Location, location II

Where do artists congregate? The clichéd answer is cafés and bars - and doubtless they do go for coffee and drinks. But it turns out that visual artists at least spend a notable amount of time in big hardware stores and the Post Office. Or at least they do in Darwin.

The Creative Tropical City project there has been trying to determine the impact of cultural life in the Northern Territory capital. Chris Gibson, who's actually at the University of Wollongong, used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to map the city's creative life. He got the artists to draw their movements on maps and asked them questions about where they live, socialise and work.

What he found surprised him. Artists do use places like bars, galleries and museums (exactly the facilities found in 'creative precincts') but most of their creative epicentres weren't to be found there. Instead, they tended to go to secluded beautiful spots for inspiration, and to Bunnings warehouse and the Post Office for socialisation.

But why? The reasons turn out to be very rational indeed. Bunnings is cheap when it comes to art supplies. The Post Office is where they dispatch their art into competitions. Chris Gibson put it beautifully, "artists spend a lot of their time dealing with bubble wrap."

So artists buying supplies, or sending off their finished works, bump into one another at these locations. They get to have a chat and catch up on the gossip.

It makes perfect sense, but it isn't something I would ever have thought of. To the artists who heard the interview, however, it was no surprise at all. One of them has already said as much on the Life Matters guestbook.