Making art is full of barriers. Amongst other things, art requires time, patience, space, focus, an acceptance of vulnerability and a generosity of the self. Our hyper-capital world is already being incrementally optimised away from the conditions of making thoughtful art and the last thing any of us need is the additional cultural barrier that we (in Australia and New Zealand in particular) call “Tall Poppy Syndrome.”
To financially support my art practice, I’ve worked as a software designer servicing many different cultures across Europe, the UK and the USA. And, even though I’ve been doing that work for almost 20 years, I’m still almost always surprised at the differences in attitudes towards celebrating successes of others in these different countries.
Australians are, generally, a self-effacing people; humility is one of the core tenants of ‘being a good bloke’, as they say. Talking about your success ‘too much’, or expressing confidence and belief in yourself is more likely to get you labelled as ‘a wanker’ than have you and your friends celebrating success together. Generally, that’s not been my experience in other parts of the world.
In the US, for example, telling people you are number one is important, and it matters. Sure, not everyone may agree, but it’s less likely they’ll ‘cut you down’ for it. And that constant cultural threat of being cut-down in Australia makes art-making, and more importantly, sharing, much more difficult because, after all, ‘no one likes a tall poppy’ here.
Achieving income through art is difficult at the best of times; yes, skill and technique are important, and so too are ‘connections’ and ‘networks’, but there’s no denying that luck is also a part of it. One can increase their chances of a ‘lucky break’ by doing two things: making the work, and telling people about it. In Australia, I feel like some of us are behind the 8-ball because telling people about the great work we’re doing as artists is where it gets difficult for fear of being a tall poppy.
No one likes a show off
The idea of ‘marketing’ one’s work, as an Australian, is fraught with the tall-poppy effect. In order to give your work the best chance of success you really do need to try to tell as many people as you can, “Here, I made this, I hope you like it.” The more you tell people, the more likely your art will find a place in the world. But Australians tend to shy away from ‘over-sharing’ for fear of seeming over-confident or worse – the mortal sin in Australian culture: lacking humility.
The thing is, it is possible to show humility and tell people about one’s work. The catch-22 is that the more people that hear about one’s work, the more likely you are to run into those who feel that, maybe, you need to be taken down a notch or two.
Sharing art is one of the scariest things an artist can do. It’s a step toward vulnerability. The critical eye for whether it’s ‘good art’ is difficult enough to overcome. The Tall-Poppy Syndrome adds another wall that, yes, is important to acknowledge, but shouldn’t stop us from remembering that in other parts of the world, sharing the gift is celebrated.