Winning entry for the Future Connections competition, conducted by The Australian newspaper and the British Council, 2003. Essay question: What Kind of relationship do Australia and the UK need in the 21st Century?
Historical ties bind. The passage of over two centuries since the landing of the British on the Australian continent and the subsequent evolution of a united and earnest nation has served to reveal a relationship based on historical and cultural affinity. A relationship based on hierarchy and inequality will always be subject to the uneasiness of imbalance, but this is not the one of Britain and Australia today. Nor should it be that of the coming century.
Australia and Britain must continue their exchanges within parameters in place since the close of the Second World War. The rights of passage for hordes of youth from future generations should continue to be played out in the mutual exchange of minimum-wage employment, sun and the finding of identity. Ease of cultural access will continue with the prominence of the English language in both countries, while a mutual affection will endure, in spite of the eventual re-arrangement of the Australian constitution to remove the Queen as Head of State. In fact, this change need barely register on the terms of the relationship, as the role is ceremonial, and the ties of Commonwealth should endure as the sole formal connection between the countries. Importantly, it is through this mechanism that employment concessions and their attendant cultural exchange will endure.
Another cultural exchange will continue in the form of direct media transfer, whereby the seemingly insatiable British appetite for Australian soaps is matched only be our indiscriminate hankering for everything from the increasingly sordid goings-on if London police to sexed-up chefs. The British will continue to buy Aboriginal art, while in Australia the influence of Hirst and Temin will linger well beyond the use-by date of their home country. Britain will continue to wield political and economic power beyond anything that the short recorded history of Australia can ever match, but Australians will be comfortable with this imbalance – for we will continue to beat the British at (most) sport.
This relationship is stable and mutually beneficial. Were the world to remain static, free of the new challenges that will come into play, it would endure indefinitely, for the passing of the last two generations has seen no reason for more than a gradual evolution. But history is restless. The world will press in with its new challenges, for neither exists in isolation from it. A future relationship must adapt to these, whilst maintaining the instinctive understanding that has characterised it thus far.
As the historical evolution optimistically termed progress marches on, the geographies of identity, prosperity, enmity and the uptake of technology (to name a few) will be accordingly re-arranged. Catastrophies will continue to expose us to visions of apocalypse, while the intractable increase in both consumption and the means to consume will further deplete badly managed resources. Perhaps most importantly, endless re-cycling of ideas will ensure that at any moment the world order will be struggling to adjust to old thinking imposed on new circumstance. The possible worlds in which the two nations will find themselves are infinite in number but, barring a disturbance large enough to lead to technological collapse and the attendant onset of another dark age (a more real scenario than many suspect), there are clear trends future historians will record.
One such trend will be the ever-reducing robustness of production and distribution systems. Technological innovation has been adopted by humanity since an upright posture was adopted countless millennia ago, for at its most broad level it enables the maximization of resource exploitation. Increasing layers of sophistication demand increasing interconnectedness and a reduced ability for self-reliance. It is no coincidence that globalization has occurred at the point of history where the greatest consumption is delivered by the most complex technology. Failure of any component is both increasingly difficult to prevent and of ever-greater disruptive effect. The power cuts of recent times in America, Britain and most recently Italy starkly illustrate this – their ramifications were vastly more widespread than could have been possible for a similar anomaly a century ago. Recent anxiety over terrorism is borne of such a vulnerability. It is an embrace that will strengthen and it will place new demands on the British-Australian relationship. Specifically, an increasingly nervous global society will crave the security of trusted friends – the ties of history and understanding that permeate this relationship may be at odds with entreaties made by either country towards unexpected interests. The thrust towards Asia by Paul Keating comes to mind.
Genetic technologies are increasingly challenging ethicists and a clumsy legal framework, while public attention remains lethargic. Ostensibly designed to improve productivity, these technologies are destined to dash the optimism of idealists whose lofty musings on solving entrenched poverty through the empowerment of the developing world take on the tone of a weary mantra. Like all other innovations adopted by those who can afford them, genetic technologies will further erode robustness – this time of genetics in the agricultural sector (already seriously depleted after the practice of millennia of artificial selection), whilst eventually finding cosmetic application among the financially-endowed. Ostentatious abhorrence of racist doctrine will be strangely muted in the face of the new master race of genetic haves. Britain has already very credibly staked its claim to a place at the forefront of the collective bio-technologies with Dolly the sheep – an under-funded Australian sector will inevitably fall behind, our best and brightest lured offshore by opportunities we cannot provide. This will serve to differentiate our nations between technology-creating entrepreneur and technology-consuming primary producer. The notion of peer-ship faces serious challenge from this quarter.
Another increasing trend is the movement of humanity. For over a generation Britain and Australia have both been desired destinations for a great diversity of people. Initially the proponents of immigration conducted their side of the debate with utopian fervour – and those who disagreed were able to be slandered at will. The rise of far-right minorities politically and the blatant abuse of utopian goodwill by the September 11 terrorists have, however, forced acknowledgement that migration is not the panacea to declining birth rates it had previously been portrayed as and a degree of pragmatism has entered the debate. Striking an appropriate balance between humanitarian and economic concerns and the desire by the home-grown for an assurance of loyalty by arrivals is a challenge for Britons and Australians alike, for the debate is essentially identical in both countries. A future relationship will need to tread carefully around the sensitivities of this issue.
The gathering together of the economies of Europe offers a pointer into a future increasingly dominated by such blocks, in addition to the plethora of bilateral trading favours and blatant self-interests that inevitably obstruct free trade. When Australia finally sorts out whether it is American or Asian (or perhaps even a clever enough country to be everybody’s mate, political agendas aside) it may yet fashion a role as a go-between, providing an opportunity that Britain may wish to exploit. Under such a scenario, the return of the favour would be a tasty scrap off the European table. Perhaps more realistic is the scenario that the self-appointed superpower of Melanesia will serve as a conduit to a geographically large, albeit economically microscopic, stretch of the globe. At such times as the nations of the Pacific do catch the attention of remote powers Australia may expect a ring of the diplomatic doorbell. In this circumstance Europe will link with Australia via Britain. Certainly, it may be expected that European journalists will overnight here on their way to cover the disappearance of the sandbanks that constitute many sovereign states in the Pacific.
All consumption delivers environmental impact. While the efficiency gains of the past century offered the promise of both shorter working hours and an environmental dividend, the reality was that consumption remained exactly commensurate with production capacity (which was able to rise exponentially). It is a hard habit to shake, especially when global trade allows the exporting of the attendant impact by the wealthy to areas remote from consciousness. What will concern countries such as Australia and the UK will be when that environmental impact itself becomes truly global. Among the more trivial spin-offs will be a reduced hankering for the Australian sun.
The merest hint of a new notion – that of the post-growth society – has begun to creep into parlance. As the assumption that economic and social wellbeing are interchangeable is undermined, a fresh tussle between humans and their desires will ensue. Those demanding frugality will take on the air of zealous dieticians. Europe has already nominated itself for this role. Being called to account by international policing bodies will be like a visit to the dentist, for it will come after the forbidden delight of gratuitous consumption and will involve confession, punishment and absolution. Accordingly, Australia will need to plan ahead, signing the UK up to a binding relationship that will not, in the face of Australian pariah status, be easily undone. Otherwise, it may be that not even the ties of Commonwealth will save us from our dreaded appointment with the disciplinarian.
It is in this circumstance that the relationship that Australia and Britain need most will be clearly understood; such a plight for Antipodean Australia will stir a latent itch in the British psyche – that of what it was to be an empire, to be proud, independent and, above all, right. In spite of the insufferable rhetoric the British endure about a future in Europe, Britons themselves know that any relationship with former colonies must remind them of the days when their sun never set.
Of the evolving world of the coming century, Australia and the UK will have an innate understanding. Perhaps it is best illustrated by the parallelism of action in relation to determined American foreign policy in Iraq – the British and Australian positions alongside America were as unique in the world as they were steadfast. That both countries were internally divided on this issue belies the almost instinctive alacrity with which their leaders took up the American cause. The sympathy of reasoning on this issue stems from deep similarity of thought.
It is this instinctive empathy that must continue to underpin the relationship between Australia and the UK in the 21st Century, with its attendant changes and challenges. Through the onward march of history, the revelation that progress is in the eye of the beholder will come to define the international climate. Australians must continue to remind the British of the very best aspects of their former empire; the British, in turn, must reveal to Australians who they are in a world where not even a genetic identity can be taken at face value. It is, and must always remain, a fair exchange.
To the Farm Gate; the Alchemy of Bits and Bytes - Albany Art Prize Artist Statement, 2014.
Playing out upon a canvas of loam and emergent biomass - and simultaneously the bits and bytes deployed by Google - is a vision of human endeavour interchangeable with the output of the artist in both the rigour of its execution and the force of its internal logic. That its oblong territories are subsumed into a coherent whole only serves to fortify the equivalence. In replacing an electronic abstraction with one crafted in paint, a truth is permitted to emerge beneath the brush’s restless trajectory. Therein lies the mission of the artist. 2014.
Industry in Nature - Atrium Gallery, Burnie, Artist Statement, 2014.
In concluding the production of works for this exhibition, some impressions of the relationship between humanity and the environment have emerged: the geographies of human endeavour are analogous to ecotones bounding species assemblages in ‘wild’ landscapes; energy transfers and the structures imposed on the surface of land are similarly analogous; and the popularly imagined distinction between the artificial and natural is likely overstated, if not without foundation. The landscapes of North West Tasmania are a microcosm of a broader – seemingly unconscious – integration of human technology into the very fabric of landscape itself.