The Spiral Gallery: non-market creativity and belonging in an Australian country town
RIS ID
75338
Abstract
This paper seeks to explore creative practice in an Australian country town, and in so doing, to unsettle market-orientated interpretations of creativity that privilege the urban. Instead of focusing on creative practice as a means to develop industries, we focus on how creativity is a means to establish a cooperative gallery space that helps to sustain a sense of self in an otherwise antithetical social and cultural context. The example we discuss is The Spiral Gallery, a women's co-operative arts space established in the 1990s in the small (but somewhat iconic) country town of Bega - in a place where avenues for feminist arts were otherwise absent. We demonstrate the Spiral Gallery does more than showcase creativity in the Bega Valley. In addition, the gallery has become a means to 'becoming' and 'belonging', to cultivate subjects through various practices including sculpture, performance and photography; which in turn enrich cultural life. In this way creativity in rural life comes to be understood as social, performative, visceral and political.
Publication Details
Waitt, G. & Gibson, C. (2013). The Spiral Gallery: non-market creativity and belonging in an Australian country town. Journal of Rural Studies, 30 (N/A), 75-85.