An Origin Story

Let me wax lyrical about one of my favourite things. Let me tell you the story of how Nothing Ever Happens in Brisbane came to be.

I started a blog back in 2016. It was for three reasons. One – I love making art and watching art and talking about art and writing about art. Two – I’m a broke arse artist and can never afford enough art so yeah. Free tickets! Three – and this is the big one – it was near impossible to ever get a reviewer to attend my art, or the art of my wild and wonderful creative and independent friends.

This image of Rachael Gibson and cover image by Fiarrah Harraif. Taken at The DoomsDay Disko Kabaret.

There is a lot of gatekeeping that goes on in the arts. For the independent creative, there are many people, big, important people, that don’t seem to have the time of day. Producers, festivals, venues, there are many fancy people who don’t answer their emails. Reviewers. There are practically no arts reviewers left at mainstream media, and they are of a, shall we say, predictable demographic. If your show ain’t mainstream, its virtually impossible to get a critic along to see it. And writing, reviews, criticism, its a valuable tool in our kit for getting people along to see a show, for understanding if anyone gets it, for sharing it to a wider audience than can fit in the theatre. For recording it for posterity.

So, I started showing up and writing about The Art. Mostly underground, indie, alternative art. Circus, burlesque, experimental stuff. Theatre by small companies and by visiting artists. My friend and co-conspirator Adam Wood joined in. We saw more Art. Sideshow, musicals, local festivals.

After a year or so, we started having conversations about who gets to review art. We are not very diverse between the two of us. Similar age, background, colour. Bigtime arts lovers, good with the words, but by no means are we representative of arts audiences. So we recruited a couple more people, really changed up our team demographics. Saw more art. LGBTIQ+ art. Dark art about death. Art in tiny halls and backyards and for 10 people only. We wrote about it all.

The name is a tongue in cheek statement about the art in Brisbane. I’ve lived here on and off and passed through town for nigh on thirty years since I was tiny. There is this pervasive myth, the myth of the Deep North, that nothing actually happens here. That because you can’t find it on the main street, it doesn’t exist. But Brisbane has a virulent, passionate artistic history. Our punk scene was the driving force behind the world punk scene in the 80’s. Our community radio was the first community radio in Australia. The history of 4ZZZ was truly what first politicised me. When I was young, I used to watch how artists moved from Brisbane to Melbourne or Sydney, and maybe then to London, New York, Berlin. I used to think they were being subsumed by those bigger scenes. Now I know, they were changing them from within with our own vibrancy. Our house parties are legendary. Our ideas are both stupid and wonderful.  Even to this day, our circus companies are the most in-demand in the world. But it’s the stuff we make at home that changes lives. The truth is, if you think nothing ever happens in Brisbane, you aren’t being invited to the right parties.

Well perhaps we can help.

A still from ‘Rear Vision’ by Vulcana Circus, that was performed in a carpark under stars, in the midst of the 2020 pandemic. Image credit: Jacob Morrison.

During the Great Lockdown of 2020, I was scratching away at the idea of how I could pay our writers. You see, up until now it was all for free. Just for the free tickets and the glory. The occasional opening night of cheap fizz. But as an independent artist and producer, when it comes down to it I have few morals, but one that I hold dear is Everyone Gets Paid. Even if we split the door, every one gets bus fare and dinner. So I tried to figure out a way to pay our writers.

I also wanted more writers. Greedy I know. But there were so many more voices I wanted to hear from. I can sing you the song of a thousand cliches about diversity is unity, diversity is strength. But you probably already know that tune. As an artist, I WANT to hear from different people. I don’t just want to make art for people like me. I want to know if it works for young people, for blak people, for counter-culture dancers, for straight-edge warriors, for young romantics, for future poets. This is interesting to me!

So, I came up with a plan. We started a newsletter. It’s $1 a month or pay what you feel. The newsletter is recommendations from our writers about what they recommend you see next month. It drops on the 25th of each. We use the money from the subscriptions to pay the writers.

That’s it, that’s the simple grand plan. So far, its working real good. It took us about three weeks to break threshold and start paying for pieces.

A still from Koo Koo The Bird Girl by Sarah Houboult, the first show ever reviewed by Nadia on this site. Image by Sarah Louise Cheesmur

We’ve also done two collaborations with independent festivals, Wynnum Fringe and Anywhere Festival, running our Critiquing the Arts workshop, training up new and different voices, and sending them out to see The Art and talk about The Art. There are seventeen of us now! We’ve written nearly 300 reviews and counting. And we are every orientation in the rainbow, cover a fifty year age span, come from all manner of artistic background. We are immigrant, colonial, First Nations, descended from refugees, or passing through for just a few years. We are dancers and sideshow sirens and thoughtful writers and shoestring producers and disability assessors and grant writers and comedians. I can assure you, it is an excellent newsletter.

Criticism is dead, they keep on saying. But I wonder if it has to be. For me, critiquing is a way of taking the temperature. A good reviewer is a magnifying glass, a mirror, a headlight, an aperitif, a digestive.

A good critic looks at a work, with all of their own knowledge and intersection and taste and measures it against the zeitgeist. Its value for an artist can be multiplicitous; it can show where a work went right or wrong, it can show a producer which kind of audience really responds. It can show a glaring iniquity or highlight a massive cultural mistake. A review can also be hopelessly off-the-mark – this too is knowledge that is useful for an artist. Perhaps it shows that our marketing and our material is unmatched. Perhaps it shows the limitations of the writer. Perhaps it shows a chasm between the stage and the front row. The best reviews take a piece of art and honour it by reproducing it again through a fresh vision. The best reviews are works of art in themselves. This is the task I set to the writers in our team. Sometimes, we even pull it off.

I live in an eclectic stunning mycelium of artists and creatives. It’s the blessing of my life. And I think that a strong and diverse platform for critique can only add to our delicious Meanjin artistic broth.

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