For Melbourne theatre-maker David Williams (of alternative facts fame), the notion that most artists are allergic to sport is quite simply, a fallacy.
Im a sports-interested person, and its rare to find an artist who is not interested in sport, he said.
But while there are many sports devotees in the Australian arts sector (as a search for the Twitter hashtag #aflartsmafia reveals), the fallacy continues that loving the arts and loving sport are somehow incompatible.
Williams is one of several seasoned arts industry figures who believe there may be biases and misconceptions holding us back from closer ties with the sporting world.
MISCONEPTION NUMBER ONE: ARTISTS ARENT INTERESTED IN SPORT
David Williams initially received a blank response from some of his arts sector peers when he raised his interest in sport at a major sector gathering.
When I was at the Australian Theatre Forum in 2013, Williams explained. I asked a question to a panel discussion of Festival Directors. I said, Is anyone doing anything in conjunction with the Asian Football Cup (which was coming up in Australia in 2015)?
And everyone in the room went totally silent. I would describe the feeling in the room as though they all thought that I had grown a second head, he laughed.
It was sort of like, why would you even ask that question? They were completely baffled.
But then director Lee Lewis (then of Griffin Theatre Company) approached me after the session, and she said Great question, are you doing something?. And I said, No, but I always thought it would be fun to spend a season going to Western Sydney Wanderers home games in Sydney FC colours and talking to people there. So that became the frame of a show I ended up making with Griffin Theatre Company and the National Theatre of Parramatta, Williams said.
Entitled Smurf In Wanderland the show, which premiered in 2017, charts Williams experiences as a die-hard Sydney Football Club fan watching games in the stands alongside fans from rival clubs. Its really a piece about that wonderfully pleasurable misery of being a sports fan, he laughed. But it also talks about ideas of identity and belonging.
Despite initial art-world skepticism, Williams says the shows were well attended by a broad range of people, including new faces who were attracted by the works subject. Some people came because its a show about football, and some came because they are fans of those clubs, he said.
David Williams performing in Smurf in Wonderland, 2017. Photo credit: Brett Boardman.
THE ART WORLD HESITATES ON SUBJECTS OF SPORT
Someone else whos experienced a dash of art-world nerves to ideas of art and sport is Dr Chris McAuliffe, Head, Centre for Art History & Art Theory, School of Art & Design at the Australian National University (ANU). As the Director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art from 2000 2013, McAuliffe co-founded the biannual Basil Sellers Art Prize in 2008 a prize dedicated to works reflecting themes of sport and Australias sporting culture.
It was amazing, McAuliffe recalled. [Philanthropist] Basil Sellers came to me with a very simple and specific mission. He said, I like art. I like sports. Why can’t they be together?
But even with Sellers strong commitment to what would become Australias richest art prize at the time, McAuliffe remembers initial hesitation from some in the art world.
We ran five biannual prizes he said. But the first time the art world was a little standoffish.
I think the suspicion was that we were going to put up a bunch of artworks that had to do with sport, and that it wasn’t going to be a layered, complex, nuanced exhibition, McAuliffe continued.
But after they saw that first exhibition, what I heard from art world visitors was that it was obviously a very good show. Many of the exhibited works ended up in public collections too, so there was formal museum endorsement also.’
Read:Bridging the art/sport divide with creative energy
But where the art world seemed shy, the general public had no such qualms.
We did some formal market research at the time, McAuliffe explained. And 92% of those we interviewed said they were interested in looking at both art and sport there were only 4% at each end who were only interested in art or sport.
So any notion that arts audiences arent interested in sport, and vice-versa, is just not true, he said.
MUTUAL ADMIRATION, MISSED BY A CRITIC
Sydney-based performer, choreographer and dramaturg Martin del Amo has also seen the public drawn to art with a sporting edge, yet he too has felt push-back from the art world at a certain point along the way.
Del Amos work CHAMPIONSis a wry and sophisticated dance theatre work exploring ideas of heroism in sport and in art which premiered at the Sydney Festival in 2017.
A scene from CHAMPIONS by Martin del Amo at the Sydney Festival, 2017. Photo credit: Heidrun Lohr.
There are 11 [female] performers in the work to mirror the 11 players in a soccer team, he explained.
Its always hard to gauge exactly what the audience is thinking about a work, and why they are there, but there were definitely a broad range of people who came to see it including people interested in sport. You can only guess about that, but I think there were some more sporty guys there with their girlfriends, he said with a laugh.
Afterwards, overhearing some of the conversations from them, they were really in awe of the performers saying things like “Wow, that was great! Isnt it amazing what the performers can do?!”
But then I read a review of the work, and one of the sentences said something like, if this is a show that seeks to bring sports crowds into the theatre, I doubt it has much to offer them, and I feel like that was doing the audience a disservice, del Amo said. Because that was not my experience of the audiences at all.
It makes me think that maybe general audiences and also sport audiences get short changed a little bit, because people [in the art world] think, oh, they wouldn’t be interested in the art. But if you present a work where a lot of thinking has gone into it, and you present it in an accessible fashion, audiences can see that and there will be a positive response, he said.
Del Amo is someone (like Williams and McAuliffe) who is puzzled by longstanding divisions between the two worlds. Im really not sure why it [the divide] exists, he told ArtsHub.
But I think its a fascinating area of investigation. I mean, I am an artist and Im also an avid sports fan so why cant we bridge that divide?read more
Misconceptions About The Relationship Between Arts And Sports
