FINANCE? NO, FINE ARTS

Sari Kivinen

On the same day as I received my high school certificate in 1999 I boarded a Greyhound bus at Beenleigh (South East of Brisbane) and travelled to Sydney. A girl on the bus asked what I was going to do there.

“Study Fine Arts,” I said.
“Finance?” she replied.
“No, Fine Arts,” I repeated.

I had no proper comprehension of where or what UWS Nepean was. Yet, I chose to apply to UWS largely because performance art was mentioned in the formal description of the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. It was the right place for me. I was provided the space and support to investigate ideas and push boundaries. I remember hearing about the terms ‘cross disciplinary’, ‘inter disciplinary’, and ‘transdisciplinary’. I gained a sense that anything was possible, that we could cross unthinkable borders and forge our art practices and careers however we chose – with willingness to do the hard work of course. The motto “1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” was heard more than once.

My academic career began at UWS even though I didn’t realise it at the time. I was exposed to all kinds of ideas - creative, conceptual, theoretical, philosophical, and even absurd ones. We were taught to critique, and for our artworks to be critiqued. Occasionally I’ll clean out an old box from storage and be amazed with the study notes I find. Derrida said what? Lacan huh? Abramović did what? Burden was shot!? A few lectures and presentations have stayed with me over the years. Random things like sometimes I think about a presentation by Cheo Chai-Hiang when I open my front gate which is clasped shut with a twisted metal coat-hanger (a make-shift solution). I think about first year Modernism and Modernity lectures when I travel on the train and about how people in general try not to look at each other. The changed gaze.

Perhaps the most important lesson I learnt from art school was the art of pulling everything apart, scrutinising it and putting it back together.

Wine, Watermelon, and Wonder exhibition catalogue, 2001

A few years following graduation, my friends (my friends!) Naomi Oliver and Liam Benson started the performance duo The Motel Sisters. I was tasked with creating a persona that would be friends with Paris and Tacky Motel. Instead, a beast was unleashed. I remember going wig shopping with Liam and coming back with several hair pieces instead of one. After a session of filming myself trying to develop this ‘friend’ for The Motel Sisters, somehow three distinct roles emerged. Coincidentally these three roles were also sisters. One was a friend for Paris and Tacky (Jessee-Liina), one didn’t know who The Motel Sisters were (Caroliina), and the third sister (Starella) was a mess who had inherited all of the family dysfunction and also sort-of disliked The Motel Sisters. I performed these three sister roles as my art practice from about 2004-2012.

Sibling Study: Finlandia Vodka Chocolates, 2006

In 2007 I somehow became the public face of the Save UWS Arts blog behind which Daniel Mudie Cunningham was the inside man. The blog shone a spotlight on the most recent restructuring of the UWS Fine Arts and Electronic Arts degrees. Recently, I found this letter from Professor Janice Reed (then UWS Vice-Chancellor) in my archives. Now reading this as an historical artefact, it’s sad that even the downsized Bachelor of Contemporary Arts degree didn’t survive. I get it, arts education is expensive, and the supply/demand numbers aren’t quite the same as for other types of degrees. Sadly, the real value of an arts education is all too often overlooked. One of the problems with trying to figure out the value of an art degree is that arts benefits are multifaceted. There are both instrumental benefits (those useful for society) and intrinsic benefits (benefits that are valuable on their own). The value of these variable benefits can be thought of as cumulative, expanding from us who make it, to those that directly experience it, and to the broader community.  

In 2009 Starella moved to Finland (along with myself) and while I came back to Australia some years later in pursuit of my future husband (who I’d met in a Finnish snowstorm), Starella remained touring Finnish bars with her death metal band. Starella used to be obsessed with being the daughter of a vet and sang songs with lyrics such as “my soul is cut torn shrivelled with your betrayal of humankind. I didn’t want to know. And there’s no hand left to hold.” Whenever I think of my time at UWS I think about my focus on the role for which Starella became the outlet. I often think about the difficult life roles that I had experienced before art school and how at UWS I was encouraged to investigate and transform my difficult experiences into artworks that would communicate a story, however fragmented and displaced that story was.

For about 12 years after graduation I was a busy artist pushing my creative boundaries. When I lived in Sydney I exhibited, performed and organised arts outputs nonstop. When I moved to Finland I exhibited, performed, organised, produced, and even curated arts events nonstop. I started to receive decent grants and recognition. I was a chairperson and a treasurer and a board member on three different arts boards. But then in 2015 I stopped.

I just stopped.

I took a detour and literally walked into a ‘Z block’ at a different university in a different city. In this Z block I joined the company of Mick Jagger, Janet Jackson, Robert Plant and Kenny G and I did the unthinkable; I studied accounting! Throughout my Accountancy degree, and the research that I have since delved into, I have frequently thought about my Fine Arts degree and its value to society. I have thought about how important access to resources is, including access to proper arts education, so that the current and future generations can equitably continue to pass on traditions while innovating and pushing new boundaries.

One day I might come up with a more sophisticated way to ‘measure’ the multifaceted value of such an experience as my days at UWS. But for now, let’s just say that my UWS Fine Arts degree is valued in the following simplistic way:

FAD = B + C + CD + CH + CM + CP + CT + E + F + HA + H + LS + MS + SB + SE + P + SC + SP

Where:

FAD = Fine Arts degree
B = belonging
C = captivation
CD = character development
CH = cultural heritage (sustain)
CM = communal meaning
CP = civic pride
CT = critical thinking
E = employability
F = friendships
HA = harm avoidance
H = health (improved)
LS = learning skills
MS = mental stimulation
SB = social bonds
SE = self-efficacy
P = pleasure
SC = social capital
SP = sensory pleasure