Many may not recognize the name Bronwyn Johnson but for those in the visual arts industry in Australia she is the name behind one of the country’s largest visual arts gatherings other than the Asia Pacific Triennial and the Sydney Biennial.

As director of the Melbourne Art Foundation, a not for profit organisation established to support living Australian artists, and the Melbourne Art Fair, a biennial trade show and exhibition space again for Australian living artists as well as an international selection.

Bronwyn Johnson has been involved in this 22-year-old event for over half of its existence. She remembers the time when the Melbourne Art Fair was held on the balconied areas of the Royal Exhibition Buildings whilst other more “major” events were held below. And in the fifteen or so years she has been there, she has taken the event from being a small gathering of 20 odd gallerists to an international event held over five days, with attendances reaching 30,000 and revenue of over AUD $7M in sales for living artists.

Speaking recently to ArtsHub Bronwyn Johnson recalls her career as starting out more in the theatrical side of the arts. “I had been working at the Melbourne Festival doing a job that’s now called Artistic Associate, but in those days I was a producer who worked on the outdoor theatre programme for John Truscott when he was artistic director at the festival from 1989-91.”

“That was a fantastic experience” she recalls “because John pretty much locked me up in a room with a sizeable budget to create new work for the festival.”

According to Bronwyn, her interest back then was very much in performance art and she collaborated with artists who could deliver that. Her role went from fielding submissions to working with groups that could actually deliver an original work.

Similar to the work that Vanessa Pigrum and her team currently do for the Full Tilt programme at the Arts Centre, Bronwyn was the one who chose which works would be further supported by the festival and receive the funding they needed to see their work reach an audience.

She also, during that same period, undertook work for the Southbank area (formerly known as Southgate), producing the precinct’s glittering opening.

With a background in theatre and drama, and visual arts as a side interest to her degree, Bronwyn Johnson saw her career ambitions sitting well within the framework of a creative producer.

“I like having a foot in each camp” she admits, “I like having that opportunity to direct creatively and artistically and I like the intersections that being a producer allows. Producing in its own right is very creative, speak to any film producer - they are after all the ones accepting the accolades for best film at Oscar time.”

Bronwyn says she found her niche when she left university and a girlfriend who was working on the Comedy Company got a job as a production assistant on the show. Even though it was not for her she recalls, she did learn a lot about getting things done and production deadlines.

“I liked to have an outcome – see the work, particularly when producing, I need to start and finish somewhere.”

So when she took on the Southgate job, she set up a company – basically so she could be employed to produce that event. But after efforts to freelance in a dire economic climate did little to advance her career, serendipity intervened. It was at this point that the opportunity to work at the Melbourne Art Fair came along.

Bronwyn Johnson commenced work at the Melbourne Art Fair in 1995, and one of her first tasks was to get a show on in a pretty big hurry – all on her own. And when asked why there hasn’t been such noticeable or public interest in supporting the fair, Johnston’s answer is to the point.

“The position and value given to something like the Melbourne Art Fair reflects a really interesting mix” she begins. “There seems to be in Australia a fairly 19th century view of cultural trade - which does not exist elsewhere in the world – and I mean both in Eastern and Western cultures where I have had the opportunity to go and work in”.

“The fair began in 1988” she remembers, “and it’s not a hypocraful story that it was about twenty galleries gathered on the upstairs gallery of the Exhibition Buildings, whilst downstairs there was a tractor show”.

Support for the fair came sporadically it seems in those early days, and even to this day the fair only receives 25% funding of its total budget from the government. Some came from the Bicentennial funding coffers to begin with before moving to the Australia Council.

Bronwyn Johnson remembers when she first started attending the fair as a member of the public, that she was always struck by what could be done with it. Things like broadening the way in which Australian art is shown in an international context…

“Most art fairs in the world have a place that they are engaged with” explains Bronwyn. “And I was very keen to engage with Asia. This was in line with the Paul Keating years of government at the time; when that engagement was particularly important to our longer term political future.

Originally called the Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Bronwyn says she worked hard to change the name. Owned by the Australian Commercial Galleries Association, they licensed away from ACGA in 2003 and finally separated from them entirely at end of last year, with the foundation now running independently.

Now in 2010, the Melbourne Art Fair still operates as a not for profit company, a message Bronwyn doesn’t think people readily understand.

“Melbourne Art Fair is concerned with living artists” she says. “it is concerned with providing opportunities for living artists through their galleries but also through project rooms and other programmes that we do – most notably the Melbourne Art Foundation commissions.”

“But where that locates us is in the primary market in market terms. So we are about first sales and fostering a culture of collecting, because one of the best things you can do for an artists is support them through their practice. And for us it’s about fostering and developing those careers.”

In those early years when Bronwyn Johnson first started producing the Melbourne Art Fair on her own and the recession made it tough – much tougher than this current correction, she says – she recalls how they concertinaed the walls upstairs at the Exhibition Building and put up exhibitions by the late greats such as Robert Klippel, Rosalie Gascoigne and Bronwyn Oliver in amongst work by landscape painter Neil Taylor.

Rosalie Gascoigne actually stayed for the four days, whilst Noel McKenna helped hang signs, she remembers. All encouraging signs of an industry and art community that clearly wanted to create its own sense of space.

“Now that it has grown” Bronwyn Johnson says, “part of that is due to a focus on fostering cultural activity. I want artists to have an opportunity to do innovative and experimental work, and I want to try and provide those opportunities for them. That too is what the foundation is about.”

So is the Melbourne Art Foundation heading towards becoming a peak arts body for the industry?

“We do a lot of strategic planning in the framework of a 15 year plan” Bronwyn says, “which we revisit every two years, and we also run an awards night in Sydney at the Art Gallery of NSW which is about acknowledging people’s participation in the visual arts and awarding artists and visionaries. It’s a dinner where the guests get to hear and talk about what’s going on in the industry. It is a ticketed event and we sell out because people want to know – there is a great thirst for that kind of information.”

“I would like to think that the Melbourne Art Foundation could take up the role of provider and supporter of the visual arts in Australia as governments become more risk averse and funding is reduced across the board.”

And will governments become averse to funding the arts?

According to Bronwyn Johnson, 25% of the Melbourne Art Fair is government funding, 40% is raised through gallery registrations and the remainder is raised through box office, but if they didn’t have that government funding, the financial structure of the fair would not be stable.

“I think we need greater government support, like there is in countries such as Canada” Bronwyn says. “I think when you operate outside the framework of institutions it presents a whole series of unique circumstances. I have staff the equivalent of three, whilst in Hong Kong and Basel there would be hundreds. I think in order to have a thriving arts culture you do need to have small medium and big. And although we do now have small and big, there is no medium. Ours is a middle sized event based in Melbourne like the Biennale in Sydney.”

So will the task of finding funding for an event like the Melbourne Art Fair be an ongoing challenge?

“We did go to major events for support” Bronwyn says, “but we are not a sporting event and don’t get the international media coverage they expect of an event. And yes I would like to be funded in a similar way to what a festival like the design festival is”.

In the end however, it’s all about the artists.

“I want people to want to come and see the art fair and see that snapshot of practice every two years. We have artists making works from 24 to 80 years old, and we also organise project rooms marrying the artists with an arts run initiative where they have had work, or even commission a couple of curators to create new work. I do this because this is where artists start their careers and I want to show that.”

And at the end of the day we are only as good as the work…”

Melbourne Art Fair 2010
Royal Exhibition Building
Carlton Gardens Melbourne Australia
4 - 8 August
Visit http://www.artfair.com.au/fair/ for more information.