I remembered attending a seminar once, and one of the speakers said that you can’t begin to get the answers you need unless you ask the right questions.  So I began to ask myself questions.  How do we change the law if we don’t understand the law?   If we don’t understand the law, how can we prevent tyranny?  Is there a reason why the constitution isn’t taught in schools?

In a moment of melancholy and pessimism, I had a paradigm shift, and impulsively enrolled into Law School.  My acceptance into a Graduate Law Degree hasn’t diminished my love of art, and in fact I think both pursuits are complementary to each other.  I pictured myself as someone similar to the lawyer character that Kathy Bates plays in the television sitcom “Harry’s Law”, except I’ll have an art gallery/art studio and lawyers office all in one instead of a shoe shop/lawyer’s office.

So anyway, I decided to go  to the Lifeline Bookfest to buy a bunch of law books.  I met a lady there who complained about the state of the world.  She said she just wanted to escape and go live somewhere else.  I told her I was going to study Law and that I was going to change the world for the better.  She rolled her eyes and wished me luck!

I purchased a range of books, from text books to sarcastic farsical black comedies, such that Shakespeare would be proud of, and found a fairly rare book by Evan Whitton written in 1989 called “The Hillbilly Dictator – Australia’s Police State:  How Democracy and the rule of law in Queensland were subverted, and injustice and corruption elevated to the commonplace”. The back cover states that:

“it has been said, and not entirely in jest, that Sydney is the most corrupt city in the western world, except of course for Newark, New Jersey, and Brisbane, Queensland.  These were the opening words of ‘Can of Worms’, Evan Whitton’s 1986 book about New South Wales.  Since then, the Fitzgerald Inquiry in Queensland has produced the most closely documented study of corruption in an Australian police force.  More significantly, Fitzgerald QC showed how easy it is for a democracy to become an authoritarian state in which corruption and injustice are not just tolerated but elevated to the commonplace …”

Evan Whitton, a journalist and cartoonist, who also wrote “The Cartel:  Lawyers and Their Nine Magic Tricks”, which features a quote by Mel Barnett, a common lawyer in 1997 that he doesn’t “… think it’s a justice system as such; it’s a legal system” (p.11).  The Honourable Mr Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia, writes on the front cover that Whitton is “… an experienced and distinguished journalist ..[and]… must be listened to with care …[as]… outsiders often see error more quickly because they are without preconceptions”. Whitton proceeds to quote Judge Harold Rothwax of the New York Supreme Court where he says “truth must be the goal of any rational procedural system … [and] … without truth there can be no justice” (p.33).    However, the average person would never suspect that TRUTH was not important to JUSTICE here in Australia because of our adversarial legal system?  Many people simply don’t know what’s going on out there, unless you get caught in the net.  Why do we have a legal system, but not a justice system?  Think about the implications of that just for a moment.

Statistics in Whitton’s 1998 book state that in Australia about one percent of people in prison are innocent, and that about 80 percent of fairly serious criminals are found NOT GUILTY (p.11).  Obviously there is something fundamentally wrong with “the system”.  In an article by Charles Bruce Stewart, he links the “Slave Trading Codes” of Ancient Babylon, which were codified within the law, to the “modern laws of commerce, equity and civil/municipal jurisdictions”.

In the past it was Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who brought Socratic (logical/rational) argument into common use and it was in Greece that democracy was born.  The Bible is replete with references to Pharisees (Judges) and Lawyers, and both the American and Australian constitutions make references to the fact that lawyers are not allowed to hold political office.  Yet the Pharisees (Judges) and lawyers still poisoned Socrates and put Jesus on the cross to die, and Greece is now ruled by technocrats under the dictatorship known as the European Union.   I believe we are all in a spiritual fight against evil and tyranny because when you start digging into the law and investigate the meaning of things, you begin to understand how very powerful lawyers are, and how dangerous lawyers who become politicians can be.  On top of that, if the lawyer/politician displays psychopathic behaviour, then watch out.  This is why the separation of powers in the Australian and American constitutions is imperative.

My aim of undertaking a law degree will be to do my part towards restoring truth and the proper common law back to our courts.  Consider there are many innocent people who have been irreparably harmed by the courts.  One such innocent person is a man named Ian Henke, who at 75 years old is now in jail in Wacol, Brisbane.  Apparently Mr Ian Henke was denied legal aid even though he was a declared bankrupt,  Having suffered through lack of representation and inequalities associated with civil procedures he was not allowed to cross-examine witnesses whom would have helped prove his case.  His wife maintains he was framed.  To find out about whom Ian Henke is, read the information and watch this You-Tube video that demonstrates Ian Henke’s good character:  http://sosnews.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,print,0&cntnt01articleid=155&cntnt01showtemplate=false&cntnt01returnid=80

Many people are disheartened, disillusioned and now bankrupt because of a system that does not support a fair go and equality before the law, so there has been a day organised called ‘The Australian Liberation Day:  Magna Carta Walk” on Friday 15^th June 2012. Support your rights to the Magna Carta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta ) and your rights to Common Law Jury trials.  To watch more about what is at stake, watch this 19 minute You-Tube video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?src_vid=rs1ntqa5M2k&annotation_id=annotation_392430&feature=iv&v=f-ztGSKuC6s

Watch this short video on the Australian Flag and what it has come to represent:  http://www.larryhannigan.com/flag01.htm

Watch this video on the Australian Constitution and how it protects your rights:  http://www.larryhannigan.com/constitutionvideo.htm

Remember Gough Whitlam and Australia’s biggest political crisis?  Read about Australia’s Constitutional Crisis, and how the rot set in from 1975.  You’ll hear the words “Constitutional Crisis” bantered around on the ABC News, but they would never dare discuss what the Crisis is as their reporting is restricted by draconian media laws and their employer, the Australian Government Corporation, has a vested interest in your ignorance:  http://www.larryhannigan.com/federalgovernment.htm

Once you watch these videos, you will know why we must all vote “NO” on any constitutional questions in the upcoming Federal elections, because you can be sure the Government will not provide full and proper disclosure.    The Magna Carta was enshrined in law centuries ago, and there are monuments to it everywhere.  Protect the Magna Carta, because the Magna Carta protects you and your inalienable Rights which you are born with.  The Government only bestows benefits and privileges, but they cannot bestow you your Human Rights.

Happy Australian Day everyone.

Lest We Forget.

P.S.  If you would like to register for any interesting updates and information about this subject that I find out please email me at krisstie@brisbaneartworkshops.com.au and provide your email address.

Read the Terms and Conditions carefully as your information may be gathered to be on-sold to other companies who will try to market to you.  That means more spam, and even sponsors of such competitions might find their own email databases hijacked by the promoter and sold to the highest bidder (their competition).

Under law, a promotor has the right to conduct a prize without a permit, provided that the prize is awarded ramdonly and that there is no entry fee.  If there is an entry fee there must be a prize awarded for skill, so that the award is not based on luck.

Some competitions may state that the prize-winner is chosen randomly, however one must remain suspicious if one of the rules of the same competition is that you must assign over the copyright of your artwork.  That means, the promoter may place your image on t-shirts or anything else for that matter, sell them, and they do not have to give you any royalties or fees for the use of the image, or even promote the artist who created the artwork.  This is morally and ethically wrong, and NAVA, the National Association of Visual Arts, frowns upon this immoral activity.

Remember, always read the Terms and Conditions of competitions, especially if it involves your intellectual property, or if you have privacy concerns.

When competitions like this are advertised, it is my personal theory that the award will be given to someone with advanced abilities, rather than to a beginner or someone unknown to the promoter, as this would add a greater chance that the final image assigned over to the promoter would be one worth hanging onto.  Unfortunately this is hard to prove, however be warned, I think it is entirely in the realm of possiblity.

Looking at many of the art prizes that are handed out today, at least in Queensland, I strongly believe constitute a breach of gaming regulations.  When some prizes are awarded, most people wonder where is the skill in that?  Of course the art critic, the art historian and the gallery dealer with talk about track record, that the artist is edgy, young (discrimatory), emerging (also considered to be young therefore discriminatory), so that the whole industry is in bed with itself.  There can be no semblance of objectivity in art, if strict rules concerning skill are not adhered to.

It is ironic that the Turner Prize, handed out by the Tate Modern in Britain, and named after the famous painter, is now handed out to people who cannot draw and don’t paint.  The use of projectors is not cool or modern, it is plain speaking nothing short of cheating, as there is no skill required to trace.  If this government regulation were enforced, then the artists who deserve to be awarded prizes would be recognised, and the people who can’t draw, who have no imagination or vision (photoshop becomes the same as using a projector) and can’t paint should be left to be a legend in their own mind.

In order to bring skill back into art, perhaps a class action or two against a high profile art prize would help to turn the tide of opinion about what constitutes art and skill?

In my humble opinion, the Galleries are still showing crap, and there is still market manipulation.  Collectors are still being duped into buying art that they are told is or will be worth lots of money and Gallery Directors are selling the hype with sentences that prefix the artist’s induction into the Gallery Stable with their artist “… was awarded the Academic Excellence Award”.

What does Academic excellence have to do with this person selling a piece of art.  The art object is the practical side of an Art Degree, yet Gallery Directors are selling the practical on the hype and rhetoric that surrounds it.

Isn’t art supposed to be about beauty, aesthetics, enjoyment and pleasure?  Richness lives in your surroundings as well as your bank account.  With “things” as cheap as they are these days, there is no excuse for “bad taste”.

As an old student of QCA, who managed to achieve a place within its studios by folio, it is insulting that Galleries would dare espouse the achievements of someone who can talk the bullshit, but can’t actually do it.  Infact, I’d go so far as saying that many of these artists today wouldn’t have made the cut back in the day when folios were king, when rhetoric was left to the critics and art historians.

In order for the world to get some normality in the art market, it needs to be overhauled.  There needs to be some regulation in this industry, but it is doubtful if any could ever be reinforced, due to the very subjective nature of art itself.

It is because of the Contemporary Art Bubble, that the Henry Review for the Australian Taxation Office is setting the stage for the biggest overhaul of the tax system in 40 years.  Thanks to the greed, market manipulation and speculation of recent years, the Government looks set to axe the ability for the Self-Managed Superannuation Fund to be able to buy art as part of their investment folio.  As art is an unregulated industry, the government has seen fit to term this investment class as unworthy and speculative at best.  For once I agree with the government, the only thing that was propping up the art market was its underpinning of rhetoric, dust and feathers.  The majority of Contemporary Art is boring, ugly, and technically deficient; therefore technically worthless with no intrinsic value.

This has dire implications for the art market as investors will be seeking to “dump” their investment art and try to recoup their money before the tax implications take effect, and a double dip in the graph is likely.   However, all is not lost, and I predict this will cause one of the biggest shake-up’s in the Art World in Australia’s history, and I say, bring it on.

Previously the market was held up by greed and speculation, in part fed by the fact that owning a piece of art within a Self-Managed Fund meant you weren’t allowed to have it in your home.  You weren’t allowed to look at it, and had to store it in a safe place, as you would your gold or jewellery.

Now, private collectors will most likely store their collections in their homes, where they can enjoy them.

And here is the sticking point.  Enjoyment.

In a recent article for an Amsterdam University, a Professor of Economics did a paper on art as an investment.  He wrote that art has “a psychic value”, that is, art has intrinsic value just like real estate.  He wrote that while real estate as an asset class increases in capital value, it also had intrinsic value because people live in houses and the piece of real estate becomes a home, and is not just a piece of paper like shares or bonds.

Art also has intrinsic value because of the supply and demand equation.  Where there is limited supply and high demand, prices will be strong.

The two key names that led excesses within the contemporary Art Bubble were Damian Hirst who hired employees to make his art (high supply), cashed in on his reputation when he held his own Auction, and Andy Warhol whose prints were in high supply, surely spelt disaster for anyone who invested in them.  While Andy Warhol is famous in the art history books, are his prints really worth that much?  High supply is unsustainable as a capital growth strategy.

Sound judgement prevails in Bear Markets.  In times of financial depression, the markets usually revert to what is known to have value.  Gold in the financial markets and in the Art Market, investors defer to the Old Masters, and those who already have a name in Art History, such as Monet.

I predict that only art that has intrinsic value will live to survive, and that the next chapter in the art history books will be dedicated to explaining away the excesses since Duchamps “Urinal”.  Art that has technical prowess combined with good aesthetics will proceed to outpace it’s contemporary competitor of those artists who use enablers; that is those who hire employees, trace, project, or use technology to digitally enhance or enables them to make “art”.

The Post-Contemporary Market or the Post-Photographic age as David Hockney described it will hopefully yield some common sense in the art market, now that the collector has to look at what they buy.

From a student’s and educational point of view, the changes to the Queensland College of Art is that there is now the flexibility to study the subjects you want to study (in theory anyway) which is a  fantastic idea, allowing students to complete part of a design and business degree, which could be utilised to turn their idea “… into businesses” (p.5).  It is however only part of the story, and if students wanted to get a job, they would need to go on to a Masters degree to complete the particular path they want to specialise in, which is a big turnoff from a students perspective, as it means time out of your life, and your reward is a huge HECS debt.

The whole ethos of education is to churn out employees.  Yet 2010 and beyond is the start of a new era where creativity in design, combined with some good old fashioned common sense, might help to get humanity to start to build a sustainable future, with an economic system that is honest, but still allows the entrepreneur to bring to market products that change our world for the better.  Introducing arts into the national curriculum is a start which means Australians will “… end up more of a European type culture where the majority of the population comes to appreciate good design, and come to appreciate the importance of the arts in the community …” (p.6) and that we might catch up and perhaps one day overtake “… those countries that consistently outperform us in innovation …” (p.7)

However getting back to the crux of the question, I personally believe you will be severely disadvantaged and short-changed if you attend university if you want to go specifically to Art School to learn how to be a painter.  You will be taught how to develop “… intellectual conceptual skills, the capacity to think, problem solve, communicate, advocate, challenge, question, through processes of making.  Whether it results in a finished artwork is much less important …” (p.4).

These ideals are in and of themselves noble pursuits, however I’m particularly starting to question the role of talent, as unfortunately technology has spawned the use of enablers and wannabe’s.  With QUT’s creative industries terminology wrapped up in a “… mausoleum of rhetoric …” (p.7), is it little wonder the rubbish produced could even be termed art and entered into an art competition? For instance, take the presitigious 2009 Stan & Maureen Duke Gold Coast Art Prize.  Upon entering the room we were greeted by the Exhibition host who told us not to stand on the thing that looks like a stage, because its actually ” … one of the artworks on display”.  Now when someone has to TELL me that an object is a piece of art there is something wrong.  Anyone with reasonable common sense can tell the difference between art and furniture.  It is akin to shoe shine boys giving stock tips just before the Great Depression.  It tells me that the pendulum has swung too far, and I believe change is imminent.

I’m starting to think that people have lost their minds?  Surely after the Great Contemporary Art Bubble burst, people would start to realise that paintings produced in a manufacturing environment, aka Damian Hirst and China’s manufacturing arm, supported by Interior Design shops/galleries that import paintings from China and then mark them up 400-500%, have infiltrated the heart of what the dictionary describes as art.

Back in 1993, the first year that Queensland College ofArt amalgamated with Griffith University, I spent two years studying printmaking as my minor (Painting was my major) all because the ceramics class was booked out by students majoring in photography, and now I have a HECS debt, a proportion of which was of absolutely no use to me, courtesy of the Federal Government.  It did however teach me an important lesson, Art School as we knew it, was in decline.

Looking back almost twenty years, I have seen the Queensland College of Art, which had a great reputation, fall into disrepair.  Now folios have disappeared, replaced by entrance scores with courses that have twice as many students, half as many staff, even less contact hours and an ever decreasing budget.  However, as I can attest, the arts can attract some of the best thinkers in our society, those in the medical profession and the sciences, as QCA have “… some of the highest entrance scores in the university.” (p.6)  For the moment though, that leaves some very capable people perhaps being denied places in favour of people who fit the university’s academic outcomes.  The problem with tests, particularly academic tests, is that they don’t take into account emotional intelligence, which I have found is THE most important component in any endeavour.

Arrogance mixed with ignorance can be dangerous and is a barrier to learning, combined with greed and narcissitic (egotistical) decisions bring you things like black spots on our highways.  To cite an example building the turning lane of the Logan Motorway onto the right hand fast lane of the Ipswich Motorway, causing the Motorway to back up as people slow down to make the turn safely.  Duh …!  How come we spend so much money making mistakes, that with a bit more listening and a little bit more thinking, someone in authority would have noticed that that was a bad design idea?

Lets hope that 2010 is the beginning of the decade where we start to think a little more about the consequences of our actions.  The concept of universities was designed and supported by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to teach thinking and wisdom, and finding wisdom through the arts, is one of the last bastions of the thinking mind.