Elisabeth Bastian started her working life teaching art to primary and secondary students - both in schools and as an education officer at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She then headed west and spent three and a half years as curator of Orange Regional Gallery, during which time she also set up and ran a weekend bookshop cafe where she held mini exhibitions. She then became Regional Arts Promotion Officer for Arts OutWest; this included producing and presenting three radio programmes and an Arts news segment on Prime TV each week. She eventually became CEO of Arts OutWest (which serviced 17 local government areas), during which time she set up the Central West Writers' Centre, co-ordinated community festivals, produced Artspeak, a regional cultural magazine, set up Arts Councils, obtained funding for the region and represented the Central West on a variety of Ministry for the Arts committees. She lectured on Art History and Theory at TAFE and regularly exhibited and received awards for her artwork. This all came to a screaming halt when she gave birth to twin boys in 2000. Having recovered from the shock of this, she started the Blackheath Philosophy Forum and, with her cartoonist husband, opened Stop Laughing This Is Serious Gallery. She continues to exhibit her art while also working as an illustrator.

ABSTRACT

Stop laughing this is serious

I am interested in the curious notion of “serious” art and what that word “serious” has come to mean. Over the last 25 years I have worked in schools, TAFE, the Art Gallery of NSW, a NSW regional gallery, a whole range of community arts both in and out of museums, as a practising artist in the fine art and commercial worlds and now in a commercial gallery. Each area has had completely different criteria for the type of art that is worth taking “seriously”.

Stop Laughing This Is Serious Gallery bridges all these worlds and is an interesting experiment in attracting audiences and sales, providing a focal point for a community and surviving without any funding support. The name is taken from an early Australian cartoon by Stan Cross in which two workmen are hanging off a scaffolding on a building site. Death is imminent. The situation couldn’t be more serious, but all they can do is laugh.