Not Quite Art

A three-part Arts TV series that explores life outside the Galleries.

In Not Quite Art, Marcus Westbury takes us on a journey through the unfunded DIY cultural environment of media artists, niche publishers, video art bar owners, cultural criminals, and street artists. He asks the provocative question: where does culture really come from and what cultures do we value and why?

Episode 1: Icons and Opportunities
Why do we spend far more money building sterile palaces that store dead artists' work than supporting the contemporary practice of living artists?

Marcus posits whether you can buy culture by building an iconic building or even franchising a McLouvre or McGuggenheim? Or is culture a messy, dirty thing that comes from the bottom up, refuses to behave, and breaks a lot of occupational health and safety rules? Marcus travels to Newcastle Australia and Glasgow Scotland looking for clues.

This episode features a guest appearance by the Pasha Bulker.

Episode 2: The New Folk Art
Is culture a set of elaborate and elaborately funded life support systems, or an infection that's trying to attack us? What's the difference between a Symphony Orchestra and a covers band (apart from about $40 million dollars a year)?

Marcus take a journey around the street art of Melbourne, meeting the artists who've turned Hosier Lane from a bunch of low-rent, grimy walls into one of Australia's prime tourist attractions. He hangs out with multi-media musicians The Herd and wonders why the games industry has so much money but so little content. We also find out what 'uncollectable' art is, and how to host an 'empty show'.

Episode 3: The Business of Culture
Where does art stop and business begin? Is the difference between art and commerce whether you make money out of it or whether you are making it to make money? And are artists just the underpaid R&D guys for big fashion, design, music and business?

Marcus Westbury ventures into a video art bar, meets an artist who sells ideas, reveals the angst of being a sneaker designer and comes across a magazine that you can only read on a wall. With sneakers on show at the National Gallery of Victoria and every new art movement the basis of an advertising campaign, as a society, are we just the best consumers ever known?