Editorial 21 June 2017

Hooray! It’s the new annual season of giving, a mid-winter, end of financial year festival of generosity in which the public, awash with choice, donates to arts companies and organisations desperate to boost sorely limited funds. It’s no different for RealTime. Arts journalism, whether in print or online, is suffering: jobs are disappearing, the number of outlets diminishing, long-form reviewing less and less sought and arts advertising declining as social media shorthand becomes the currency of critical evaluation. Can the arts be seriously sustainable without informed, considered criticism? If you think not, then bring us cheer with an all too welcome donation. In this edition of RealTime, like no other Australian arts magazine, we range from Perth to Hobart, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, traversing forms, media, a desert and a suburban creek bed, and in the company of two remarkable bears [image above]. For artists, for you. Keith & Virginia

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Top image credit: Nancy Denis, Candy Bowers, One the Bear, Black Honey Company, Campbelltown Arts Centre, photo Document Photography