Artspace, 31 July, 2024

White – Saviour – Industrial – Complex

Andy Butler is an artist, writer, and curator living in Naarm Melbourne. His visual practice employs moving image, performance, painting and text to consider strategies for maintaining hope and optimism at a time of political upheaval, with a strong focus on the political currents of the Indo-Pacific region.

Andy Butler, Deep Clean, 2021. Installation view. HD video, black and white, audio on speakers, 11 mins, looped.

Notes:

·        Andy spoke about growing up in 1990’s Australia where being brown in the art world was a hot ticket.

·        He was brought on through inclusion policies adopted by arts institutions as if his presence would solve racism. It wouldn’t

·        In late 90’s Australia people were starting to talk openly about race

·        The rise of racist, right-wing politician Pauline Hanson and the 2005 Cronulla race riots. On 11 December 2005 over 5,000 mostly Anglo-Australians assembled at Cronulla in Sydney's south to 'reclaim the beach from outsiders'. Violence erupted as the crowd attacked people of Middle Eastern appearance, sparking two further days of rioting.

·        The writing of Ghassan Hage “White Nation”, 1988 – hit the nail on the head describing Australian race relations

·        White people trying to figure out how to manage non-white people

·        Reducing “other” to a “passive object” to be governed. But that thinking also turns inward and the “other” can see themselves as a “passive object”.

·        Andy didn’t know any good white multi-culturists in the 90’s/2000’s in Western Australia.

·        Artists with diasporic identity / non-white artists expected to produce cultural work in the art world.

·        Arts institutions are talking about diversity but everyone is white in art galleries and arts management

·        In December 2017 Andy wrote an article called “Safe White Spaces”, pointing out the institutional racism in the arts in Australia, which lead him to become a diversity advocate working within institutional systems.

·        He realised that systems put in place to deal with diversity DON’T WORK

·        95% of leadership in business, government, arts etc are white

·        Andy realised that nothing will change – but he found that very liberating because it meant that now he knew where he should focus his energy

·        He went back to making art.

·        In 2021 he made “Deep Clean”, a black and white work on HD video shot on location at Arts

House, Naarm Melbourne where it was originally shown. He cast an actor who resembled his mother to perform the often invisible service work central to the life of cultural organisations. This work is included in the Artspace group show “This is the house that Jack built”.

·        He referenced the 2018 film Roma, directed by Alfonso Cuaron.

·        The only way his mum could engage with cultural/art spaces was if she was cleaning them

·        He starts delving into the dynamics of white saviourism

·        References the Rudyard Kipling poem “The White Mans Burden”, written about the Filipines

·        Andy found it extremely hard working with the archival material – he hadn’t expected it to affect him so deeply

·        He used the term “internalised Orientalism” to describe the way white power structures and attitudes are so entrenched that Filipinos believe it of themselves.

·        Conversations about race and power were circumscribed for us years ago

·        Andy likes making film because it’s collaborative and he feels like he can share the burden of the difficult material without having to come up with any answers or solutions

·        He used the 1931 film Thirteen Women starring Myrna Loy as a reference for his latest film project

·        How to work with broken institutions?

·        The energy it takes to perform pre-prescribed racial stereotypes

·        How to engage with highly difficult material

·        Change is cyclical. Things improve then the next government undoes the improvements and so it goes on without ever getting better.

Andy was an excellent speaker and really engaging. Art can be a catalyst for change when it opens up space for the hard conversations. I feel like things are slightly better here in Aotearoa, but of course that's me speaking from a white privileged position. Bottom line is that until you experience something like that first hand, you don't know how it feels.