Australian artists are furious. Our peak arts agency has questions to answer

By the usual standards of Creative Australia’s board, it was a relatively short meeting, lasting just 90 minutes.

The peak federal arts agency has seen far longer – a two-day epic preceded its restructure in 2023.

But this one, on February 13, was far more seismic.

That day, events had moved with astonishing speed after Labor’s Senate leader, Penny Wong, took questions on notice from Coalition frontbencher Claire Chandler shortly after 3pm.

Following an article in News Corp’s Australian newspaper earlier that week, Chandler challenged the suitability of Australia’s newly named representative to the Venice Biennale, artist Khaled Sabsabi.

A still from Sabsabi’s video installation You (2007), showing then-Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.Credit:

Chandler cited two historical works: the 2007 work You, depicting the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last year, and Sabsabi’s video rendering of the 9/11 attacks in the 2006 work titled Thank You Very Much.

“With such appalling antisemitism in our country, why is the Albanese government allowing the person who highlights a terrorist leader in his artwork to represent Australia on the international stage?” Chandler asked.

Lebanese-born Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino had been named the week before and planned to realise a new conceptual work at Venice that they promised would celebrate unity, human connections and peace.

Federal Arts Minister Tony Burke jumped on the phone to Creative Australia chief executive Adrian Collette.

Burke denies giving direction, and has since described Sabsabi as an “extraordinary” and “gifted” artist but by 6pm the board had been hastily convened by interstate hook up. It happened so quickly that Indigenous advocate, academic and broadcaster Larissa Behrendt could not attend.

Tensions were high, artist Lindy Lee said.

“In no direction was there anywhere to breathe,” she recalled.

A highly charged blame game, said another, with Lee said to have taken heat as one of the board’s artistic representatives.

Given the geopolitical shockwaves of the Middle East conflict, some members felt blindsided and believed they should have been fully briefed about the works raised in parliament before signing off on the appointments.

At 9.15pm that night, the board went public with its “unanimous” decision to ditch the artistic team it had chosen for the Venice Biennale 2026 just days before, citing the unacceptable risk to public support of a “prolonged and divisive debate about the 2026 selection”.

Creative Australia chief executive Adrian Collette.Credit:

In the resulting furore and flurry of resignations, the row has laid bare questions of artistic freedom, arm’s-length funding, political interference and censorship and exposed a crisis of confidence in Australia’s premier arts funding body.

The fallout has ramifications for the government’s relationship with the artistic community and its standing in western Sydney, a region of cultural funding inequity that Sabsabi and Dagostino had unceasingly championed.

And the chaos potentially puts a target on the back of Creative Australia, were the Coalition to win government.

The anger among artists in Australia and internationally is lightning hot, says Callum Morton, who represented Australia at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 and signed an open letter with 22 other distinguished Venice representatives.

‘This is a line-in-the-sand moment for artists.’

Callum Morton

“The universal condemnation from artists, and arts workers, speaks volumes,” he says. “This is a line-in-the-sand moment for artists about how a bureaucratic and political class treat us, and it has already echoed around the world. Side-stepping the politics, look at how Khaled [Sabsabi] has been hung out to dry and humiliated.

“Hopefully, other opportunities will come from this, but you would not blame him for feeling deeply betrayed. The pavilion will become a symbol of the disregard Creative Australia has for artists.

“The irony is that at the last biennale the Gold Lion was awarded to the Australian representative, Archie Moore, and in the next iteration we will have an empty pavilion. We’ve gone from triumph to disaster in one year.”

Due Diligence

The process to shortlist Sabsabi and Dagostino was no different to that in which Moore and curator Ellie Buttrose were chosen for the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale last year.

Moore’s Gold Lion prize was Australia’s first since 1958 – and equated to the Nobel Prize in its stature.

Archie Moore won the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion last year for his Kith and Kin pavilion.Credit: Janie Barrett

Hopes were high for Venice 2026. Sabsabi and Dagostino were shortlisted from 50 applications in a two-stage open-call process managed by the agency’s visual arts team.

An independent panel of industry advisers named them among six finalists, with each panellist providing individual written and verbal advice to Collette and program director Mikala Tai.

“Creative Australia do not request of any artist – for any funding application, for any artist opportunity – to identify at application stage any known works they feel are politically risky because that would sway assessment and not allow a level of probity and fairness,” an arts bureaucrat with knowledge of the application process, but who was not authorised to speak, said.

“Outside of that, for Venice, the industry advisers provide advice to Creative Australia to make the final decision, and the final decision rests with the chief executive.”

Sabsabi is a Lebanese-born artist who fled civil war in 1978 at the age of 12 and works out of a converted studio garage in Green Valley.

Dagostino is director of the Chau Chak Wing Museum, a former director of the Campbelltown Arts Centre and founding director of Parramatta Artists Studios. Both are highly regarded.

The announcement was made at Parramatta Artists Studio in Granville, a stone’s throw from Burke’s multi-ethnic electorate of Watson and celebrated by western Sydney artists as a moment of overdue recognition.

Sabsabi’s boycott of the 2022 Sydney Festival over its decision to accept $20,000 in funding from the Israeli embassy to co-fund a dance production was raised in media interviews, as was his public position over the Gaza war.

The violence and destruction in Gaza was “inhumane and unacceptable”, he said. “Having said that, I support peace, and the possibility of that dream. We need a way forward; this violence and destruction cannot be sustained.”

Jewish commentators perceive double standards: “So whatever else Sabsabi may believe, it’s clear he doesn’t object to blocking other artists on political grounds – at least not when those artists are Israeli,” wrote Deborah Stone in The Jewish Independent.

Applying retrospective interpretative meaning to political works is an inexact science.

Artist Ben Quilty told the ABC that Sabsabi made the work You in 2007 when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was a “legitimate political leader in the Middle East”. Hezbollah was not designated a proscribed terrorist organisation in Australia until 2021. It has been held in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art since 2009 without controversy or complaint.

Artist Khaled Sabsabi (right) and curator Michael Dagostino were dropped as Australia’s entrant to the 2026 Venice Biennale.Credit: Steven Siewert

Likewise, Sabsabi’s 2006 video work using images from the 9/11 attacks, Thank You Very Much, could be interpreted as a commentary on the disconnect between US politics and world-changing events.

“Sabsabi’s work does not glorify; it interrogates,” says National Association for the Visual Arts executive director Penelope Benton. “He does not incite; he critically reflects. Context is everything, and its deliberate erasure in the political discourse surrounding this decision is deeply troubling.”

Both, it is argued, could have been defended, even in the bare-knuckle arena of Parliament House on the eve of a tight election.

The events of the past week have baffled experienced arts administrators who wonder why a detailed risk assessment did not identify the works in question, leaving Creative Australia without a ready response to give its minister.

“That’s risk management 101,” said one, who asked not to be named. Another arts adviser characterised the selection of Sabsabi and Dagostino in the current climate as politically naive.

Risk assessments have been common since the Sydney Theatre Company faced a donor backlash and boycotts when some members of the cast of The Seagull donned the Palestinian scarf at a curtain call in late 2023.

Australia’s international ambassador for Venice 2026, Simon Mordant, cited “poor process by the government-run arts body” when he quit immediately after hearing of the board’s about-face.

Creative Australia says it won’t change its mind again. “No one shoots themselves in the head like the board did, unless they were backed into a corner and had no choice,” one long-time observer of arts politics said.

It seems likely that next year’s Australian pavilion will stand empty or be occupied by an exhibition lacking legitimacy among large swaths of the Australian arts community.

Creative Australia has announced an independent examination of its 2026 Venice Biennale selection process, but offered no further detail. More than 4000 signatories to an open letter protesting Sabsabi’s dropping want the review to interrogate the process for rescinding the contract.

The implications of this decision extend far beyond a single artist or event, they say, and strike at the heart of the functions Creative Australia is legislatively bound to uphold.

Were Creative Australia to set itself up as an arbitrator of art where does it end, asks Western Sydney University academic, Dolla Merrillees. Imposing limitations on artists and curators selected for Venice? Signing up artists who pledge to produce only politically sensitive work? Either way it sets a dangerous precedent.