Disrupting the arts

Art is the business of disruption.

No matter the medium, platform or level of professionalism, the act of making is innately transformational: whether it turns thought into matter (or the other way around), brings different elements together or breaks them down to be shared or understood in different ways.

The work we make changes who we are and how we make sense of ourselves and the world – or helps us imagine a new one. When that work is shared, it changes its audience too, in big ways or small. Their experience is often different to what we intended and always unique: received as distraction or entertainment, relaxation or response, affirmation or challenge to something they already think or feel.

Collecting and sharing art on our pages and stages, museums and galleries is inherently disruptive too. Institutions make decisions about what and who they platform or don’t – and who gets to decide. Those decisions can reflect or contest, celebrate or silence but can never be neutral. There is never a choice that does not cause ripples: infinite branching narratives that reinforce or evolve the status quo.

What art disrupts

So, it is unsurprising that artists and cultural institutions have often been at the forefront of larger societal change. This relationship goes in both directions: resistance and revolution can lead to revolutionary art, and art can incite revolution; art can move us to change minds or lives and that change can be what leads us to make art in the first place.

Entire artistic movements have evolved from this tension: disrupting our understanding of the nature of art, such as Dadaism or pop art; its substance, such as non-fungible tokens or other digital art forms; or the issues it depicts, such as protest music, feminist or disability art, or Indigenous Futurism. Historically, most new art movements have been met with reluctance, distrust or even rejection, but that has not stopped them changing the way we think about creativity and culture, as well as ourselves and the world.

The democratisation and digitisation of art and culture have sped up this process: removing traditional barriers and gatekeepers, making it easier for more and more diverse artists to reach more and more diverse audiences, and changing the nature of their relationship. This has been accompanied by a growing understanding of how our monocultural institutions have not been accessible, equitable, representative or culturally safe, and an attempt (at least on paper) to disrupt and diversify who makes decisions and who those people platform.

Disrupting the arts

But what happens when the organisations meant to support art and artists instead disrupt their disruption?

The last few years have provided dozens of examples of Australian arts and cultural organisations failing to live up to their stated purpose or values. Instead of championing artistic expression, many have censored, silenced or otherwise harmed artists. Instead of meeting their fiduciary duties and duty of care, many have fumbled their way through risk and crisis management, and seen artists, audiences, employees, board members, donors and funders divest as a result – putting their organisations’ credibility and viability at risk.

In the main, these failures have been testimony to the increasing influence of money, power and politics on Australian art and culture – including direct threats from donors, funders and other stakeholders that have been allowed to override the remits and ambitions of individual organisations.

The arts and culture sector is responding to the rise of authoritarianism, and authoritarianism is responding in kind. Critical thinking, self-expression and creativity are seen as a threat to power, which means artists and cultural organisations are currently under attack by authoritarian regimes all over the world. It has shocked many to realise that we are not immune here in Australia – where even the country’s peak arts body, Creative Australia, made headlines in 2025 when it peremptorily complied with implied threats from media and government about its prestigious Venice Biennale commission.

It took just one 90-minute meeting for Creative Australia to undermine its own processes, independence, integrity and guiding principles by choosing to censor artistic expression, without even pausing to get legal advice or investigate the claims or artists involved. Months later, an expensive independent review re-instated the commission; providing a case study of an avoidable and expensive mistake that has caused significant and ongoing harm far beyond the individual artists involved.

This has put individual organisations and our entire sector in crisis, and made it even harder to make and sustain a living as an artist in Australia – even before we consider the shrinking funding environment, fewer and more expensive arts education and training options, threats and thefts of Generative AI, and the impact of fake art on Indigenous cultural and intellectual property.

‘Australian cultural institutions are retreating from their founding purpose,’ Australian arts academic and consultant Samuel Cairnduff writes. ‘They’ve become complicit in their own marginalisation, trading relevance for illusory safety.’

Such failures may be understandable, given overstretched and panicked organisations are trying to survive the current polycrisis, at a time when the people within them are more overwhelmed than in most of our careers. Unfortunately, this leaves us with fewer people, who have less individual and organisational capacity, needing to make more and more complex decisions, in more challenging operating conditions.

Disruptive impacts

In 2024, the Artists as Workers report from Creative Australia told us that ‘despite the fact Australians value the contributions of artists, the challenges they face in earning a living have never been greater.’ This was reinforced by last year’s Parliamentary Inquiry into Victoria’s cultural and creative industries, which showed ‘it has never been harder for Victorians to make a living in the cultural and creative industries.’

As a result, Australian artists and cultural workers are ceasing practice or leaving the sector in record numbers, and not being replaced at anywhere near the same rate. As always, the impact of these issues falls heaviest on those who are already strategically under-valued or marginalised – making our monocultural sector even less diverse, representative and culturally safe.

Reclaiming disruption

In recent years, being ‘disruptive’ has started to be wielded as an accusation or slur. But disruption is fundamental to art and artists. Which means the organisations that support and rely upon them have legal, moral and vested interests in upholding their right to do so.

This may require frank, bold (and potentially uncomfortable) conversations about which of our decisions, programs or actions support artistic disruption and which suppress it, and how we can stay aligned with our organisational purpose and values when our work and artists, integrity and livelihoods are under attack.

Will this be a bold, open and nuanced conversation informed by complexity and creative and intellectual freedom? Or a compromised, reductive narrowing as we make ourselves the smallest possible target? The choices we make will define Australia’s cultural landscape.

This essay was originally commissioned by the Art Gallery of Ballarat Association for Untitled (Autumn 2026: Disruptions), the Art Gallery of Ballarat’s member magazine.

AI policy

I am a concerned and conscientious objector to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. You can read more about my many objections in my recent piece on raining on the parade of generative AI in the arts (and everywhere else).

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