FOREWORD

Michael Dagostino

As Director of Campbelltown Arts Centre, I have the privilege of writing forewords that speak to why a particular project is important to who we are, where we are located and how it has affected our community. When I started writing a foreword for Space YZ, I found that I was grappling with a series of ideas that I could not necessarily convey through words. UWS produced one of the greatest art schools of my generation, and this cannot be understated. I had the honour of opening the last graduate exhibition by the final cohort of UWS students, which was held at Carriageworks in 2009. There I felt a sense of loss and a great sadness that the arts, something that has changed my life, was clearly not valued. Over the past two decades, I have seen art schools shrink and close as they don’t neatly fit within the university framework.

For the last decade, I have been banging on doors campaigning for a new art school in Western Sydney. The meetings are usually greeted with excitement, until the reality of what it costs to run an art school comes to the fore. Right now, there are many more important and pressing issues that require our attention and which we should be campaigning for, including ending gender and race based violence and ensuring our world is a place all species can continue to inhabit. Art and arts education play an important role within these issues and Space YZ presents the opportunity to think of art schools differently, an art school which is not bound by traditional frameworks and is open to all. Thinking through this new proposition, I believe that Western Sydney is the right home for this school as it is a place where great things start. Therefore, instead of writing the traditional foreword as directors have a tendency to do, I have decided to continue with the campaign for an Art School 4 Western Sydney. 

I would like to thank Daniel Mudie Cunningham for his intense curatorial investigation for Space YZ, sharing his life and art from that time, as well as Emily Rolfe for bringing this project to life at Campbelltown Arts Centre, Cherie Schweitzer for driving the exhibition design, and Ashley Murray for the brand and website design. I would also like to thank the exhibition Working Party, including Peter Charuk, Anne Graham, David Haines, Terry Hayes, Cheo Chai-Hiang, Joyce Hinterding, David Hull, Noelene Lucas, Eugenia Raskopoulos, and Julie Rrap. Lastly, thank you to our partner, Western Sydney University for contributing to this exhibition through research, archival access and support.