“Painting the Woods into Existence”: Australian Fiction on the Value of the Arts

This article analyses two works of contemporary Australian fiction—Wayne Macauley's Caravan Story and Julie Koh's "Inquiry Regarding the Recent Goings-On in the Woods"—and places their depictions of artists under attack in the context of Australian cultural policy history. Despite the surreal hyperviolence contained in these stories, their concerns neatly align with the academic criticisms of cultural policy in their respective eras. Caravan Story, published at the end of the John Howard era, shows how a focus on economic return in lieu of artistic merit can erode the value artists place on themselves and their work. "Inquiry", published soon after Minister for the Arts George Brandis had significantly reduced available arts funding, represents the drastic effect the funding cuts had on artists and the passionate community response. The texts are further connected by their optimistic endings, contextualised here through an exploration of the artists' biographies and their struggles to push back against cultural demands of economic success. This article shows how these experimental works of fiction make the case for the intrinsic value of the arts through narratives that reject the economic imperative and in their very constitution as creative works.