Opening ‘Hidden Faces’ Exhibition, 14th Salon de Refuses, Hilton South Warf

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, and artistes refuses,
It is a great pleasure for me to be here this evening, and I am humbled that this is as a consequence of being the subject of one of the portraits here. Thank you to my old friend, Rachel Rovay, for choosing to paint my portrait.
Reflecting on the place of art, I am reminded of Marx who, paraphrased, noted that outside of a dog, art is man’s best friend.
He added that inside of a dog, it’s too dark to see ….
This evening we have the opportunity to see those portraits that have otherwise not yet been seen in public. These are the ‘Hidden Faces’, the Salon de Refuses.
The Salon de Refuses, of course, has French origins, as its name implies. But it is also, in a way, quintessentially Australian. This is the room of the unsuccessful grand gestures.
Noble failures resonate with the Australian myth – the romance of the negative – of courageous but unsatisfied adventure, from tackling and being defeated by the hardships of the difficult bush, to the gallant and unifying but ultimately futile failure of the Gallipoli campaign, to the World War II suicidal charge on the Kokoda Track by Victoria Cross awardee ‘cousin’ Bruce Kingsbury.
Here, in this room, we have creative heroes charging headlong into that most confronting of notions; that Australia can and does produce fine, sometimes great and cutting edge art.
Against the odds, without critical mass, and with a sometimes unappreciative audience, Australian artists and their art survive, and thrive – despite the odds. There is, therefore, something quite heroic about this art.

Such heroic art is not to be conventional, comforting or operating within expected paradigms. The purpose of art is to challenge us to think, to help us understand the changing times in which we live but which we cannot step outside of its context to see. This art is going down swinging!
Indeed, to have been accepted as a finalist for the great art prizes speaks to a certain conformity, a convention, a comfortable place of acceptance and being accepted. To be accepted into that final reference group, in art, is to be commonplace. To win a major prize is, perhaps, even vulgar!
Yet to be refused acceptance is to be an outsider – un etranger – the leitmotif of the 20th and 21st centuries. In the wasteland, a world gone mad, to step outside, to be refused entry, to reject the status quo or to regard it solely with irony – to be an outsider – was and remains the only sane place to be. Archibald died today. Or was it yesterday?
Less than coincidentally, I was also a refuse – an outsider. As a journalist, I was a deuce reporter, which is the same as an ace, only at the other end of the pay scale.
Later, as an academic, no-one wanted a late upstart interfering with established certainties and conventions. These included, among other incorrect assumptions, that Indonesians culturally preferred authority to free choice, that they only wanted was to be fed and housed. Yet it is not enough to just have a full belly and a roof over one’s head – many prisons do as much!
The purpose of art, as with politics, is to create freedom, or a sense of it. Being a refuse is to manifest such freedom.
Yet as an academic, a professor, I am in many ways conventional and socially uncontroversial – despite what people who know me might say. I worry that I have lost my own status as a refuse.
I therefore take some comfort in being black banned from a number of countries, of continuing to be rejected!
Moreover, I would not wish to be identified with any institution that would have someone like me as a member!
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen and, most importantly, for all who are now, who have ever been or one day may be rejected, before I am rejected from this spot, I am very happy to formally open the Hidden Faces exhibition of the Salon de Refuses!