Latest news with #KhaledSabsabi
ABC News
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Is there any appetite for risk at Creative Australia? And the story behind the art of Emily Kam Kngwarray
Khaled Sabsabi is once again Australia's representative to the 2026 Venice Biennale, after the Board of Creative Australia reversed their previous decision to rescind his invitation. Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, the former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, says that Instead of shying away from controversy, a strong agency would embrace it and work to engage the public. But after an independent review that spoke a lot about risk management, what will happen to Creative Australia's appetite for risk? And Emily Kam Kngwarray is one of Australia's most renown artists and one of the most expensive. This week, a major collection of Kngwarray's art opens at the Tate Modern in London. Featuring more than 70 pieces, it's the first exhibition of this scale of her work in Europe. Danielle MacLean, director of Emily: I am Kam, explores the life, the Country, and the politics behind the art. Our track of the week is Something About A Cake Shop by Stiff Gins. Stories mentioned in the headlines: Sean Combs, aka Diddy, found guilty on two charges, but acquitted on three others Gareth Sansom wins the Sorrento Art Prize Museum of West African Art announces first public exhibition Actor Julian McMahon dies at 56 Actor Michael Madsen dies at 67
Sydney Morning Herald
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Shark puppet and otherworldly ‘dinner party' among $3m arts fund winners
Eight diverse NSW arts projects have been awarded more than $3m in funding under a new Creative Australia initiative. Big winners in the inaugural round of the four-year project include Wollongong's Merrigong Theatre Company ($750,000), The Cad Factory, based in Sandigo north-west of Wagga Wagga ($634,000), and Marrickville company Erth ($551,000). The Creative Futures Fund has handed out nearly $8 million nationwide and will award a further $11 million over the next three years. It follows widespread criticism of the organisation from the arts sector after the sacking and reinstating of Khaled Sabsabi as Australia's representative at the Venice Biennale next year. Scott Wright, creative director of Erth, which specialises in immersive puppetry-based shows for children said the 'pretty hefty' sum would make a huge difference in how they can present their project, Shark Dive. 'But one of the most amazing things was that it is really more about acknowledgement,' added Wright, who founded the company in 1990. 'We know our peers were on the assessment panel, and it just feels nice to be acknowledged.' Shark Dive was created for the Sydney Festival two years ago at the Australian Museum. 'We put people in a shark cage and swam a four-metre great white shark puppet around the cage,' said Wright. 'It was sort of tongue in cheek because we were creating the work from a desire for conservation and for better understanding of sharks. We were actually not trying to create fear.' The cash injection from the Creative Futures Fund will allow Erth to expand the scale of Shark Dive and reach a much larger audience. 'We want to show it to 500 people or a thousand people in an hour as opposed to trying to get 500 people through a day,' said Wright.
The Age
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Shark puppet and otherworldly ‘dinner party' among $3m arts fund winners
Eight diverse NSW arts projects have been awarded more than $3m in funding under a new Creative Australia initiative. Big winners in the inaugural round of the four-year project include Wollongong's Merrigong Theatre Company ($750,000), The Cad Factory, based in Sandigo north-west of Wagga Wagga ($634,000), and Marrickville company Erth ($551,000). The Creative Futures Fund has handed out nearly $8 million nationwide and will award a further $11 million over the next three years. It follows widespread criticism of the organisation from the arts sector after the sacking and reinstating of Khaled Sabsabi as Australia's representative at the Venice Biennale next year. Scott Wright, creative director of Erth, which specialises in immersive puppetry-based shows for children said the 'pretty hefty' sum would make a huge difference in how they can present their project, Shark Dive. 'But one of the most amazing things was that it is really more about acknowledgement,' added Wright, who founded the company in 1990. 'We know our peers were on the assessment panel, and it just feels nice to be acknowledged.' Shark Dive was created for the Sydney Festival two years ago at the Australian Museum. 'We put people in a shark cage and swam a four-metre great white shark puppet around the cage,' said Wright. 'It was sort of tongue in cheek because we were creating the work from a desire for conservation and for better understanding of sharks. We were actually not trying to create fear.' The cash injection from the Creative Futures Fund will allow Erth to expand the scale of Shark Dive and reach a much larger audience. 'We want to show it to 500 people or a thousand people in an hour as opposed to trying to get 500 people through a day,' said Wright.
The Guardian
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
After the Sabsabi debacle, Creative Australia must learn to embrace controversy
After months of angst and uproar in the arts, the decision has finally been reconfirmed: Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino will represent Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2026. An independent report, which was initially only tasked with reviewing the selection process and not the board's decision to rescind the appointment, has identified the 'missteps' of that decision and the board has had the courage to respond accordingly. There will be some detractors but I have no doubt that when the work is unveiled next year, all the preconceived fears will be laid to rest. The question now is: how can Creative Australia rebuild confidence in its role in supporting the visual arts? The report raises some red flags with regard to the selection process for future Venice Biennales – for example, among all the well-intentioned recommendations about risk management, it says the future selection process will need take into account what 'could be so polarising and divisive as to have a material impact on the ability of Creative Australia to discharge effectively its statutory functions'. This phrase is troubling. As a museum director of many years experience, I am well aware of how hard it is to predict what will stir up controversy. And what is genuine community concern, as opposed to media beat-up? People may be surprised to learn that complaints about content in artworks are rare and usually driven by those who have not seen the work. Creative Australia will have to demonstrate that prejudging what might cause offence does not lead to the bland and the boring. The report also references the tensions between artistic freedom and Creative Australia's responsibility towards the wider community. I do not believe that there needs to be such a distinction. We should have a funding body that supports artists to make work that is critical and demanding as well as organisations that make the bridge between this work and a wider public, who do have an appetite for contemporary art. The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, where I was once director, became the most visited museum of contemporary art in the world, while putting artists and artistic excellence at its core. But there is more to be done in the immediate aftermath of this debacle. What we need is strong leadership from Creative Australia in relation to the visual arts. Why does this matter? It matters because in the age of artificial intelligence, creativity will be a driving force of the future. AI relies on human creativity and educational experts have identified creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and empathy as the skills and qualities that employers of the future will be seeking. These are the very skills that working with art and artists can contribute to society. Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning We also need support for galleries as we face the challenges of a society dominated by social media. Over a decade ago I sat on a panel discussing the impact of new technology on the arts and a panellist announced that, in future, art would be online and galleries redundant. We would all sit at home viewing art through ever more sophisticated gadgets. It has not happened. Social media instead can drive audiences to galleries – there is a strong desire for a shared, real experience to combat the world of the virtual. Why do visitors still flock to see works of art such as the Mona Lisa? Online representations are not enough – audiences want the power of the real, often a shared experience. Galleries in Australia and around the world can attest to this interest, especially from young people. Galleries can and still should be safe places for the discussion of difficult issues through the work of artists. There is now an opportunity for Creative Australia to take the lead and review the ecology of the visual arts across the country and to overcome the perception that it is an agency for the performing arts. We have seen a renewed focus on literature and music, so why not visual arts? It has been more than 20 years since the Australia Council's Myer inquiry into contemporary visual arts and craft, which focused on the organisations it funded, not the whole sector; I have long thought that our regional galleries, for example, play a vital role in engaging audiences with new work. A new strategic framework for the visual arts, with a commitment to respecting peer review in selection processes, could transform Creative Australia's relationship with the sector and restore confidence. What Australia needs is a visionary federal agency that works closely with all levels of government and other funders, respected for its commitment to artists. Instead of shying away from controversy, a strong agency would embrace it and work to engage the public. Art does matter – if it didn't, why all the recent outrage? Elizabeth Ann Macgregor is a curator and art historian and was the director of MCA Australia until 2021.
The Age
05-07-2025
- Politics
- The Age
There is only one worthwhile test of social cohesion. We may have just failed it
The idea that an artwork should not be 'divisive' is an extraordinary one, an anti-creative concept which, if you follow it to its natural conclusion, leads us inexorably to the end-point of propaganda. And yet anxiety over possible divisiveness seems to have been the guiding emotional principle applied by the board of Creative Australia, the government's main arts body, when it abruptly sacked Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi and his curator Michael Dagostino as Australia's representatives at the prestigious Venice Biennale next year. The board, which this week reinstated the duo in a spectacular backflip, originally said it acted to avoid the erosion of public support for Australia's artistic community that might ensue from a 'prolonged and divisive debate'. It is assumed that a prolonged and divisive debate about an artwork is a bad thing, but it doesn't have to be. To be fair, the board's anxieties were well-founded. Loading It was February 2025 and a caravan full of explosives had been discovered in north-west Sydney. This incident was quickly labelled an anti-Jewish terror plot but was later revealed to be a 'criminal con job'. The Peter Dutton-led Coalition was hammering the Albanese government (then behind in the polls) for being soft on antisemitism. Horrific pictures of burnt and maimed Gazan children aired on television nightly. Jewish-Australians were encountering antisemitism in their day-to-day lives. Pro-Palestine and pro-Israel forces were demonstrating on the streets and clashing in arts organisations. Sabsabi, stridently pro-Palestine Lebanese-Australian, had made clear his view on Israel when he decided to boycott the 2022 Sydney Festival because it took $20,000 in funding from the Israeli Embassy. His boycott was well before the horror of the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas on innocent Israelis, a day of rape, torture, kidnapping and slaughter from which more and more horror has unspooled. Sabsabi's views on Israel were known when he was chosen, as was his body of work, which includes a video and sound installation called 'YOU', owned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. 'YOU' features multiple versions of an image of Hassan Nasrallah, former head of Hezbollah.
