Silpa: the Art of Love

Chapter 3
Motor Meditation

The ’64 VW kicks over with a reverberating rumble. I put my foot on the
clutch, throw her into gear, and slowly let out the clutch as I ease down
on the accelerator peddle, lurching away from the curb. I maneuver the
compact but obstinate Beetle around the bends of Bondi’s serpentine
backstreets until reaching the traffic on Old South Head Road, coming to
a standstill on the hill leading up to the Junction. The traffic moves in
stops and starts, and I ride the clutch and rev her, or risk rolling
backwards onto the new Mercedes Benz right on my tail.

Eventually we make it onto the Cahill Expressway and pick up the pace to
half the speed limit, until getting stuck again. It takes twenty minutes to
get around the city’s fringes where, at last heading away from the Central
Business District along Parramatta Road, the traffic jam is pointing in the
opposite direction, and the VW purrs along at sixty, and a hundred k’s on
the toll way.

Besides paying the toll, I enjoy motoring on the toll way. It’s therapeutic,
as the vibrations of the old Volkswagen engine transfer through the rigid
steel chassis, rock my bucket seat, and jiggle my every muscle from head
to toe. There’s no turning or changing gears for a half hour. Just cruising
along, relaxing. I have the luxury of being able to zone out and slip into a
sort of meditation, allowing me to think more deeply about whatever it is
that’s going on in my life.

On my mind today is the afternoon meeting about Thailand, considering
my chances, and the context surrounding it and my life as a whole. I
never thought I’d want to be a university lecturer, even though I’d spent
over half my life studying at university since leaving school, and that was
before I started the part-time PhD nearly three years ago at University
of Western Sydney. Then, I was offered my first academic position as a
part-time tutor.

On the plus side, the students are great. With fees so high and facilities
so poor these days because of economic rationalism the students have
to want to be there. One downside is I don’t practice my art as much as I
used to, and the politics are incredible. I had no idea how cutthroat the
academic world is. Mostly it’s about money and power in a grossly
under-funded university. The power to get the money for your course,
project or department; and power in the form of your position as you
compete to advance your career ahead of everybody else’s. On top of
that there are the autocratic bureaucrats holding the threadbare purse
strings with an iron fist, ultimately controlling what decisions the
academics make actually materialise. It’s obvious to me that universities
have become more about money and profit than learning.

When I was an undergraduate in Adelaide doing a BA in Liberal Studies
majoring in Gender Issues, I was more concerned with the women’s
movement and student politics than the petty squabbles between my
lecturers I’d sometimes hear rumours about. After graduation, I moved to
Sydney to do another BA in Fine Art at Sydney University. People thought
I was mad when I went straight from doing one undergraduate program
into doing another. Everybody said to me, “You’ve got to move up, not
sideways. You’re an A student, why not do your honours and go straight
into doing your PhD?” Even though I loved the field and didn’t want to
leave it, I wanted to incorporate women’s issues into a career as an artist,
something I always had a passion and talent for. Only I’d never made it
the focus. So before doing first-class honours and a PhD I had to deviate
sideways in order to unify my two passions.

Now, if I get the selection, I’m almost certain to be appointed full-time
staff and elevated from tutor to lecturer level when the next position
comes up, hopefully next year. With it will come the long-term prospect
of rising up the academic ladder further to associate professor,
Department Head of Feminist Art, and maybe one day attaining the
sacrosanct stratospheric heights of permanent tenure and possibly a full
professorship. It’s conceivable I could become the Visual Arts Faculty’s
first female dean.

All this depends partly on whether the selection board chooses one of the
three permanent staff who have applied or me. They certainly have more
qualifications. Peter Stevens and Michael Tan have their PhDs and have
been tenured staff for years, and Roger Cedric has toured the international
university gallery circuit before, doing exchanges with universities in Korea,
Japan, Italy and now Silpakorn University in Thailand.

It was as an art student that I first became aware of the ‘university
circuit’ and it highlights the distinction between the two types of artists:
those that can do, and those that teach. But those that teach get a
salary and get to go on ‘exchange’ junkets. It was one of the reasons why
I always wanted to be a real freelance artist and never seriously
considered teaching until it was offered.

Why did I take it? With six years spent as an undergraduate, then a
seventh as an honours student, and another three spent on my PhD, I’d
accumulated a debt the size of a small Third World country. Put that
together with Sydney’s incredible cost of living and I was in deep financial
trouble. I had to do something, especially since I’m not into the
commercial art scene with its pass? portraits and landscapes; I’m
philosophically opposed to the commodification of my art. Teaching art,
besides paying well, is at least in the art field.

As a freelance artist for four years from when I finished honours to
starting studying again, I averaged one solo exhibition a year, including
one at the prestigious National Museum of Women in the Arts in
Washington DC. I got that recognition because of my talent and work,
not because I’d brownnosed the dean of a university. These were great
achievements but never resulted in much if any financial return, the odd
grant, and the occasional sale negotiated by a gallery.

I never put prices on my pieces, there never were any red dots or spaces
to stick them, but I was never against selling it if someone wanted it that
much. The point is my art has never been marketable in the same way as
paintings or prints can be. Money’s not the point. Only that means I’ve
hardly made any money and I have to say, not coming from a well-off
family, it’s been hard at times. If it wasn’t for Debra and Joan coming
through for me on more than one occasion, I don’t know what I would
have done.

You virtually never see a freelance artist exhibiting on the university
circuit, and you hardly ever see these university artists crossing over
and exhibiting in real galleries. It’s as though there are two separate art
worlds. As a student I’d gone to a few shows by my lecturers and I
couldn’t stand it; they had it all so easy. No hard work. No struggle. Just
jobs for the boys and the dean’s toadies. And now here I am doing exactly
what I’d always criticised others for. I know full well I’m a total hypocrite.
No wonder Debra’s been riding me about it. Admittedly, it’s because of the
personal financial pressure out there in the real world. Something had to
give and it was my best option.

Normally it’s the head of a department or a permanent staff member the
dean’s nominated that automatically gets to go on such exchanges, when
they occasionally come up. But in this case it was decided to throw it
open to all the staff, permanent and part-time, to stop the grumbling
about how the same people are always getting these juicy, expenses paid
holidays. In other words, it was opened to all staff because of politics,
and the politics had been getting nastier and nastier. Whoever they pick
today, it’ll be because of politics or personal favouritism, not because of
the art.

The dean, Malcolm, who I’d made the near fatal blunder of having a brief
affair with last year, heads the selection committee. It’s been over for
ages and it seemed like an innocent occurrence at the time, but it was a
mistake that’s turned a lot of the other staff on both sides against me.
Not only Malcolm’s supporters, but his opponents were against me too for
sleeping with the enemy. Rumours abounded, and people were whispering
behind my back that I was sleeping with the boss so the next permanent
position in the faculty would come my way. Now they’re whispering Mal
would naturally send his ‘girlfriend’ to Thailand even though I broke off the
affair myself ages ago. Some people have long memories when it comes to
other’s mistakes.

Actually, I doubt Mal would give this to me because we slept together for
a short while. Unfortunately, it had somehow become common knowledge,
and as much of a political discomfort for Mal as it had for me, though I
can guess that Mal must have let it slip, probably unable to stop himself
boasting about a young conquest to one of his mates over beers, and
from there broadcast to the world. He might throw the exchange my way
to be rid of me for a month, or he might not, just so he’s not seen to be
being paid in sexual favours. It would be so much easier if we were solely
judged on the merits of our proposals, unfortunately that would be the
wishful thinking of an idealist, and I’ve long given up being the idealist.

I swallow a deep breath and glance left and right at the rows of houses
stretching out in both directions for as far as the eye can see. On the
right is an established suburb with old gum trees giving shade to redbrick
houses, and on the left is a new subdivision of larger houses crammed
onto smaller blocks of land with not a single tree in sight. A year ago it
was a mix of cow pastures with scattered eucalyptus trees and original
native bush, vegetation that would have been there since before
European settlement about two hundred and twenty years ago. All of it
had been felled and denuded by the developers to pack in every house
possible. I imagine that in one you couldn’t have a conversation in your
lounge room without your neighbour overhearing, and you’d be staring
directly into each other’s bedrooms.

Turning off the toll way, the last few kilometres to the Kingswood Campus
tick over in a matter of minutes. Driving through the spacious but parched
grounds I look up at the university buildings and can’t help but compare
them to the new houses bordering the toll way. The main structure must
be twenty-five years old, but is constructed out of the same cheap
materials and with the same substandard work as houses these days are
built, unable to withstand the test of time. With several additions since,
each seemingly designed with only keeping costs to a minimum in mind,
the overall effect is an unsightly mishmash of architectural cruelty.

After circling the parking lot three times I find the last available space
back near the entrance, forcing me to stride the entire length of the
campus to the faculty at the far end, making me hot and sweaty, and
five minutes late for my nine o’clock class.