Dead Red

Thanks to all of you who responded to my invitation to comment on early drafts of the text for my catalogue of paintings; here’s another few words about a land that is far from ‘dead’, but is indeed very ‘red’, and orange.

… the striated surface of the landscape appears like a vast skin pulled taut in the foreground that ripples and wrinkles as the mountains rise out of the ground and recede into the distance.

For any painter trained in the northern hemisphere, nothing can prepare you for the impact of Australia’s Red Centre. Instead of the shifting cloudscapes under which I lived in England and Scotland, here around Alice Springs the light has an alarming intensity. Shadows look like they’ve been hewn from the rock. Their purple density is scored into the earth as if incised with a metallic blade.

Along the MacDonnell Ranges, the gorges beat with a heat that is of its own baking. Around the plunge pools and waterholes the rock pulsates with a flushed blood-orange glow. Shadows emit their own light. Everywhere there is a harsh and uncouth beauty. Clambering high above the creeks, up the steep, chossy rocks veined with shining quartz, I am immediately reminded of the sea; ‘a savage sea whose mighty swirling waves of ochre and dark olive streaked with white were curling over, and just about to break, when they were frozen into everlasting immobility.’

Several hundred miles further west, alert and indomitable, surfacing out of the flayed landscape is Uluru, an immense monolith of rusted rock, a supremely sacred place that defies conventional understanding. More than 1,100 feet in height and five miles round at the base it is almost beyond description in word or image. Under a piercing summer’s light, the Rock assumes the colour of dried blood, its surface pitted and pocked, streaked with black striations; its dents and caves speckled with hand-painted circles and outlines, proof that it is the temple of a living faith.

Nothing is as it seems. The immense scorched domes of Kata Tjuta some sixteen miles west of Uluru, are places of metamorphosis where ancient myth and legend is deeply embedded in every groove and chasm. Outwardly it seems to be an emptied place but that is not the case. Everything is named, every part is known intimately by the Anangu people who revere it as home to spirit energies from the ‘Dreaming’.

Stunned by the scale, the sizzle and the spectacle I take what shelter can be found, flick away the flies, and paint outward appearances, filling the crowded emptiness with layer upon layer of rusted orange and cobalt blue.

‘Australia is not a country from which a painter may easily learn’ wrote Cynthia Nolan in 1949, ‘for above all it is the changing colour of space which gives this empty land so intoxicating beauty.’

 

Wandering and wondering cross WA

Sorry readers (I’m saying plural, but that’s only a weakly informed guess), I’ve been neglecting my blog. Apart from the one about the dog eating my notes I do have the best excuse – I’ve been introduced to Yammer. I’ve been implored to become active, which requires fearsome fortitude and earnest application. It also requires me to set aside my other pursuits. You probably don’t know, but I used to be keen on DIY: hours in the workshop, sawing and chiselling, a tool in each hand. As a hobby it was especially well suited to a rather solitary youth like me stuck in the tool shed and practicing to overcome a slight speech impediment that kept me a little isolated from my peers.

So now, instead of Hammering and Stammering, you can find me Yammering.

For today’s reading, I share with you here some texts that I’m drafting for a catalogue of recent paintings now well under way with my clever student group at The Bowen Street Press, under the expert guidance of Tracy and Cinzia.

Do feel free to drop me a note with any observations, typos, and other such edit; thanking you all in advance.

Nambung

Spread across a vast tract of desert in Western Australia stand hundreds, perhaps thousands, of craggy conical stone pillars. Resembling jagged stumps of broken teeth, they poke out of the custard-coloured sand like steeples, like dented towers, like the fractured walls of a long-forsaken city. The Dutch crews who landed near here in 1650 described it so: an ancient metropolis lost to the sands.

Of course those European sailors were not the first to stumble across the pinnacles, nor were they the first to be wary of their haunting ambience. For previous eons the land was important to the semi-nomadic Aboriginal peoples who came to draw water from a chain of waterholes and caves that filled during the wet season.

Original custodians of the region are the Nyoongar: the desert there belongs to the people of the Yuat and Wajuk language groups. The angular course of the river that flows through the land each winter gives the region its name – Nambung, which translates as ‘crooked’.

To paint and draw amongst these crowds of brittle conical stones is challenging. But in fact they are not brittle at all: they are tough fibrous rocks impaled in the earth. They appear to have traces of tree roots trapped in their cocoons of shelly limestone; they congeal as thick veins of toughened sand; jugular and aorta coursing through the earth.

This is but one of several theories devised to explain the geological mystery of the pinnacles. I am standing amidst a calcified forest, the elaborate casts of tree roots and intricate soil drains that over the eons have filled with wind-blown sand and petrified in place

From Melbourne to Mungo to and north-west to Kimberley

Apologies for my tardiness in writing to you all. I’ve been out and about. Namely Lake Mungo in NSW and the far Kimberley in WA. What an extraordinary depth of experiences. At Lake Mungo, I joined the Vice Chancellor’s Executive (VCE) on a 3-day indigenous immersion, which was really remarkable. We were accompanied by Jock Gilbert and Christine Phillips from the School of Architecture and Urban Design: they acted as academic guides, cicerones, ‘interpreters’, drivers, but also they were the crucial points of contact with the indigenous elders, their families and rangers. Their insights over the three days was really effective, compassionate, informed and at times very moving. Over the years they’ve run successful partnered studio projects in the region. The impact of these staff-led, student-centred events has been really profound.

In addition to touring the lunettes, the ‘lake’ and the features of the Lake Mungo NP we met indigenous elders, workers and their families in Mungo, Culpra Station, and the Mildura / Gol Gol area. The rangers and families entertained us to an evening barbeque with live music and rich fireside conversations; on another day we visited some highly contested historic sites on the banks of the Murray and had lunch with members and family members at farms and homesteads. The outwardly becalmed terrain around the Murray concealed some dreadful acts ‘visited’ upon the original custodians of these infinite lands.

This is our 3^rd annual VCE immersion event. As ever, we left the region deeply moved by all that we saw, felt and experienced but also deeply committed to realising RMIT’s vision around reconciliation and a shared future.

I’ve also been on leave in NW Australia; on an 18 day road trip across the Kimberley, from Broome eastwards to Kununurra, taking in the Woolfe Creek Meteorite Crater (avoiding hitch hikers), the vast bloated Boab Trees (unique outside Africa) the deep chasms and beehive domes of the Bungle Bungles (quite unique in the whole world). What our rather ancient Land Cruiser camper lacked in refinement and luxuries it certainly made up for in character – by ‘character’ I mean the unfailing ability to attract red dust, black termites and blue-tongued lizards.

After Hall’s Creek, Wolfe Creek, the Bungles, and the oasis of ‘Palm Springs’ we took on the 660 km ‘Gibb River Road’; described fondly as one of the country’s great 4WD adventures. It was also described by me on one occasion as: ‘You mean we’ve got to drive across that river? And there are crocodiles in it? Are you serious? Yes, I think you are…’. And so off we went, even when the water (but not the crocs) leaked into the footwell.

There’s not much in my UK Driving Test that equipped me for this epic journey, where Petrol Stations are 300kms apart and the [rather] few food shops decided to close for Easter and then again for ANZAC day. It didn’t help either, when, on Easter Sunday, after a rather severe stretch of corrugated ‘road’ one of the back-wheels shed two nuts, shredded the hub, and spectacularly burst the tyre. After quick running repairs in circa 37 degrees we took refuge in a hospitable homestead run by the most thoughtful owners. The truck was recovered, repaired and we went fearlessly back up the road again, clocking up an additional 460km.

We arrived back in Derby after 5 days of wild camping and numerous dips in the most stunning pools and falls at Manning, Lennard, and Bell Gorge.

By any standards, it was quite an adventure really. Certainly beats a Sunday afternoon drive around the Cotswolds, although we did find a homestead at EllenBrae (230 kms from the nearest other building) that served rather fine scones with cream and homemade jam. Apart from the crocs, the heat, and the dust it made it feel quite like home from home.

Choosing to remember: deciding to forget

I’m sorry for the long absence from your screens. It’s been weeks. Nay, longer. A month or more. It’s not as if I’ve been that busy, but I have been finishing a book: I’ve coloured in every page and didn’t go over the lines once. More about that later. My puny excuse: I have been taking part in a succession of events connected to the 100^th anniversary of the end of World War One, the ‘Great War’ as it was known in the 1920s and 30s, before the next one came along and made everyone realise the pause between 1919 and 1939 had just been a moment to draw breath, recover and re-arm.

Last week many of us joined the remarkable team of Kirsten Haydon (from School of Art) and Neal Haslam (School of Design) and Elizabeth Turrell from the UK, to launch a quite stunning artwork marking the commemoration. A four-metre wide wreath made of over 400 finely enamelled and etched leaves, petals, flowers and fronds, lit up in a unique space under the vast Shrine of Remembrance. The impact is awesome, quite literally. Moving and monumental. Marked by a speech I was invited to give about the value of flowers in remembering.

We adopt the poppy as an emblem of remembering. And yet, how ironic. The poppy is from the opiate family. A drug more associated with amnesia, forgetting, the sleep or reason. Do we remember so that we can more readily forget, or do we simply forget once the intensity of commemoration is over? Cenotaphs and monuments are invisible for so much of the year, just another item in our over-furnished cluttered cities, props for the pigeons. And yet once a day every year, like the puya raimondii, they spring to short life, a floral aneurysm that bursts bloodily into our streets and into our consciousness.

Then we move on; we compartmentalise the memory and forget. In fact, talking of moving on, over the past few years I’ve been invited to speak at Great War centenary conferences, in UK in 2014, in the Dardanelles 2015, in Melbourne and Te Papa Wellington, 1916 and 1917; and in Macedonia and then Ypres in Belgium this big one-hundredth year. Some organisers asked me to be a bit provocative, to raise the stakes about why we choose to remember. Hence the draft titles of my papers: ‘Let me forget’, or even ‘Best we forget’. I argue that if war is about fracturing, destruction, the dis-membering of the whole, then recovery, recollection is about ‘re-membering’, the gathering and ordering of shattered parts into new shape and meanings.

And the new book. A team effort with the wonderful students from Tracy O’Shaughnessy’s fine post-grad program in professional writing and editing. They’ve done all the proofing, the editing, the pictures, the design, even an index God Bless them. It has a snazzy title called ‘Dead Ground’ and a new word in the sub-title – ‘MemoryScapes’. Out soon, 208 pages, lots of colour pictures, and I haven’t gone over the lines once, well not often anyway.

Back on the Ground

Greetings! I’ve been on the road again, then up in the air, then sky to ground. In Belgium delivering a paper at a 100-year reflection on the commemoration of the Great War. The inspirational organisers invited a ‘provocative paper’. So they got one: ‘Best we Forget?’ was expected to irritate and inspire in equal measure. Which it did; well, they let me out the country anyway. Then north to Finland. Flew with the national airline. Literally, we vanished into Finnair. I was invited as one of 40 international experts to assess research output, impact, and innovation in the universities. It was wonderful: Helskinki is heavenly when the sun is shining at least. On Day One, Session One the President’s Address (a perfectly poised presentation packed with pie charts, data diagrams, moving parts, etc) was dramatically interrupted when a student Silver Band burst in bugles a-bugling and drums a-drumming. President remarkably unfazed. Stood to one side; told us later that this was very Finnish, very innovative, and evidence that ‘we do ‘ave a sense of Yuma, here in Finn Land’. Later that week President Macron pitched up (though I think that was pre-planned) and guess what, the Silver Band popped up again and disrupted him and his endless entourage. I hope he had the same sense of yuma.

Then flew far south to Saigon and Hanoi to meet and greet the fabulous folk in RMIT Vietnam, in the School of Design & Communication (the ampersand is critical, apparently) which now formally joins the College. What a place. The students seem so happy, singing and smiling; must be because their chances of getting or creating jobs after graduating is so impressive, pushing 95%. Most memorably, I was driven by scooter – at speed – through the Friday evening rush hour traffic. That’s one for the bucket list. Basket case actually. It was really refreshing, indeed riveting. I’m still picking the dead flies from my teeth. In a future blog, I’ll share with you the poncho I was wearing. Wouldn’t quite cut it down Collins Street.

And back here to more exciting events: interviewing Donna McColm at the NGV, one of our College’s leading partnerships, about the future of her industry. Just look at the setting: the Salon Gallery, simply divine. Not sure what I’m about to do with my left hand (weigh an egg perhaps) but Donna had the right answer for everything. And then the opportunity to introduce the estimable Australian journalist Peter Greste, a champion of press freedom and investigative reporting second to none. His talk about the battlefields of truth captivated a huge audience in Lower Storey Hall. He spoke movingly about the plight of one of our adjunct professors Dr Shahidul Alam currently under arrest in Bangladesh. Following staunch work by staff in Art, Photography and Journalism, our Academic Board passed a resolution of support, which we all hope will add to the barrage of protest to release him.

So, with that, I’m back in the office, with my wonderful team, ready for the clamorous creativity and endless energy as we head into the final furlongs of this academic year….

Remaining Really Relevant; an affection for alliteration

How good is this? ‘Collide’: a six-day six-camera shoot with several hundred VE students in screen, media, comms ; they’re working with a dozen live bands in our simply fabulous Media Precinct, managing everything from cameras, sound, photography, vision and sound mixing, even presenting and interviewing. As you’d expect it’s also pretty loud, not quite enough to uproot your fillings, but enough to wake up the neighbours – in Canberra that is.

This is what the college does best: we are relevant, engaged, fit for purpose and contemporary. In fact, it’s what RMIT does best. It’s what gives our graduates the edge over others; it’s what transforms our research into impact. It keeps us sharp and edgy.

Indeed, that’s the message I’ve just broadcast to all the Associate Deans as they design ‘Road Maps’ for the 24 academic disciplines across DSC. And you know well my affection about alliteration, indeed my affliction with alliterative accomplishment… So I’ve termed the message Remaining Relevant. And here it is:

The greatest risk that faces any college with our range of academic disciplines is for our graduates, our research, our practice to be dismissed as ‘irrelevant’. 

DSC prides itself on a pedagogy built on contemporary praxis; we build and maintain deep effective partnerships with industry; we create opportunities for our students in real-world settings so that they are ready for the world of work. That’s what gives us our edge. We’re not yet achieving it everywhere but that’s our aim.

Your Discipline Road Maps must remain really relevant to the worlds of work that exist today – and also tomorrow – in this city, country and overseas. It’s not enough to create Road Maps that talk just to other academics, to subject conferences or other HE organisations.

Governments will strike hard bargains with universities in the future; they will want to see a real return on investment; to see how public money translates into graduate employability, and to see how research makes a difference to the economy and society. Bank on it. The conditions are going to become harder, especially for those areas that are not considered as STEM.

That may sound unfair, but staying relevant, engaged, fit for purpose and contemporary is what RMIT does best, it’s what DSC as a partnership college does really well; it’s what gives our graduates the edge over others; it’s what transforms our research into impact. It keeps us sharp, edgy, relevant.

Collide does just that; our student sound producers, vision mixers and camera operators will be ready to walk from our media Precinct straight into a professional studio anywhere in the world. Isn’t that great? The staff are so proud.

And the band; they were great. Can’t recall the name I’m afraid. But they were definitely not a tribute band. And most definitely not Proxy Music.

STOP PRESS: dispute resolved!

Thank you to those who contacted me last month with this astonishing news. After 12 years of deadlock, stalemate and impasse the two Macedonias have struck a deal; one will be called ‘North Macedonia’ and the other one won’t. I doubt it had much to do with my timely blog posting of early June, but you never know; stranger things have happened, I mean England might even reach the semi-finals of the World Cup?

And thanks to the many of you who sent in their own pronunciation of  ‘Loughborough’. The winning entry was Lugger-burr-Ugger. I once saw a movie made in the countryside around that fine town, deep in the fox-hunting domain of Leicestershire [pronounced Lestershiyah]. It was bad beyond belief. It’s now widely considered the worst film ever made that doesn’t feature Madonna.

This past week I’ve mostly been making speeches. Sometimes I even write them myself. Tuesday I was surrounded by a throng of real academics and even more real HDR students at an ARC-funded international workshop on ‘Art and Conflict’ (so I had to brush up on my Baudrillard); then I introduced a conference crowd to the new MOMA show at the NGV  (so I had to freshen up on my Braque and Brancusi); next night I introduced a speaker at the remarkable ‘About my Monster’ show at our very own RMIT Gallery [no time to mug up on anything: they were queuing 200 metres down Swanston street for goodness sake], and the next day I presented at a panel session on ‘The Value of Art’, as part of a global conference full of cultural economists. I’ve never encountered that particular tribe before. They were an analytic and exacting crowd. Quote of the day from one of them: ”You think we’re a tough gig; it’s a good job we’re not econometrists’. Indeed. If only I really knew the difference.

And talking of the World Cup, I’ve been reading about the fitness and dietary regimes of some of the soccer squads. They are so healthy, so well-balanced, so green! I mean I remember the days when most footballers thought Broccoli was the name of an attacking forward from AC Milan…

Having trouble with place-names: the challenge of phonetics (fonetix)

I’ve been on the road, Well, in the air actually. Then plenty of road. I’ve been travelling around parts of Europe on university business and carrying out some field work and presentations as part of a recent ARC grant. You may be amazed but Google Maps doesn’t seem to work in some of the places I’ve been. So, it’s a good job my geography is pretty up to date; after all, I can name the longest river in the world (easy: Amazon); the largest bookseller in the world (too easy: Amazon), and the name of the mythical warrior women who were the archenemies of the ancient Greeks (hold on, I sense a product placement conspiracy here…].

But my secondary school geography failed me abysmally when I tried to ask directions to some of the towns en route. I mean who would have thought that Cholmondeley is pronounced ‘Chumlee’ and Featherstonehaugh is actually ‘Fanshore’. How embarrassing was it to ask directions from a local who looked at me as if I was from another part of the world, like I was from Frome (‘Froom!), or even Scone (Skoon!!) and let’s not even go to Gloucester (Glooster, Glostah or possibly even GlowSester).

For even those skilled in the vernacular of English topographics the most tricky destination has to be the fair university town of Loughborough, which I visited in late May. The name of this modest town is really quite unique, it is the only place name in the entire English world where ‘ough’ appears twice and each syllable must be pronounced differently. Terrific! So, for options you have: Luffboruff, Loobaruff, Luffboroo, and even ‘Looboroo’, which I’m told is twinned with the Australian town of Wallamaloo. (That is according to the notorious sketch by the Monty Python team, which open with the lines: ‘I hear you’re from Australia – my name’s Bruce too…]

So, I managed eventually to find – then promptly leave – Loughborough, and all its fiddly phonetic figurations and ended up in Macedonia. Now there’s another place with a complicated nomenclature. You see there are actually two regions called Macedonia. One is the vast and beautiful region of northern Greece, the ancient Greek Kingdom of Macedon; the other to the north is the equally beautiful ‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ or FYROM to its friends. Since 1991 not even the United Nations has been able to resolve ownership of the name. In the general assembly, Greece objected to seating the Republic’s representative under ‘M’ (as in Macedonia) and the Republic rejected sitting under ‘F’ (as in Former Yugoslav…]. Instead, it was seated under ‘T’ (as in ‘The Former…) right next to Thailand (pronounced not Thigh, but Tye]. Let’s hope a compromise can be found.

My pictures show yours truly with two of the remarkable historians who graced the conference in Macedonia. On the left Sir Hew Strachan (pronounced ‘Strawn’) and on the right Sir Michael Llewellyn-Smith (just have a go at that yourself). Sadly, I failed to take a photograph of the inquisitive and inspiring British Ambassador who accompanied us throughout the conference and tour.  I know I’m name dropping: but I think you’ll agree it’s easier than place-name dropping. And the beauty of it is: Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Hellenic Republic was none other than the divinely simple Kate Smith. Even I can pronounce that.

Nil-Nil: Drawing a Blanksy

It is said to be easier to draft 8,000 words than 800.  Brevity is a virtue, concision in writing a skill enjoyed by too few. So what was I to do when the ‘phone rang and a rather fetching Spanish voice urged me to write a short [a mere 750 words – a snip!] but entertaining piece [oh dear, a little less easy] that combined three rather disparate topics. Yes, you guessed them: Soccer, Copyright Law, and Banksy.  Really? How could I said no? Or ‘nada’. Or whatever the word is in my broken Espanol.

The invitation came from the editor of a well-known Spanish Soccer Fanzine. Well known in the stands of the Nou Camp, anyway. The editor had obtained a terrific image.

A classic Banksy: street urchin, foot on a copyright icon instead of a ball, the print framed behind a sheet of [printed] broken glass. Priceless.  They had even secured the permission of Banksy’s office. Yes indeed, Banksy does have an office run by some impressively business-like people.

With some effort I was able to weave a tale that united the world’s most famous unknown artist with the world of soccer (‘Banksy once played in goal for the Easton Cowboys’) and the strict laws of licensing images and text (Banksy once wryly commented, ‘Copyright is for losers…’). I penned a few wise words of witty reflection, some throwaway lines about the essentials of stencilling and the basics of the offside rule, and voila [or ‘ola’ actually] ‘twas done. Slam dunk. Into the back of the net. One-nil.

Despite the editor’s eager assurances, a glossy copy of the fanzine never did arrive. By accident, I found it online. The image looked terrific as I knew it would; the text was a melange of me and my sporty Spanish amigo.  The online translation tool produced the usual array of hilarities: IPR was mistaken for QPR [an abbreviation for Queen’s Park Rangers, an English soccer team]. The ‘street scene’ became ‘alley art’, or was it allez-oo? But best of all was the misspelling of my name.

While it was nice to be described as ‘El Professor’, the misspelt appellation ‘Paul Glough’ was a new one on me. Perhaps it was an homage to the Nottingham Forest supremo of the 80s ‘Brian Clough’? Who knows.

And despite the many entreaties, despite the permissions from the street artist’s office, despite the clamour, I still won’t reveal the true identity of the artist.  Indeed, in this instance, it’s most definitely a ‘Blanksy’.

https://revistalibero.com/blogs/contenidos/un-portero-de-bristol-llamado-bansky

 

Never mind the Research Statement: read the lyrics

The sleeve notes for a 12 inch vinyl record – or the ‘liner’ as it’s known in the US – comprise on average 700 words, roughly the same as this blog entry, and thrice that of the ‘textual descriptor’ – the Research Statement – which is all that’s allowed when describing the content of a non-traditional research output [the NTRO] for the forthcoming research assessment exercise, habitually known, but in a different acronymic order, as ERA.

Unlike Research Statements, which many of us will have been crafting and drafting in recent months, sleeve notes are rather a dying format. They belong to the era of the pre-gatefold long-playing vinyl record: the ‘LP’ as it was lovingly called, or ‘Album’ if you were brought up in the 1970s.

Scratch any vinyl LP and you’ll rue the day forever. Scratch any practicing academic and you’ll discover the agony aroused by having to draft an ERA-ready ‘research statement’. As a guaranteed way of bringing a practitioner out in a rash, it shares much in common with its distant cousin, the ‘Artist’s Statement’, and ranks only a little behind ‘The Impact Case Study’ for arousing deep and lasting consternation. Cue the sound of foreheads being clutched and pencils chewed.

So, can the art of ‘sleeve noting’ may lend some succour to stressed practitioner-academics as they agonise over their statement? Are sleeve notes best prepared in advance or better ‘off the cuff’ [excuse the pun]

Once regarded as the cherished way into the world of popular music, many of you will recall poring over every precious word of the sleeve: learning the lyrics and dedications, the potted biographies and the name of the 3rd trombonist. Not forgetting the standard advice on how often to change your stylus. Unlike ERA, however, I don’t recall many occasions when I was ever in doubt and had to ‘consult my dealer’.

In the USA (where there is no such thing as a national research assessment exercise) the sleeve note ‘liner’ has long been celebrated. Indeed there’s even a Grammy Award for ‘Best Notes’. Awarded to the words that offer the judges an impeccably researched, definitive statement about the creative content – where it was made, its field of interest, its origins and intentions, perhaps even its contribution to originality. Beginning to sound familiar?

In a previous life, I was part of the academy (in the UK) that agonised over research engagement and impact.  We looked to Australia for a best working practice – namely the ‘Research Quality Framework’ in 2009 – when this fair continent had nearly grasped the nettle of impact and then stepped away at the last minute. Along with my leadership peers in the UK we agonised, we argued, then we accepted that ‘Impact’, just like ‘Research Statements’ was a lived reality. We simply had to fully prepare and future-proof our institutions in the lingo of translational research, B to B, and the ‘Pathways to Impact’ that the research councils promptly (and in retrospect quite wisely) added into every pro forma for grant funding.

In truth, sleeve notes were pretty variable. The venerable US music writer Dan Morganstone, who wrote 500 covers, amongst them Grammy Winners, advised that writing ‘should not be unmusical, it must not be poorly and clumsily expressed; a bad liner would be one that indulges in exaggeration and puffery’.

It’s a valuable lesson for those charged with writing any form of statement for ERA, whether it be 2 digits, 4 digit, impact case study, or statement.  Hyperbole, rhetoric, mild exaggeration for effect is a no-no. If Cicero were around today he’d find it tough in academia. He would have to adjust his demagoguery to create a language that is categoric (but not deadpan), factual (without being soulless) and informative (but not exhaustive, or exhausting).

It’s easy to get it wrong, though our sector has radically improved on those clumsy early days. Many years ago I recall one respondent had answered the question in the pro forma about the ‘location of the work’ (meaning ‘Where was it exhibited, displayed, screened?’) and had replied ‘Still in my studio’.

So take heart in your writing. Think of the factual creativity of the best sleeve notes. Some institutions hire journalists to help draft them; some employ journal editors. Perhaps we ought to work with poets, just as Paul Weller did recently with Simon Armitage. Or other musicians? Bill Evans wrote insightfully about Miles Davis. And Johnny Cash wrote wonderful sleeve notes about his own music and others, including a fine poem for Bob Dylan’s ‘Nashville Skyline’ album. As the music writer, Laura Barton, notes he had to convince ‘the farmers, felons, and folkies’ who idolised Country but were suspicious of Dylan’s shape shifting, that here indeed was another musician worth their cautious attention. In 1969 Cash won a Grammy for his notes on the Folsom Prison concert album, with the memorable words – which may resonate with those of us still agonising over a  pile of draft ‘Impact Statements’ – “The culture of a 1000 years is shattered by the clanging of the jail door behind you….”

Note: a version of this article was commissioned in February 2018 for NiTRO, the online journal of the DDCA, Council of Deans and Directors of Creative Arts across Australia. See https://nitro.edu.au/articles/never-mind-the-research-statement-read-the-lyrics

Note: The DDCA magazine is not the same as a journal of a similar title– Nitro Hot Rods – which features customised, collision and colourful sports cars along with such mysterious titles as ‘Built Ford Tough with Nitro Chevy Stuff’. This is definitely and definitively different from anything in NiTRO. Most of the time anyway.