Lauren Carroll Harris

What is most interesting about Newcastle’s annual This Is Not Art (TiNA) festival, is that what started 12 years ago as a community festival of independent, emerging art and culture, is still a community festival of independent, emerging art and culture.

In an era when it’s not uncommon for even the most intimate art show to be sponsored by a massive alcohol company, the non-commercial nature of TiNA is remarkable.

Australia is being hit by a relentless, daily gauntlet of live music and art festivals, but TiNA retains a truly artist-run schedule of events.

artRiot
September 11-26
Upstairs at the Annandale Hotel,
17 Parramatta Rd, Annandale, Sydney

Sydney is currently swathed in artist run spaces and ecologically concerned art. The Museum of Contemporary Art’s latest show, In the Balance — Art for a Changing World, is just one of a range of recent exhibitions that explore climate change and community involvement in solutions.

It’s in this context that artRiot has emerged. artRiot is a new art collective comprised of Sydney and Newcastle artists whose mandate is to combine art and activism.

Review: Plastic Beach
Gorillaz, EMI
Escape to the Plastic Beach Tour
December 6-19, on sale now
Bookings via Ticketek,
Premierticketek.com.au, 132 849

“If you watch MTV for too long, it’s a bit like hell — there’s nothing of substance there”, said Jamie Hewlett, graphic artist and co-creator of “virtual band” Gorillaz, in 2005 . “So we got this idea for a cartoon band, something that would be a comment on that.”

Wander through the labyrinthine lanes from Chippendale to Marrickville, and it will strike you: Sydney has been hit with a tidal wave of new art galleries.

Galleries like MOP in Chippendale, At The Vanishing Point on south King St and First Draft in Surry Hills are among a new generation of art spaces that are strictly not-for-profit, often self-funded and always run by and for artists. They’re called artist-run initiatives (ARIs), and they’re blasting a fresh gust of air through the art community.

The ALP government’s environmental credentials have suffered a second meltdown in as many weeks.

A Nielsen poll published in the February 8 Sydney Morning Herald showed a sharp drop of support for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's key climate change policy, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).

As I write, there are two Copenhagens. One is the Copenhagen swamped with 100,000 protesters demanding climate justice, social justice, solidarity and community before corporate profit.