade provided. We only wish the ground on which we lay brought some pleasure from shelter provided..

The paintings in this exhibition are modestly scaled and are painted on paper. Modest ambition mostly proves to be the most productive however, these paintings provide the scope for a hand and wrist gesture. Scaled up they would give scope to what the arm and the body might bring to the discussion in terms of ‘embodying’ the landscape and I look forward to seeing the way in which those actions are employed, perhaps.

The works in this exhibition are an account of the experience of being in the landscape. Also they are an account of the influences of other artists that guided these results. 

There is a history here of trying to understand what it is for us to be here, in this place, pictorially. Any contribution to this discussion is much appreciated. 

‘Thubbul Garden

This painting is more than the description of a place. It shows what it feels like to be in it, to walk through it, to be at one, with it. One senses the artist’s smile.

Painting

Dam 2022 oil on canvas 90 x 60cm

What we see is where we are now and where we have ever been. We bring to this moment all of the other moments that came before.

All of this prior experience gets stuck to what is in front of us. It’s bodily and in no way intellectual. Try and steer. Try to navigate. They are all dead ends compared to this driver.

We are at best, part of the medium with which we work. We are part of material’s plasticity. If paint is wet or dry, thick or thin, red or green, it is the task of the artist to spread paint’s word.

it is not so much that we think with our gut or heart. It’s that we digest with our brain. The brain is a filter that extracts simultaneously the goodness and badness of life and synthesises it.

If our brain is required at all, it is to persuade this governing process not to be interrupted.

Don’t stuff things up, we tell ourselves.

The graffiti gallery

There’s an industrial site in Balmain that has been repurposed as a park and within that park there is a natural gallery space. It has been put aside for graffiti artists and the collection of works here probably represents a survey of local graffiti art quite well. 

They have laid down their hand. ‘This is what we do. This is the sum of our capacity. We live by it and the messaging built within the works stands for what we believe. 

Because there are no distractions here, the work speaks for itself. The work has been tightly curated. There is a secret heirarchy and messaging I cannot decipher, but the works are laid out side by side with an almost military precision with everything in its place. This is a compliant orderly showcase for anarchy. There are signs warning unapproved additions are illegal.

Because there is no significant anarchic population in Balmain, the ‘gallery’ reading is amplified. The application of a painted ground unites all the works. Each piece reads as a visualised breakdance. It’s as much a show as an exhibition. It’s worth writing up here. A big effort deserves acknowledgement especially when it brings pleasure. This writing about it will increase audience. That is writing’s purpose.

Life is Beautiful

What is it, or more importantly, where is it, if this painting is a ‘landscape’? It has to describe somewhere, or everywhere, or account for a condition of landscape. If it is not made of land and trees and rock and sky in particular order to make sense, then how is it a ‘landscape’? Can one accurately, pictorially account for a smell or a sound of landscape? Can a ‘landscape’ be what it feels like, to be in it? ‘Painting’ the landscape may be, getting the landscape off and out of you. To return inside from having been outside, to be hot and sweaty and dirty, to have been bitten and swarmed, scratched, exhausted, painting may be the shower you take to cleanse yourself from it, to eradicate it. You take the shower to make the paint flow.

This landscape here is a curse. The painting of it breaks the curse. To catch it is to capture it, to reduce, to tame its power. It’s a strong landscape. You need a new potion every time to tackle it. Every potion has a use by date of yesterday. Every painting is a potion. No number of boosters will protect you.

To those accustomed to being here, to live here, to be at one with it, the landscape is mother. By giving the landscape respect, to care for the landscape, the landscape returns the favour and cares back.

Here at Wamboin, there’s a tiger snake under every rock.

Life is beautiful.

Potion 1 120 cm x 180 cm oil on canvas 2021

Mush v taut

It doesn’t really matter where or how you start. There can be no good beginning. With any beginning there is room for failure, all the failure in the world. 

There is room for failure in the middle. Form cannot arise out of no catastrophe. Mistakes in the beginning and the middle do not exist. 

There is nothing you can retreat from having begun and middled.

The canvas is blank from very near the end and everything is still wide open. 

For all of that though, the conclusion gives form to everything that came before and without the end being succinct, everything else is mush. 

Mush is opposite taut and there is nothing, no structure without taut. 

Painting as a verb

You’d think a painting

Would be that place where the paint landed, was spread, brushed, but that is not necessarily the case.

That place may lie elsewhere.

 You might think that a painting is where colours and shapes could be organised according to intent or intuition or accident.

Maybe not.

 What if the painting took place elsewhere, where the paint was still separated from other colours, still held inside its tubes in which the manufacturers had pumped it?

What if the tubes of paint lay side by side on the painter’s table, each tube waiting to be identified as ‘the one’, waiting for its lid to be unscrewed?

What if all the lids had been taken off? All the tubes are lying side by side each waiting to be chosen as ‘the one’? The paint is still moist, wet, ready to be squeezed, expressed. They are all waiting with baited breath. 

What if in waiting, with the artist not having made their choice, the opened tubes allow the paint inside to harden with less capacity to be squeezed to the artist’s intent? In that case when the hole size is reduced by the paint’s hardening, the paint then requires the artist’s muscle to be employed to persuade the paint out and when muscle is required then all sorts of unnecessary efforts are made which then serves to blunt the artist’s intent?

Where does the painting take place? Perhaps there is no painting as a noun, only painting as a verb and there is never any end to it, only perpetually painting without end. 

The queue

The broken chapter

The Broken Chapter has featured on the blog before. The work was moved today. The sculptures here move around. It is a consequence of seeing opportunities and having a crane and time.

The Broken Chapter

This work is a sculpture by accident. It had been the bottom third, the first chapter in The Book, before the storm blew it over. Because The Broken Chapter is a fragment of The Book, it has not been considered an autonomous work.

The tree which stands next to this work had three limbs torn off in another storm. With The Broken Chapter placed next to the broken tree, new life has been added to both the tree and the sculpture. Each, despite being handicapped, is now complete.

The Broken Chapter

Making an impression

Prints

We would like to make a good impression, a big one if possible. Sometimes though, with a modest mark, only a modest impression can be made. That should not diminish our commitment to finding our voice, where ever, however and whenever it speaks.

Despite devout rinsing of the electric tooth brush after use, it leaves a deposit on the bathroom cabinet every night.

When the brush is placed randomly with the other objects on the cabinet, it leaves random prints.
After a week or so, the prints lay scattered among the other objects. They find room where there is room. They are not decorative in any way, as other prints might be. These prints are carelessly applied like muddy boots inside make and always leave a poor impression.

I have reminded myself to take a little care with my toothbrush and its mark. Every night for the last week or so, I have lined up the toothbrush next to where it had been the previous night. While it may still constitute ‘a mess’, this new order determines that it is at least not random.

I was disappointed however, that on the crowded floor of the bathroom cabinet, there was no scope for social distancing.

Every night the toothbrush would have to peer over the shoulder of its prior placement.

From the folded forest

FF28

The sculptures arrive here at Wamboin. They are initially held on ‘the arena’ until their natural site is determined. FF28 remained connected to The Folded Forest out of which it grew until this new site was found yesterday. It speaks for itself now, rather than on behalf of the group. Its simplicity has a purpose and a clarity. It’s clarity helps to clarify the landscape in which it stands.

FF28

There is not much to it. It is as sparse as the landscape. The variability of light, sunlight and shadow bring a richness the sculpture lacks. There are two sentinels now, at the bottom of the hill, on the rear boundary. The other is Two Chapters from The Book which stands 50 metres away.

FF28 with Two Chapters

Gavel

Gavel 2016

Works benefit from being separated from the land, to accommodate them. The addition of a plinth makes an outdoor room. Steel sculptures corrode from the ground. The concrete serves as a moisture barrier.

Gavel 2016

Some works hold themselves from a distance and from up close. Some works are only legible up close and some works are only legible from a distance. Gavel welcomes us as we arrive at Wamboin. There’s a large welcome party here. The sculptures are always on duty.

Gavel on ‘Prairie’ tinted plinth.

Tinting the concrete warms the natural cool grey of the concrete, helping it to blend with the landscape colour.

All the sculptures have a strong relationship with the horizontal. The plinth allows this aspect to be better expressed. The plinth aids legibility of the work.

3

On Norton Road

There are three objects in this picture. 

Three characters in the play. There are no humans. They are in the background out of sight. 

The three parts have equal value. If it was music and the the three parts instruments, it would be a trio, probably a jazz trio, but not necessarily. Let’s not be distracted by the saxophone! 

This is an unusual dialogue. These objects do not normally share a conversation. They normally exist in separate universes. We can see the plant for example but we do not grasp how it feels, or is, in this life. 

The sign just keeps pointing and promising over and over. All it can do otherwise is fade, or be run over. 

The truck with the door open, is the drummer, the domineering background that keeps a lid on chaos. The truck imagines it to be in control of the wheel affair. 

The picture can tell a story. We can imagine the tales spun by each voice to make the story click. 

It’s not that it’s a lonely place out there, on the road. It’s only that it’s unfamiliar and the relationships ungainly. 

With three objects not moving, it’s a still life and by being still commands our attention so we can concentrate. 

New home

We used to watch television from an armchair. Because of the harmful rays emitted, the tv was always on the other side of the room . The tv technology then, was room compatible. Technology was architecture compatible.

More recently the relationship between the two has broken down.

The mobile phone has changed everything.

Because everyone has one everywhere, we watch the phone in the way we watched tv. Because we carry it, we can move and watch, moving inside and outside at will.

Because the phone is portable, you move.

We still mostly live indoors in buildings but now there is an another door. There’s outdoors, indoors and ‘alldoors’.

Our devices remove the intermediate spaces in our lives as significant. We are all always both out and at home because of them.

Is there an architecture waiting in the wings to accommodate the new door? Do we need to suspend the relationship between home and a building?

Phone is the new home.

The empty panorama

Pocket Pano No.1

Pocket calls, pockets photos, pocket videos. Pocket panos is new. A panorama of emptiness is something else, something to appeal to a minimalist sensibility.

I shouldn’t spoil it though, to give away how this image came about. I can only take credit for having noticed it. I might otherwise have overlooked it as another phone foible.

Pocket Pano No.2

Our phones have a will of their own. Mine though was onto something and produced this too for me to notice. It helped there were precedents in painting that explored similar emptiness, similar structures.

Pocket Pano No,3

The panorama option on the phone presents a breadth of vision only available from scanning the landscape. That one could span an emptiness and derive an equally satisfying richness is a testament to the early modern adage that less is more.

The Pocket Panos employ an aesthetic derived from contemporary practices. Their value here is diminished by being wrought in light on this screen.

The Blood

It can’t be shown here. 

What’s outside the picture can only be imagined. 

There’s blood spilt though, enough of it to pool, to settle, to attract flies. 

No flies have come. There’s a paucity of insects now. Windscreens remain transparent even after a long drive. 

Enough blood to fill the gutters though, is a measure of the severity of the violence that took place. Even rain requires a heavy fall to make the gutters run. Blood to fill the gutters requires mayhem, chaos, anarchy. 

The pooling suggests the violence has passed, the air no longer full of screaming. There’s a sense of relief as if a pressure been released. 

A violence was necessary, unfortunately, to bring this sense of calm. 

The red brings relief too from the unrelenting grey of the asphalt and concrete on my morning walk. 

The blood

Where to wear

Masks worn from left, inner wrist, outer wrist and upper arm.

We came to know where to wear our phones. Phones became jewellery for the palm, permanently pouched there, ready at any point to lifted to the eye or ear. 

Masks were different. They offered none of the phone gratification. They were required to be attached to the body at all times though, but where and how? 

Masks had the ability to become ornamental, decorated and decorative, but the uglier mass produced blue ones were easier to breathe through and were ultimately more embraced. 

Blue for the outside apparently, we all agreed, was the go. Blue provided more protection, more naturally repelled the virus even if the white looked better. 

The mask was too like a hanky or a tissue to live in the pocket. The fingers are clever but not that clever they can differentiate fabrics quickly. 

The issue of where to wear the mask has only just begun. A few weeks provides enough time for behaviour to change alongside the virus’ whims. 

The photo shows the latest innovation with masks worn on the inner wrist, the outer wrist and the arm. 

Where and how masks are carried is not necessarily discussed.  More pressing issues are reserved for discussion. It’s a private matter, an intimate one. 

It’s in the zeitgeist though, the algorithmic collective unconscious is hard at work.

What Belongs

Cracks in footpath, Balmain

We notice what’s familiar. What’s familiar is part of a family. Being part of a family feels good. If it’s part of a family it registers as more real than imagined.

The photo shows a crack in the footpath. I am drawn to It because it is like what I have been painting. I have been painting trees in the landscape. This photo shows that while my backgrounds have been accurate in the paintings, I have strayed too close to what a tree looks like, rather than let it be more treelike, like this crack is, treelike.

Painting (unfinished)

The crack is more treelike than the painting of the tree(s) by being less obsessed by the tree’s anatomy. Also, the crack has an easier relationship with the ground, which aids its ‘treeness’.

The trunk of the tree/crack is bolder, more agonised, more likely to be seen here than my painted trees.

My tree invention is less adventurous than the crack/tree’s invention. The crack/tree even has even dropped several leaves on the ground.

These considerations help to explain why the photo of the crack is familiar. It’s family.

Have a gO.

50k speed indicator at Ultimo, Sydney

50/50 are odds we are persuaded by. 

It’s an even bet. 

Not bad. 

We’re gamblers, accustomed to a degree of risk, but really?

We do not need to take such a risk. 

These considerations were provided by a random representation of these numbers.(See image above.)

How could one resist when so conveniently elevated above street level, positioned for the driver at eye level for maximum legibility. 

Go for it! It’s an even bet!

Its actually a speed indicator, a speed instruction,

Repeated. 

Only,

When it’s placed at eye level, all those zeros look at you, teasing you, tempting you to have a go.

In the old days it would have been a clear split between boy or girl. Or right or wrong. Night and day. Not much to lose. Not too much to gain, 50, 50. 

We’ve come to accept 50 as the given speed. It’s taken a while, accustomed as were, to 60, 70, 80. 

It’s time to relax now. We have to to breathe and not to gasp. 

We can take our time to ponder whether to have a go. 

Dream passage

We are nothing more than

The failed courage of our parents.

What parents secretly or openly! aspire to is what we, the children are. 

We as children are the realisations of our parent’s dreams. 

Children are living manifest materialised dreams. 

Dreams are more fully expressed than genes. They bounce down through the generations like clockwork. Genes only sprout randomly, skip generations entirely. 

Even as parents we don’t know what our dreams are or were even if they are staring at us in the achievements of our children. 

Our children can have no regard for what we may interpret as our dreams. It is of no account!

They have risen, have taken off, are in flight. Up, up and away and bye bye!

I am a child of my parents and a parent of my children now, both manifesting my parent’s dreams and having my dreams manifest by my children. I am succeeding where my parents failed and my children are succeeding where I failed.

I am the meat in the sandwich of a dream passage, miracle flick passes you don’t even register.  

Great game. 

The kangaroo god

We live here among the kangaroos. They are our host, and while we are not entirely beholden to them, we respect them. They are a part of the world we are living in.

The kangaroos have featured on the blog before. They run the risk of overpopulating here on the blog as much as they do on the block.

They proliferate unchecked. The master, the boss, the leader has a larger mob to admire him than he may have done earlier. We might have been predators, had we been hungrier, but we are full from the IGA. All the females have pouches full.

They normally flee as we approach but they increasingly linger, wondering at our lack of boomerangs and rifles.

In the sky

As I drove out this morning, my peripheral vision was suddenly unaccountably full. I looked across to see a spectre standing on the far horizon. It was a kangaroo, but no kangaroo before had been a mile high. No longer bound by gravitational forces this kangaroo was suspended in the sky.

It was a trick of course, a calculation on his part to take me from ease.

I have not seen such an effigy as God before. No man could stand or be suspended as well.

He stood there on the tips of his toes and tail for long enough for me to take my measure and several photos. I shrank the first impression with my understanding but the message was clear.

This place is bigger than I will ever comprehend.