*NGV = National Gallery of Victoria
As a teenager, I spent Friday nights at my church’s youth group. Several times a year, the dozen or so of us clamoured into a bus going to a bigger church in the city. We joined kids from all around the state congregated at a youth rally. It was the touchstone of Christian youth culture: this place filtered to us all our worship songs, games and youth pastor icons with their skinny jeans and Converse fashion influence. I’d often run into friends and relatives from far and wide, connected in that pinnacle moment and space of young religious fodder.
Religion is behind me now (I stubbornly note) but flavours of its rituals always come back, especially working in the arts. It’s a line I can’t help drawing, despite one priding itself in conservative values and the other labelling itself as progressive. Yet, they’re both bound by a commitment to intangible spirituality and community while sharing a farce euphoric feeling of attending events as a means of virtue signalling, as much as they are about taking in the most elite drabs of themselves.
At the tail end of Melbourne’s long lockdown, I was surprised when NGV announced it was still hosting its triennial. The demands of my gallery day job quickly swallowed the email. I went to the last triennial in early 2018 with my sister-in-law down from the UK in tow as I showed her how grand and fun the local art scene was (iPhone memories tell me I went two others times, my blog has a cringe naive review I just archived). Melbourne was new to me then, but between Uni assignments, work events and freelance writing, I’ve since been to the NGV too many times. I don’t have a specific criticism, it just doesn’t spark joy any more.
But then, invitations from excited friends rolled in, and I obliged. In those foggy days between Christmas and New Years, I found myself in the extensive line running along the big grey gallery building. An hour later, I left in a fevered dash, frustrated by the confusing sounds of thousands of conversations and the mismatched pace of my friends. The art was new, but the names and themes repeated. I couldn’t feel a thing but promised I’d return. I apologised to my friends – like Serena van der Woodson, I had to go.
TikToks come up on my FYP urging me to go. Friends ask for my opinion. Colleagues say how excited they are. But I can’t find my loyalty to the cause, making me finish my visit.
Every time I return to Adelaide, a visit to AGSA is an embrace from childhood and home. Visiting a new city, I manifest that stimulating travel feeling by exploring the place’s epicentre of art and cultural objects. But I had that moment with the NGV years ago. Now, I sift through my mind to find a moment when the *thought* of taking the tram to St Kilda Road to re-attempt the Triennial is exciting – not exhausting.
Lecturers from my Master’s degree years ago echo in my mind, condemning students who don’t attend every new exhibition. My friend chats about an exhibition while we are at the pub, even when we drunkenly go to the toilet at midnight, which leaves me wondering if I have advertised myself as having no other personality beyond Melbourne’s arts scene.
I’m guilty of being mentally unfettered, a forever tentative audience. Of course, I love art. I work in the arts without work-life balance: my participation bleeds into free time, by way of socialising or labour. I seek art out like I habitually go to the gym or watch films week in week out. But there are limits. To reserve the extent of my desire, there’s a point I treat the arts with neutrality. I struggle to memorise artists names, unless their work has left an impression, never mind have the veracity to elbow my way into the exclusive spaces or be a familiar face at openings. But, hey, they tell me, you go to every opening until you’re thirty, then you can relax and reap the benefits. The arts not being my only interest makes me feel I’ll fail in this career.
My first-time encounter with a contemporary art space felt cool and strange. Bored and broke walking the Tyne while staying with my brother before my semester began at Bristol Uni, I stumbled into the Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art. That was only in 2014. Maybe, my indoctrination started too late, and it can’t be forced now. Regardless, the honeymoon period is over. I tell myself religion made me too cognisant of giving away too much of my soul to one thing. The first time I attended youth group, my parents pried me from my bed crying and screaming that I didn’t want to go. Resistance is so antithetical to community: I was bad at religion and I am bad at the arts.
It seems like a baseline commitment, but I can’t care about the NGV anymore. I avoid Westfields and I have never bought a ticket to a music festival. I don’t enjoy loud, showy and crowded places. And like the capitalism spewing from a Westfield, or the religion oozing from a youth rally, rushing to a ginormous exhibition telling me what visual art is in vogue seems to forget the indoctrinating power of large arts organisations.
I’ve never made a decision to stay in Melbourne, and perhaps such self-imposed transience evades subscribing to anything its entirety, never mind consume like a follower reading the Bible alongside my peers, taking big names and hierarchies and politics seriously, forgetting my separateness. Instead, I’m sceptical of the popular guy, keeping them at arm’s length, not knowing if they are truly nice or just toxic.
Art nourishes me, but it’s not my God, and the NGV isn’t my church. I can’t convince myself to climb aboard the number 6 tram to the city and clamour out with the artsy crowd to prove my obligation to the ritual of caring. I give enough of myself to the arts, but I’m not sure if I’m good enough. Maybe, I won’t go back to see the rest of the Triennial, or maybe I will force myself to be a better follower.