Tasmania: State of the Arts?

Tasmania: State of the Arts? As Melanie Tait talks with artists who’ve made Tasmania Tasmania: home, she fnds out why they came, why they stayed, and State of the Arts? what living in Tasmania means for their art ... rtists’ housing isn’t something you’ll see Malcolm Turnbull or Bill Shorten campaigning for with furious passion next time they battle at the ballot box. You won’t see rallies in capital cities in Aits honour. When you’re next chatting with your local grocery store owner about politics, it’ll take a while until you get onto the vexed issue of where artists can live afordably and still continue to make art. Since time began, societies have typically been apathetic about the needs of artists. With very few exceptions, there’s always been a suspicion that artists should, like the rest of us, abandon their dreams and get a real job. Do their art as a hobby. Never mind that pretty much every Australian has some sort of interaction with the arts each year, and over half are involved in artistic creation. Tat for every 100 people in Australia, 78 tickets to arts-related events are sold. In 2008–9 the Gross Value Added (GVA) by the arts provided $35 billion. To give this some context, in the same fnancial year agriculture, forestry and fshing provided $28 billion. In every measure possible, artists are an important part of our national life and culture. Artists have always gone to the places no-one else wanted to and created vibrant, luscious communities. You can bet that as far back as the mythical founding of Rome, Aeneas chose the site of Rome to start a new civilisation because the locals had some cool beats playing and street art that made their mud brick cottages sing. Artists have rejuvenated communities and real estate markets all over Australia – Castlemaine, Hill End, Byron Bay, and now they’re doing it in Tasmania. ISLAND Artists move in, they create an exciting community, the property prices increase. Yet, for perhaps the most famous and lucrative As I make my way up the drive to the cottage that Julia example of this in the last hundred years, we need to Fredersdorf shares with her husband and daughters on look beyond these shores, to New York City. New York the side of the mountain, there’s no mistaking the snow City is full of former bohemian artists’ sanctums going that’s been dumped on the dolerite clifs just beyond her the full investment banker granite cocaine den, but one woodshed, even though spring is already ofcially here. project sticks out the most: Manhattan Plaza. Te only thing indicating we’re in the Australian bush is Manhattan Plaza began life in the mid-1970s with the smell of the eucalypts and the fresh pademelon shit humble capitalist goals. Te developers wanted to make stuck to the bottom of my boots. an obscene amount of money from the upper reaches of Tis is the ultimate bush haven for the reclusive society with two apartment blocks, stretching 45 storeys artist, all a 20-minute drive from Hobart’s CBD. It’s a into the sky in the city’s theatre district. Te rub was former strawberry farm, and walking up the gravel path this: New York City was in recession, the theatre district armed with a freshly baked chocolate orange cake from was jam-packed with pornographers, and the city’s fancy the CWA shop in town (at $6.80 another marvellous people didn’t want to move to a place known colloquially example of the afordability of Tasmanian life), music as ‘Hell’s Kitchen’. plays and I think Julia is greeting me with some bizarre A plan was hatched to subsidise the enormous blocks classical musical ritual. She’s not. It’s the melodic wind for the city’s poor, but the developers didn’t want the chimes making calm out of the gathering mountain actual poor’s dysfunction, so who did they turn to? Per- winds. forming artists. Manhattan Plaza became a place where Julia is one of the world’s foremost baroque violin- the theatre district’s many artists (from actors to lighting ists. She’s studied for years to ‘undo’ her habits with the operators) could enjoy paying no more than 30 per cent modern violin. What she does is highly specialised, so of their income in rent. for many years she was based in Paris, going where the Tis community thrived – famously housing people work took her, mostly all over Europe. such as Seinfeld creator Larry David (who, interestingly, It was a roundabout journey to Tasmania for Julia: lived across the hall from the man who inspired the frst, home to Melbourne. ‘I didn’t want to end up iconic character of Kramer in the hit TV series), musician growing old in Europe. I never felt like I completely Alicia Keys, playwright Tennessee Williams and actors ftted in there. What I love in Australia, whether we have James Earl Jones and Al Pacino. diferences or not, is that there’s a common philosophy. Now, the Times Square/theatre district in New York I felt there was more of a kinship here, which made me City is one of the city’s most afuent, in no small part feel more safe.’ because of the community built by the Manhattan Plaza. Tinking strategically about the likelihood of her Tis is happening, albeit in a quieter, less fashy career having legs in Australia, Julia made the move way, in Hobart. Hobart is home to an internationally from France over two years. ‘I started trying to build acclaimed art museum and a Man Booker Prize winner. up work here, and winding down the work I accepted It’s a moment in time in which Tasmania is still aford- over there.’ able for the mainland artist with its (relatively) cheap Life in Melbourne still meant lots of travelling. Her rents and home prices, yet has an increasingly hip kudos. worn, orange suitcase became known to her friends as Could this make Tasmania the new state of the arts? ‘Julia’s Apartment’. A move to Tasmania crept into con- versation between Julia and her partner, ABC broad- Fern Tree is a suburb of Hobart still uninfected by what caster Christopher Lawrence, shortly afer their frst some Tasmanians think of as the hipster virus. Te local daughter was born. pub’s side doors are chipped, there’s nowhere to buy a ‘We could have aforded a small two-bedroom apart- fresh litre of milk, and it’s impossible to get a decent ment [in Melbourne], and Chris already owned this cofee unless you climb another ten minutes on the place here [in Hobart]. We kept looking at the options, tourist trail towards the summit of Hobart’s kunanyi/ and it kept being a no-brainer. We’d looked at living half Mt Wellington. in the [Melbourne] country, like Healesville, but the 44 trafc is so ridiculous that we were looking at a two-hour social media to anxiety. Her 50 000 Twitter followers commute. Even there, we couldn’t really aford it, so we hang on every word she says, and so do I when I visit her decided to give it a year down here.’ on a bright Hobart morning in her house in the suburb Tat was in 2013. Now, their family has expanded, of Lenah Valley. and with it, Julia’s thirst for travel and being away from Tere are books in every crevice of her house, her her family is ever-diminishing, which is more to do with local bookshop of choice being ‘Cracked and Spineless’, having two little children than a loss of work opportu- a part of her world she couldn’t do without to ease the nities due to being island based. A life in Tasmania has lonely hours of a full-time writer’s life. Joe and Michelle meant Julia’s grown very selective about trips to main- at the local post ofce help make up the community she’s land Australia and beyond. It’s also led to the formation found since moving her life to Tasmania. of her baroque ensemble Van Diemen’s Band. Peopling Rae and her Australian husband Kevin Johnson (also, the band wasn’t without its challenges – the musicians curiously, a radio host, this time at the local 7HOFM) come from Tasmania and beyond. moved from the UK eight years ago on a whim, without Te classical musician has found there’s a real hunger having so much as tested the fsh and chip situation at in Tasmania for new work, and there’s a desire to support the docks. local artists. Like any self-respecting young British woman in the ‘Van Diemen’s Band’s added something really cre- 1980s, Rae was a fan of the television show Neighbours. atively satisfying, so I feel more enriched living here and When she and her husband decided to move back to having that opportunity.’ Australia, Tasmania was the only choice. Not only was ‘Tere’s a lot of opportunity here to realise an idea. the climate vaguely acceptable, but it’s where Neighbours If we’re talking about music specifcally, Melbourne characters Scott and Charlene had settled (as Jason and Sydney are really saturated with groups. [Here] Donovan and Kylie Minogue went to the UK for pop there’s a smaller population and a community minded- careers). ness, which I compare to Iceland, having spent time in Continuing to build her career from Tasmania was Reykjavic.

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