Ignorance is not bliss; art and its place in Australia-Asia relations

Image: futureatlas.com / flickr

13 January 2010This essay reveals how the Arts are a microcosm of Australia-Asia engagement. Unless we are proactive in Asia, the burgeoning Arts community in Asia will continue to grow in complexity and internal goodwill, and Australia will remain forever on the edge. Australia must make some harder decisions, including re-looking at the Australia Council’s quota of half its international funding being for Asian projects. That quota, set in the early 1990s, was never met. It reached 35 per cent around 1993, and has since quietly fallen away.

Alison Carroll established and is Director of the Arts Program at Asialink, the leading program for arts exchange between Asia and Australia for visual arts, performing arts, literature and arts management practice. Her new book, The Revolutionary Century; Art in Asia 1900-2000 is out early 2010, published by Macmillan.

 

Image: 'Bangladeshi folk art', futureatlas.com / flickr
See also futureatlas.com blog

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13 January 2012

The Summer 2012 issue of Quarterly Access examines the recent East Asia Summit, bilateral alliances in the Asia Pacific, the future of Timor-Leste, women's participation in peace processes and more.

Read QA online: http://www.aiia.asn.au/qa/qa-vol4-issue1

02 December 2011

Applications are now open for a unique training opportunity for selected individuals develop the skills, networks and knowledge needed to be effective in forging a more sustainable future.

21 October 2011

Michael Wesley, director of the foreign policy think tank, the Lowy Institute, has won the third John Button Prize for writing on public policy.

Dr Wesley won the $20,000 award for his book, There Goes the Neighbourhood: Australia and the Rise of Asia.