Best visual art: Rich works in a year of economic uncertainty

This year marked 50 years since parliament passed the Whitlam government’s Australia Council Act 1975. Whitlam’s cultural policy reflected the ambitions of its era, combining support for established institutions with new funding for “experimental” art, promoting cultural innovation as a public good.

From the late 1960s, a new generation of artists challenged the conditions under which art was produced, validated and circulated, turning to dematerialised and ephemeral approaches. Their critiques targeted the elitism of power, of museums and the commodification of art. Extending this push, artists founded alternative and artist-run spaces as supportive environments for the new hybrid practices.

Artist critique, pluralistic practices, dedicated exhibition venues for progressive art and the introduction of formalised public funding forged the contemporary art system that took shape through the 1980s. As radical and experimental practices became incorporated into state-supported institutions, opportunities expanded and art careers were increasingly professionalised, but new layers of gatekeeping also emerged. Events in 2025 underscore how funding priorities, institutional validation and market logics continue to structure Australia’s art infrastructure and mediate artists’ careers.

This year, longstanding structural pressures became newly visible. The commercial art ecosystem persists, anchored by art fairs and a significant number of private-market institutions, but fluctuating economic conditions and the purchasing patterns of a relatively small collector base have exposed artists of all generations to heightened financial precarity. Federal arts funding remains significant in aggregate, yet the share directed to visual arts – and particularly to artists themselves – is modest and unevenly distributed.

The establishment of Creative Australia in 2023, replacing the Australia Council as the national arts funding and policy body, marked a decisive shift in arts funding away from prioritising artistic excellence and experimental practice towards a broader “creative industries” framework emphasising cultural-economic impact. The organisation’s shocking removal of Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino in early 2025 as Australia’s representatives for the 2026 Venice Biennale sparked widespread condemnation from artists, curators and peak organisations. The decision was widely interpreted as organisational overreach and confirmed fears that Creative Australia’s policy-driven oversight threatened artistic and curatorial autonomy. The pair were reinstated with an apology in July after sustained advocacy, but the episode illustrated how vulnerable artists and independent curators remain within Australia’s cultural bureaucracy.

That vulnerability was compounded by the broader economic pressures of 2025, which sharply exposed the persistent financial precarity facing artists. A 2025 RMIT PlaceLab report confirmed that artists are among Australia’s lowest-paid workers despite high levels of education, relying on multiple casual or non-art jobs to sustain their practice. The pressure to self-brand and perform careerism continues to intensify. Universities, long central to training and sustaining artists, are also under strain. Reductions to visual arts courses and the threat of future cuts have increased uncertainty for emerging artists.

These developments risk undoing the hard-won gains of the 1970s, when the women’s art movement and the growing recognition of Indigenous art broadened participation, enriching the field with new approaches and perspectives that reflected Australia’s growing cultural diversity.

Copyright protections for artists equally came under pressure in 2025. Although ultimately rejected, the Productivity Commission’s proposal to exempt text and data mining with AI from copyright law emphasised the devaluing of artists’ work.

Despite these pressures, visual art in 2025 remained rich and vibrant. University-affiliated galleries and public art institutions continued to play a crucial role in presenting critical and socially engaged work, framing it through insightful, challenging scholarship. The Ian Potter Museum’s exhibition 65,000 Years exemplified this capacity, foregrounding Indigenous histories while connecting the deep past to pressing contemporary cultural and political concerns.

Recent history suggests economic uncertainty can foster an upsurge in experimental and oppositional practices while seeing artists collaborate, share resources and build grassroots networks to offset diminishing institutional and market support. But this resilience comes at a cost. Fifty years after the establishment of national arts funding, Australia’s contemporary art system might be professionalised and greatly expanded but still depends on the under-compensated labour and dedication of the artists who sustain it.