THIRTY YEARS with FLYING ARTS – 1971 to 2001 Chapter 1
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1 FROM RIVER BANKS TO SHEARING SHEDS: THIRTY YEARS WITH FLYING ARTS – 1971 to 2001 Chapter 1: Introduction This thesis traces the history of a unique Queensland art school, which began as ‘Eastaus’ (for Eastern Australia) in 1971 when Mervyn Moriarty, its founder, learned to fly a small plane in order to take his creative art school to the bush. In 1974 the name was changed to ‘The Australian Flying Arts School’; in 1994 it became ‘Flying Arts Inc.’ To avoid confusion the popular name ‘Flying Arts’ is used throughout the study. The thesis will show that when creative art (experimental art where the artist relies on his subjective sensibility), came to Brisbane in the 1950s, its dissemination by Moriarty throughout Queensland in the 1970s was a catalyst which brought social regeneration for hundreds of women living on rural properties and in large and small regional towns throughout Queensland. The study will show that through its activities the school enhanced the lives of over six thousand people living in regional Queensland and north-western New South Wales.1 Although some men were students, women predominated at Flying Arts workshops. Because little is known about country women in rural social organizations this study will focus on women, and their growing participation within the organization, to understand why they flocked to Moriarty’s workshops, and why creative art became an important part of so many lives. The popularity of the workshops, and the social interaction they supplied for so many, is a case study for Ross’s argument that the cultural role of the arts is to provide personal and social re-generation.2 In 1994 Griffith University published a report on women’s participation in the Arts and Cultural Industries, they observed that women’s attendance at cultural activities is consistently higher than men and that very little is known about their patterns of participation and their levels of satisfaction.3 The growth of women within Flying Arts in the thirty years under review and the reminiscences supplied by students is a case study which adds to the knowledge of the leisure activities of women in regional communities. Others have also commented on the lack of knowledge of the leisure pursuits of country women. For example, Kerry James observes that around seventy per cent of Australians live in cities, and have never experienced life in the bush at first hand. Of the other thirty percent, one third of people living on farms are women whose 1 The figure put out by Flying Arts in 1994 was 5000 but as no accurate records are available prior to 1994, a conservative estimate would be at least 6000. 2 Malcolm Ross, The Aesthetic Impulse, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1984, p. 9. 3 Gillian Swanson and Patricia Wise, Going for Broke: Women’s participation in the Arts and Cultural Industries, Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy, Griffith University, Brisbane, 1994, p. 22. 2 interests have been largely unrecorded;4 these women are the subject of this study. Although research on the lives of country women has increased over the last decade, many of the published articles are written from a feminist viewpoint, and tend to show them as being exploited. They are the carers - the unpaid labour for their husbands, their children, the farm, even the local community.5 This thesis, however, by tracing the history of Flying Arts, questioning why so many of its students were women, and documenting the changes it brought to their lives, suggests that, to compensate for the cultural deprivation of living in regional centres, or on lonely properties, women embraced the creative art workshops provided by Flying Arts, often leaving their families to travel hundreds of kilometres over poor roads to participate because they found creative art workshops were a challenge. The stimulating discussions with practising artists/teachers and fellow students with similar interests helped overcome their mental isolation. Fostering their own creativity gave these women a focus which fulfilled their inner needs. Lesley Warner6 wrote of the educational needs and opportunities for rural women. She highlighted the difficulties Flying Arts encountered when she described the problems associated with supplying education to a state as large as Queensland. Covering 1,728,000 sq. km., an area equivalent in size to Western Europe, Queensland is the most decentralised state in Australia. With significant regional centres evenly spaced along the coast from Cairns in the north, to Brisbane and the Gold Coast in the south, about 38 per cent of the population live outside Brisbane and the south-east corner.7 These Queenslanders are scattered over a vast area, and research for this thesis supports Johnson’s argument that, until the 1960s, their education and cultural needs were a low priority. 8 Kay Thomas, in her study of women’s health and welfare in remote Queensland, has also compiled data describing Queensland, with several areas of high population away from the capital city, as being unique in relation to other parts of Australia. In latter years the Queensland coast, from the NSW border to Cairns, has experienced a high growth rate. Following the downturn in rural Queensland, population has decreased in smaller inland towns, but larger 4 Kerry James, ed., Work, Leisure & Choice: Women in Rural Australia, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 1989, p. xi 5 Margaret Alston, ‘Feminism and Farm Women’, Margaret-Ann Franklin, Leonie M. Short and Elizabeth K. Teather, eds., Country Women at the Crossroads, University of New England Press, Armidale, 1994, p. 25. 6 Lesley Warner, ‘Educational Needs and Opportunities for Rural Women: The Queensland Experience’, Country Women at the Crossroads, p. 116. 7 Australian Bureau of Statistics 1971 figures. 8 W. Ross Johnston, The Call of the Land: A History of Queensland to the Present Day, The Jacaranda Press, Brisbane, 1982, p. 196. 3 inland towns like Toowoomba, Emerald, and Longreach have been steadily growing at the expense of smaller communities.9 With young people seeking work in larger towns there is an ageing of the population with retirees being over-represented in many areas. Reminiscences in Appendix III show that they are among the women who benefited from the Flying Arts Workshops. With Queensland’s immense distances and wide population distribution, in 1971 government-run organisations did not supply satisfactory art education for those living in remote areas. Although young people attended boarding school in the more populated coastal towns, art was only part of the curriculum; there were no opportunities for further tuition in the visual or performing arts. Those who could went to Sydney or Melbourne for further training, not to Brisbane. The reason for this will be discussed in chapter two. Older people living in the bush were committed to their families and their farms. They had no opportunity to travel to coastal centres for art or craft classes as a diversion from their day to day chores. When Mervyn Moriarty overcame distance by flying his art school, not only to the coastal towns of regional Queensland, but to towns and properties in the far west, he was welcomed by many. To understand why creative art was different and why it attracted women the arguments of Pen Dalton, who taught art at girls’ schools in England from the 1970s, are useful. Dalton begins with a description of the nineteenth century South Kensington School and the way its academic methods of teaching art were exported to the colonies in the late nineteenth century. Dalton describes the art being taught in Australia in the early part of the twentieth century when she wrote that: ‘English culture and its fragmented, classed, gendered and colonial outlook became part of the structuring forms of art education for the United States, Canada and Australasia.’10 With its emphasis on technique and skills, over the following decades the English model for art became stilted and rigid. However, by the mid-nineteenth century many French artists began to challenge similar academic art being taught in France, and by the early twentieth century Australian artists who could travel to Europe adopted a more creative approach to their work. Although creative art was introduced into Melbourne and Sydney in the early 1930s through schools operated by artists, it was not brought into Queensland until the 1950s, and did not become a significant force until the 1960s. Chapter two discusses, against this backdrop, why Queensland art education remained with the South Kensington School model. The Central 9 Kay Thomas, 'Women's Health and Welfare in Rural and Remote Queensland', Country Women at the Crossroads, p. 99. Census figures how that between 1954 and 1971 the population of Townsville grew from 75,699 to 111,963. Far western Queensland dropped from a high in 1961 of 6,107 to 4,336 in 1971. 10 Pen Dalton, The Gendering of Art Education, Open University, Buckingham, 2001, p. 4. 4 Technical College, Queensland’s premier art training college, did not have accreditation for creative art courses until the 1970s. In the 1950s artist/teacher Jon Molvig, and others who came to settle in Queensland during and after World War II, began a cultural shift. The rise of Hitler’s Germany was a significant factor. European art practices were taken to the western world when many artists and intellectuals fled German occupied territories – they became known as the ‘Hitler émigrés’. For example, Snowman cites prominent people who fled to England – among them were Otto Klemperer and Carl Ebert, masters in music; art historians Ernst Gombrich and Nikolaus Pevsner; and architect Walter Gropius11. Highly educated in their field, the Hitler Émigrés influenced the culture of England, America and Australasia.