Episode 42: Bianca Beetson

Keynote recorded live at Australian Cultural Policy: The Next Decade, presented by Monash University’s Masters of Cultural & Creative Industries and NAVA at the State Library of Victoria on 8 April 2019. “We need a national cultural policy that’s grounded in First Nations sovereignty and the NAVA Code of Practice... Cuts to the arts affect the Australian identity.” Gabi Gabi / Kabi Kabi and Wiradjuri artist and academic Dr Bianca Beetson gave the artists’ keynote and response to Shadow Minister for the Arts the Hon Tony Burke at Australian Cultural Policy: The Next Decade, presented by Monash University’s Masters of Cultural & Creative Industries and NAVA at the State Library of Victoria on 8 April 2019. Dr Beetson studied a Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts) at the Queensland University of Technology 1993-95, completed Honours in 1998 and was awarded a Doctorate of Visual Arts in 2018. She is a visual artist who works in a broad range of media including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, photography and public art. She is a former member of the seminal Aboriginal artists collectives Campfire Group and ProppaNow. Dr Beetson is the Program leader of the Bachelor of Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art degree at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University and was recently appointed to the QAGOMA Board of Trustees. In this podcast, Dr Beetson speaks of the need to legislate against fake ‘Aboriginal-style’ art and its cultural harm, to establish a national Aboriginal arts authority, keeping places and a repatriation fund, as well as climate change policy because there are several sacred sites currently at risk of permanent loss to rising sea levels.