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TCB
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Brunswick 3056
Victoria, Australia
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TCB acknowledges the people of the Kulin Nations as the traditional custodians of the land, recognising their connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to their Elders; past, present and future.
©2024 TCB Art Inc.
Thank you to our generous sponsors:
HARI SINH
Some things are the way they are
2024
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Corinna Berndt & Mark Friedlander w/ Beth Arnold, Katie Lee & Andrew Sainsbury, Tully Moore, Jake Preval, Brigit Ryan, Sarah Rudledge, Zara Sully, Joon Youn & Siying Zhou, In-house, In-kindGallery Two, 28 Sept 2024—27 Oct 2024
This writing discusses the idea of knowledge sharing amongst communities. These concepts cannot be evoked with the careless assumption that they have quietly made their way into academia. The transferral of knowledge through spoken word and local communities has been practiced on this continent for countless generations by the custodians of these lands, skies and waterways. This piece was written on these unceded lands, of which the custodians are the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung people of the southeastern Kulin nation. I pay my utmost respect to Elders past and present and extend this respect to First Nations readers now and within the extended community.
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At its loosest, working in-kind is the act of contributing goods or services other than money in exchange for some other good or service. The mode of in-kind that most artists or people in general are familiar with is providing time and materials for another individual or an institution, in exchange for something that isn’t purely quantifiable. These exchanges are often undocumented between parties or friends – but sometimes form a part of an existing contractual agreement.
At the turn of the 21st century, economic policy showed clear trends toward eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers, and public-private partnerships.[1] The erosion of counter-models to this reform means that alternatives are still being informally explored and defined. Art has speculated on these economic and social frameworks, with medium and representation providing a method to imagine or showcase alternative methods of organisation.[2] Art, artists, and their communities reflect these extraneous economic conditions in many ways. One of these ways is through working in-kind as a means to meet practical and social outcomes. In-kind has actualised as an alternative mode of economic exchange, conceived through a need for artists to maintain control over a practice, without institutional or resourcing constraints. In-kind is a phrase which is loaded with reasoning and consequence - it draws attention to particular logistical and practical behaviours of art, artists, and their communities. For institutions, in-kind contributions are typically voluntary labour, donated goods, or donated services from the artist. Of course, this definition makes sense in an administrative context, but the phrase ‘in-kind’ means more amongst artists. We engage in the practice consistently, for reasons we appreciate, as well as resent.
As I alluded to above, working in-kind is an incredibly specific concept that escapes the idea of simple transaction. It’s an activity which can allow for a more tender and nuanced exchange of ideas and materials. The ‘transaction’ of working in-kind between artists is able to remain flexible, specific to practices, and open to interpretation. In-kind does not even need to have material outputs and can be an exchange of administration or facilitation. All that is to say: it is not a mere exchange of goods or services, but involves the sharing of promises, the future, and knowledge. Conversely, this looseness of exchange (and the precedent for doing so) means that parties can also lack accountability or facilitate extractive relationships. The process undertaken on this page now too, is a sort of in-kind conversation between me, the artists Corinna Berndt and Mark Friedlander, and the support from the City of Merri-Bek council.
Goods and services, and how they are exchanged, is naturally at the core of the phenomenon. Transactions are required to maintain compliance with certain governing bodies. The ATO calls in-kind work ‘bartering’ - which is “assessable and deductible for income tax purposes to the same extent as other cash or credit transactions.”[3] To an administration, the notion of in-kind is simply a pigeonhole for any transaction that isn’t directly monetary yet requires adherence to a system of strict accountability.
Realistically, in-kind is quantifiable by its own value system, agreed to by all parties. To an artist, the idea of working in-kind is inexorably linked with the allocation of capital (or lack thereof) - spreading from the top-down. As an example, the most established institutions (at the ‘top’) still face the threat of closure or relocation. Recently, the Centre for Contemporary Photography closed their doors in Fitzroy after 20 years and are in the position of “seeking a permanent building” after opening their doors nearly 40 years ago.[4] The speculative securitisation of property in this country and its subsequent unaffordability means there is an inability for permanence at any level. From this, an internalisation of scarcity sinks in. When the mere thought of scaling back negative gearing is met with outright scandal, there are obviously entrenched problems.[5]
I’m not making an argument that artists are the most at-risk, or deserving of more protection than other fields. I’m also not placing sole responsibility with the property market – but it is the most severe index. There is an understanding and expectation that one must use personal resources or rely on informal networks to meet certain obligations or elevate a practice. The existence of backyard galleries serves as a good example of an in-kind alternative when everyone is ‘priced-out’. Convert a backyard or courtyard into a space, consult the people around you as your very own board of directors. Pay out of pocket and volunteer your own time to keep it running. Of course, how can it be anything but impermanent?[6] I am not highlighting this precarity to encourage a spiral, rather to provide an example of why in-kind is a reflexive behaviour in this creative industry. The precarity of in-kind (like many other issues) may be a symptom of these attitudes toward property and the allocation of capital toward the arts. Although worrying, I don’t think the consequences are entirely problematic, nor do I think this is unique to artists.
As the practice of working in-kind is inexorably linked with allocation of capital, an educator’s approach to their own practice becomes linked with their instructional role. It must be said that art educators, like other educators, go beyond contractual obligations without institutional support or compensation. They are required to give up more than their time and labour for the sake of other artists; they invest emotionally, physically, and mentally in the outcomes of their ‘dependents.’ Furthermore, the emphasis on empirical justification of higher education means that, to university administration, scholastic outcomes are only as valuable as they are measurable. The question then becomes: what do institutions decide to be important in a tertiary arts education? Each student has a need entirely unique to their practice, and no practical input or topic is more important than another. The only way for educators to service these simultaneous needs is not through a rigorously defined curriculum, but rather through informal knowledge-sharing that extends beyond the walls of the institution. An artistic practice doesn’t adhere to the usual quantifiable outcomes the university expects from graduates. As such, large institutions can never understand how to adequately service something quite as nebulous as the arts, nor the educators in this field. The notion of in-kind exists in a purgatory of immeasurability and specificity unique to instructing in a fine arts context. The abstract nature of in-kind exchange also facilitates a more nuanced form of engagement. Where institutions demand exhaustive documentation and traceability, in-kind emerges as a method of escape for artists, facilitating exchange with each other on their own terms. Artists don’t ‘create value’ in a late-stage capitalistic sense. For this reason, I don’t believe that working in-kind is a method we can or should entirely escape from. The alternative - to be absorbed into a neoliberal operative mode of terminal administration, institutionalisation, and documentation - consigns us to the ‘real-world’.
I have discussed how in-kind operations persist due to a misallocation of resources, producing informality. This informality affords familiarity and tenderness between agents. Where a gallery wall may assist with artificial context, pulling in external actors breaks down the artifice of the wall entirely. When we look at work anywhere, we know that the artist has received in-kind support or is benefiting from specific learnings. What happens when we showcase this manner of working? The physical layout becomes entirely contingent on external requests of the artists. Though the work could be anything, the core idea never changes. What is important is the insistence to support in such a way, and for this to be communicated through the vehicle of an exhibition. In-kind exchanges are all informal, going beyond the gallery walls. These fleeting moments of sharing can be equally as important as the material outcome. What we acquire is a microcosm of an informal economy, one which highlights the network of people behind an exhibition. As artists, we often understand and assume the existence of these networks, but are not always privy to seeing them. In-kind can reveal different possibilities of seeing, collaborating and creating in the otherwise individualistic, artificial white cube, and the unaffordable, managerial world beyond it.
[1] Brittanica. “Neoliberalism.” https://www.britannica.com/money/neoliberalism.
[2] Ressler, Oliver. Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies. Frankfurt: Revolver, 2005.
[3] The Australian Tax Office. “Bartering and trade exchanges.” Updated May 24, 2017. https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/gst-excise-and-indirect-taxes/gst/in-detail/rules-for-specific-transactions/barter-and-trade-exchanges.
[4] Centre for Contemporary Photography. "LOOKING BACK AT THE FIRST DAYS OF THE @ccp_australia" Published August 29, 2024. https://www.instagram.com/p/C_QQyy8TWZn/?img_index=1.
[5] Butler, Josh. " What’s really going on with negative gearing? Here are four paths for change." The Guardian, September 27, 2024, 1:00 a.m. AEST. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/sep/27/negative-gearing-law-changes-australia-albanese-government.
[6] Egerton-Warburton, George. "Art Scene: Melbourne.” Spike Art Magazine. Published March 15, 2022. https://www.spikeartmagazine.com/articles/art-scene-melbourne?q=legacy-redirect&page=1. (How many ARIs on this list still exist, a little over 2 years later?)
HARI SINH (b. Bullongin Land, Yugambeh Nation/Gold Coast, 2000) is a student in 2nd year Painting at the VCA. His practice currently intersects sculpture, coding, ‘painting’ and writing. He works and lives on unceded Wurundjeri Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung land.
Edited by Madeleine Minack.
Documentation by Nina Rose Prendergast.
The author would like to specially thank Madeleine Minack, Corinna Berndt & Mark Friedlander and the team at TCB for their insight, guidance and support in the development of this piece.
This piece was commissioned in response to Corinna Berndt & Mark Friedlander’s exhibition In-house, In-kind as part of TCB’s 2024 Emerging Writers’ Program.
The TCB Emerging Writers’ Program is generously supported by the City of Merri-Bek.
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