UWS INGRAINED

Susan McInerney

In 1991, amongst the thick of ‘get a job’ and the 1990’s recession ‘Australia had to have,’ I graduated Year 12 and naively chose to do a fine arts degree at the University of Western Sydney. I didn’t know what I wanted to be but I sure as hell didn’t want what was on offer, such as secretary, primary school teacher, nurse or wife. What I didn’t realise then and can clearly see now was that I was a student of the arts, someone who was interested in communication, someone who liked to conjure, create and ruminate. In adolescent layman's terms I wore a lot of black, loved English, history and art. In economic terms I was immeasurable, much like the impact my arts degree has had on my personal and professional development.

You learn so much in your twenties about life, people, yourself. They are formative years and because of this I am finding it hard to find the right words to describe university and its impact. The memories come flooding back, of past friendships, confrontations, triumphs, mistakes, highs and lows. It’s hard to weed them out from each other, to disentangle the tendrils of intertwined thoughts and recollection.

When I was contacted about the Space YZ exhibition, I went rummaging for the few things I still had left from my time at UWS, mainly videos and slides. The timing was impeccable, April’s lockdown was in full swing, and Facebook and Instagram were full of nostalgic and melancholy hashtags like #MeAt20, #throwback and #untiltomorrow.

Once I secured a VHS player I travelled 30 years back in time. The videos were mostly performance pieces I had created in my third year. Some cringeworthy, some still vivid in my mind, others completely forgotten. I marvelled at my wrinkle free self, laughed at my youthful ideas, scanned the audience for my impactful teachers (Joan Grounds!) and reminisced about old lost friends.

The discovery of a long forgotten video documenting student studio spaces ignited memories and sensations. I instantly recalled the journey to Z block which started at Kingswood train station. Every winter morning I traipsed across a field of crunchy frozen grass blades, expelling arctic blasts of cold air from my mouth and nose. During summer I sweated through my Indian cotton skirts and op shop treasures, puddling into my trusty Doc Martens.

I remember the lengthy journey through the university to get to the ‘arse end’ of campus. First you entered past the scantily clad theatre students, then the main lecture halls, down past the swamp bar and store. Past the library and AV Services, past primary school teachers-to-be, down deep into the bricked corridors. Past entrances to narrow winding halls with tiny offices budding off left and right, past engineer types, finally leading up to the last set of glass doors, now leaving Y and entering Z.

The glass doors acted like a sensory airlock and once you stepped through the quiet white gallery you burst into the turps and linseed, the etching grease, the media lab’s chemicals and developer. You were immediately surrounded by a cacophony of conflicting sounds; the staccato of staple gun against canvas, Raquel Ormella’s renditions of Shirley Bassey, the whirl and clunk of the printing press, Morrissey and Sonic Youth echoing off the glass roller doors, the zapping of welding machines.

Meanwhile, in an opposing corner the Sex Pistols competed against Nirvana or Alanis, heavy OH&S booted feet stomped and shuffled. There were voices raised in unison, discussion, argument. Marcello Severo's whooping laughter dovetailing Craig Baker’s thumping industrial techno and the slap and puck of wet clay.

A dirty white walled labyrinth of studio cubicles raked out before you, and if you belonged, you could easily navigate the halls like slum kids navigating Dickensian London alleyways. The place pulsed with promise, with concentration and creativity. The air was electric like the beginning of a concert. The journey from the train station through the university’s brown bricked walls of ‘economy’ was well worth the hike. 

When I think about the impact of university on my life, I think of tutors and lecturers. Of Terry Hayes’s wry humour and quizzically raised eyebrows. Of Rhett Brewer and Graham Marchant. Of Debra Porch’s exasperation with docile first-years (me), of Peter Charuk’s encouraging voice. Of Anne Graham, Eugenia Raskopoulos and Chris Fortescue. Jules Gull and her Citroen. I remember Phillip Kent, Helen Grace and Sue Best suffering through my adolescent writing. I lovingly remember Joan Grounds and her softly spoken support.

Two poignant first-year lectures keep circling this cluster of memories and I feel the true measure of university’s impact may be gleaned from here. They point an aged finger at my current employment, my motivations and principles. The first, an Art History and Criticism lecture, concluded with Helen Grace detailing an assignment. I remember her requesting our essays be proofread before submission, especially if you were schooled after the 1960s. She could not stress enough the importance of grammatically accurate text. Her abhorrence of grammar’s death, at the hands of the 1980’s education sector, was signalled through her tone.

I can’t remember the context of the second lecture but at one point the lecture hall was divided by generations. The lecturer first asked for all people born overseas to stand and line the sides. Then anyone with parents born overseas, then grandparents and so on. Moving on to people who had convicts or settlers in their lineage, First Fleeters, finally First Nations. I was in the minority colonial group, a penny dropped. Even though most of my friends were first generation Australians, university was the first place where I heard those voices raised, valued, fought for. It spoke volumes about the need and want for access to university arts programs in the greater booming ‘burbs. It spoke volumes about systemic power structures and the need for a multitude of voices and representation. It challenged my naive white sense of ‘normal.’ It left me with questions about culture, expression, representation and access.

Fifteen years after attending these lectures I started working in an Intensive English Centre as an Art and Technology teacher. The student cohort are newly arrived migrants, refugees and international students. To do so I retrained in pedagogy and linguistics. Before I knew it I was back to semiotics, culture, identity and theories of communication. I was reunited with Derrida, Baudrillard, Foucault, Piaget, Gardener and de Beauvoir. It felt like a sort of homecoming where art, education and language all collided.

Becoming a teacher brought me back into the fold of active art making. While my day job takes up much of my time, the desire to reflect, explore, communicate and create is always there. Sometimes that energy is channelled into championing the visual arts to young people and giving them alternative ways to express their experiences. Sometimes the energy is channelled into treasured days off where I explore on my own. My time at UWS enabled me to hear the voices of others and to see the world with a fresh set of multifocal glasses. It championed literacy and was academically rigorous. It asked me to challenge myself and communicate with my community.

Over the years I have watched the arts, migrants and education be attacked, underfunded, devalued, even disembowelled. In this current time, I see we are at a crucial tipping point of underfunding and political meddling, where the COVID-19 recession could be weaponised to wipe the humanities off the map. It is a sad indictment of a democratic nation when it seeks to strip people from access to equal education opportunities. What is less sad and more frightening is a political agenda targeting society’s thinkers, objectors and visual philosophers. Is a Huxleian Brave New World to be our new normal? The government's recent restrictions, imposed through new fee structures, and its long campaign to defund universities and privatise the education sector will leave a lasting cultural hole. I worry this will set us back 100 years to a time when education and the arts was only afforded to the wealthy, leaving only their voices heard.