The Mildura Sculpture Triennials 1961 - 1978 : an interpretative history

Abstract

The significance of the Mildura Sculpture Triennials from 1961 to 1978 lies in their role as critical nodal points in an expanding and increasingly complex system of institutions and agents that emerge, expand and interact within the Australian art world. These triennial events provide a valuable case-study of the developments in sculptural practice in Australia and offer a close reading of the genesis of an autonomous field of visual art practice; a genesis dependent upon the expansion of the new tertiary education policies for universities and colleges of advanced education that arose in response to the generational pressure created by the post war baby boom.

Given that there was virtually no market for modern sculpture in Australia at the inauguration of these triennials in the 1960s, the extent of the impact of the pressures and expectations of a burgeoning young population upon tertiary education, specifically the art schools, art history departments and art teacher training and, the expanding desire for cultural fulfilment and rapid developments in the cultural institution sector, is delineated at these triennial events. The expansion of the education system and the consequent expanded employment opportunities this offered to young sculptors in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, posited the first real challenge and alternative economy to the existing heterogeneous market economy for artistic works.

In order to reinscribe the Mildura Sculpture Triennials into recent Australian art history as an important contributor to the institutional development of Australian contemporary art practice, I have drawn upon the reflexive methodological framework of French cultural theorist and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and his explanation of the factors necessary for the genesis and development of autonomous fields of cultural production. Bourdieu's method provides an interpretative framework with which to identify these components necessary to the development of an institutional identity - the visual arts profession. This autonomous field parallels, conflicts with and at times connects with the heterogeneous art market economy, depending on the strength of its relative autonomy from the field of economic and political power. However, this is beyond the scope of this thesis.

Mildura's significance lies in the way that the triennial gatherings provide a view into the disparate components that would connect to and eventually create an autonomous field of artistic production, that of the visual arts profession. However, the evolution of each of the components, which were the bedrock of Mildura, was driven by its own needs and necessities and not by the needs of the larger field of which they would eventually become a part. Bourdieu's understanding of the ontologic complicitiy between dispositions and the development of an autonomous field offers a non-teleological approach to the significance of Mildura as a site to map these rapid changes and also Mildura's subsequent displacement from the historical record. Show more