How do audiences talk to institutions? To artists? Can they talk back? Artists are reaching the public not just through exhibitions, or through publicity channels, or even critical arts writing. Audiences use media — social media, specifically — to imagine an online open–forum to engage with art and artists. There’s a fraught online ecology that makes up the communication channels of the contemporary art world. Right now, there are hundreds of Mailchimp–written e–newsletters begging for your generous donation, open letters protesting the ethically ambiguous or outright damnable, or publicising a launch event or opening, and more perfectly optimised Instagram tiles made for scrolling, sharing and re-sharing on the social media accounts of online arts journals, of galleries and museums, and even of artists. A renewed internet literacy might allow us to refocus the ways we engage with these products for business, humour or critique.
We’re expected to be a certain level of ‘digital native’, using social media to consume and post content as advertising or to replace a professional portfolio. Every app is now LinkedIn, but how can we critically engage with the communication channels that promise to let us talk to institutions? Can we promote a kind of online democracy, effectively self-publishing and circulating what mainstream media channels won’t?
James Nguyen for example, an Eora-based artist, is a particularly prolific Instagram user, and his ability to self-publish timely critique is auxiliary to his practice. His art–anagrams read like scrawls in a sketchbook, and his Instagram is the interface that gives us a direct line into the new artists’ notebook: the notes app. The series has appeared in some form online since 2015, and is a bit of a middle finger to offenders, including politicians and galleries in a parody of the vinyl text on the white cube wall. 'MONASH UNIVERSITY' who quickly followed the suit of Creative Australia in suspending and rescheduling an exhibition with Sabsabi’s work, could become 'HAIRY NUTS MOVES IN’.[1]
I asked Nguyen how it feels to post the crude ones, which are my favourites. ‘For me it feels really safe' he says, in part because the posts speak to an intimate public that is made up of colleagues, friends and the local art-going audience.[2] But broadcasting to what feels effectively like a group of friends online doesn’t necessarily protect you. He mentions the WhatsApp group of Australian artists that organised against pro-Palestine artists and related organisations.[3] ‘They were mad that I was critiquing their power.’ Nguyen assures me that the value of being able to joke and critique on Instagram is about something really simple: fostering the solidarity that comes from community.
But being able to freely publish from notes app to community isn’t always risk-free. Eora-based artist and writer Zoë Marni Robertson found herself in a crossfire of public opinion when attempting a class critique of the Sydney art scene on her Instagram and Substack in 2024. Robertson reminds me that the Substack model for publishing is the Web 2.0 iteration of the noughties blog. Before the internet transitioned from personalised websites to a more centralised, monopolistic ‘social’ media-based internet (where Meta thrives and has a large hand in cultivating), it was possible to have a culture of writing and readership that existed on personalised RSS feeds and websites searchable beyond SEO-optimised ‘slop.’
Elsewhere, in London, New York, and Los Angeles, anonymity is the key to the writing scene and art criticism. The online publications Hollywood Superstar Review, Diva Corp, and The Manhattan Review have all found independent readership on websites that salvage the nostalgic infrastructure of the blog-style custom site. Their anonymity shields them from the kind of backlash Robertson got for naming millionaire-heiress Archibald Prize winner Julia Gutman as an example of class privilege. Robertson says it wouldn’t be possible to emulate that style of criticism now, ‘it's such a small scene here. I just can't imagine anyone writing without it being obvious that it was them doing it. That already happened with The Art Life.'[4] The Art Life was an anonymous blog that published art criticism in Sydney from 2004-2010. After mere months of posting, art critic and later host of the ABC show of the same name, Andrew Frost was speculated to be at hand.
On a utopian internet, using the internet and personal websites to ‘consume’ or ‘create’ would be entirely democratic. Instead, the usefulness and ubiquity of social media has fused itself to advertising and personal communications, not to mention the increasing co–dependence of social media and business communications. This monetised and ad–driven co–dependence is exactly what has given rise to the social media monopolies in opposition to the ‘free’ internet. ‘Content’ is confused with ‘information’ or ‘comms’ or writing or critique or even activism. The creation of apps like Mastodon or Bluesky heralds a small movement away from the meta-owned monopoly, and signals a desire to more critically or ethically invest the time taken and money generated by posting and scrolling. Nonetheless, artists and institutions need an online platform to garner an audience and disseminate information.
Naarm–based newsletter The Paris End has found its micro–patrons on Substack, and can remain almost completely independent of this model. One of its editors, the critic and art historian Cameron Hurst, tells me that the reason for remaining on Substack is simple: firstly, they don’t have to run the tricky back–end of an autonomous website and, crucially, it’s necessary that The Paris End publishes writing for the local Melbourne scene that isn’t beholden to the whims and politics of funding bodies and other stakeholders.
In a climate of obvious censorship, it is as necessary as ever to platform those not backed by mainstream media or institutional support. Institutions respond nimbly to pressure from various hegemonies: pressure from corporate backers, or governments, or powerful board members. The art–going audience can see this with varying levels of obfuscation and transparency.
This crisis of clarity reached a particularly visible tipping point when Creative Australia rescinded (and later reinstated) Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostini’s nomination to Australia’s Venice Biennale pavilion 2026. There’s an undeniable lethargy (typified by the minting of the phrase ‘doomscrolling’) to these lingering twenty–teens technologies and a looming haze of one day’s obsolescence. But their impact is undeniable: outrage about Creative Australia’s decision was immediately amplified and circulated online, culminating in a series of actions including protests at the Creative Australia office, resignations, open letters, which we could read as the testament to a democrat-esque display of public opinion spread on social media. In the end, the public won, and Sabsabi’s Instagram post thanking the community began to be shared online.
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[1] As seen in an Instagram video post by Nguyen on @jamesnguyens 26 March 2025.
The exhibition at Monash University titled Flat Earth by Stolen Press and their collaborators Khaled Sabsabi and Eliza Taber was called off in March 2025. The postponement decision was reversed in May 2025. See Sian Cain, ‘Khaled Sabsabi says “common sense has prevailed” after Monash University allows exhibition to go ahead’, The Guardian, 22 May 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/may/22/khaled-sabsabi-monash-university-exhibition-stolon-press-ntwnfb (accessed 27 September 2025).
[2] From a conversation with James Nguyen on 27th June 2025.
[3] Josh Taylor, ‘Publication of Jewish creatives WhatsApp group lead to death threats, MP says,' The Guardian, 9 February 2025.
[4] From a conversation with Zoë Marni Robertson on 30 June 2025.