Visual arts body’s charity status used to help dumped artist Khaled Sabsabi

Khaled Sabsabi with one of his works at the Mosman Art Gallery in Sydney.

Outraged by the dumping of Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s artist representative to the Venice ­Biennale, hundreds of people rushed online earlier this month to donate money to his cause – 864 donors, if we’re being precise – their contributions tallying up to a sizeable haul of more than $82,000 over a single weekend.

Sabsabi’s stated intention is to use that money to stage a public display of his works in Venice, a personal exhibition divorced of anything to do with Creative Australia and the headless chickenry displayed by its board of directors; they rescinded Sabsabi’s appointment in extremely untidy fashion amid an upsurge of controversy surrounding his early work.

It wasn’t even the imagery of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that bothered Creative Australia CEO Adrian Collette so much. That wasn’t new.

Collette told parliament that he’d seen it and wasn’t fussed. What was new, and what actually galvanised Collette and the rest of the board, was a 2006 video piece featuring eyewitness footage of the World Trade Centre towers being torn apart.

Khaled Sabsabi’s images of Hassan Nasrallah at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Provocatively titled “Thank You Very Much”, it also featured a snippet of former US president George W. Bush actually uttering those words and left the piece with ample room for all the artistic chin stroking required to mull over its true meaning. So, make of it what you will.

The catch, however, with Sabsabi’s $82,000 fundraising success is that it was achieved in part though a hefty endorsement from the National Association for the Visual Arts, or NAVA as it’s known – a taxpayer-funded industry body that not only signal-boosted Sabsabi’s fundraising efforts through its social media channels and provided a link to the fundraising page itself, but which processed the donations using its Deductible Gift Recipient status.

This meant every dollar provided to Sabsabi’s campaign will be deemed fully tax-deductible, a sought-after benefit not ordinarily granted to artistic endeavours – and which undoubtedly would have made Sabsabi’s fundraising drive a significantly more attractive prospect.

Creative Australia chief executive Adrian Collette. Picture: Britta Campion

No doubt a very kind gesture by NAVA, but one that potentially misused its DGR status, which is supposed to be in place for sector-wide support of the visual arts community and not the personal and political benefit of an individual artist shunned by the establishment – for reasons bad, stupid or otherwise.

NAVA didn’t respond to our questions about the eager use of its DGR status here, but it’s possible its staff are still on holiday, making the most of this Easter period, given their tendency to enjoy much time off work.

Employees at NAVA only work a four-day week thanks to an internal policy called Quiet Fridays, where they’re given the day off to indulge in their “creative practice”, as it’s described on the website.

In the meantime, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission has been apprised of the matter.