Art: What price culture?
The object of art is to give life a shape.
Jean Anouilh (1910–1987) The most frequent question that Geoff ever gets asked about his sculpture is: ‘How long did it take you to make that?’ The question seems to be direct evidence of the economic-rationalist perspective that pervades our lives. It points to the calculus of value that derives from working out how many hours someone spends making something and then multiplying that by an estimated hourly rate, or in this case, working backwards to find out whether (or not) the price-tag on the artwork is a true reflection of its ‘real’ value – a value calculated at some sort of equivalence to the making of a mass-manufactured product. For Geoff, this is frustrating and repetitive, and he’s created various psychological and practical strategies to cope. Here’s an example from an earlier part of our lives. In 2006, when we were living at Wairoa in Aldgate (South Australia), we held a small, informal gathering at our home gallery during which a few of Geoff’s sculptures were on display. One visitor – a friend of a friend – began enquiring about whether any of the work was for sale. She then asked the tired, old question. Geoff, so adept already at the pre-sale game which is part of the ritual between artist and potential client, deliberately kept his answer vague. The wealthy woman continued to press him for an exact account of the number of hours he’d worked on the sculpture; he continued to evade. Finally, sick of the banter, he retorted with the comment that the amount of money he made in an entire year was (laughably) far below the average wage or indeed, well below the value of her new car, and the conversation took an even unhealthier turn when she began to imagine what his yearly income might be if it were based on the sale of one medium-priced sculpture per week, at some amount per artwork which was her guestimate. Eventually, she suggested that the average wage in Australia at the time was about $10 per hour because that was what she paid her cleaning lady. In fact, she decided right then that this would be a suitable hourly rate for an ‘artisan’ like Geoff! Nowhere in this woman’s discussion with Geoff was the notion of intrinsic cultural value or even a consideration of the worth of the very rare materials from which the sculptures were made. The fact that she had equated Geoff’s worth with that of her cleaning lady seemed to highlight the low value she placed on everyone else’s labour – as though poorer people were there merely to serve her. I imagine now that Geoff did not agree to part with any of his sculptures that day though the discussion continued while the rich woman toyed with the notion of buying one or other of his artworks in either Sassafras or Huon pine – concerned as to which might accrue more value over the long term. A clothing designer friend understood Geoff’s situation. She’d also had many experiences – especially when dealing with the rich – of the lack of desire to value another person’s creative enterprise. In fact, many people have become accustomed to an attitude of the ‘$2-shop economy’, and this has not served any of us well. So, how can one put a value on resources that are likely finite? Geoff’s use of materials such as River red gum or Huon pine highlights the precious nature of our natural resources. His red gum sculptures remind us of the (often) dying breed of magnificent trees along the dwindling Murray River system, while the Huon pine he has sourced from legal suppliers in Tasmania is likely to be completely unavailable in the not-too-distant future because Huon is no longer logged and new trees take hundreds or thousands of years to become mature giants. Geoff has created a life’s work out of the practice of reclaim and reuse – whether in his fine art or the current work he does with Nature Play art for playgrounds. After the early 1980s’ bushfires, he saw burnt or fallen logs as potential resources, not as materials to be heaped up in paddocks and burnt. It is heartening now to hear conversations and witness actions about sustainability, recycle, repair and reuse but people like Geoff have been trying to instil these ideas in people for over 40 years. They are not new ideas but perhaps they are ideas whose time has finally come. Excerpt from Born at Sea The Life and Art of Wood Sculptor Geoff Bromilow Moonglow Publishing © Dr Kathryn Pentecost 2021 Born at Sea
The Life and Art of Wood Sculptor Geoff Bromilow Moonglow Publishing soon to be released. |
All photography by Kathryn Pentecost, unless otherwise attributed.