INDUSTRY WK 11: positive self-care for creatives
- May 7
- 3 min read
Week 11 explores the importance of sustaining wellbeing within creative practice. Artists and creative practitioners often operate within unstable economic systems shaped by irregular employment, emotional labour, financial insecurity, and constant pressure to remain productive and publicly visible. The topic also examined the impact of mental illness and chronic illness on creative lives, particularly how conditions relating to health, disability, and emotional wellbeing can influence artistic practice, professional sustainability, and access within the arts sector.
The discussion challenges the romanticised notion that suffering and exhaustion are necessary components of artistic success. Instead, contemporary discourse increasingly identifies burnout, stress, and emotional fatigue as outcomes of systemic precarity rather than individual weakness. Creative practitioners are often expected to balance continuous creative output with unpaid labour, self-promotion, funding applications, exhibition preparation, and unstable income streams. Consequently, sustaining wellbeing becomes connected to establishing boundaries, accessing support systems, developing financial literacy, and creating sustainable approaches to long-term creative practice.
Celebrating what has been learned also becomes an important form of self-recognition. Creative education often prioritises critical reflection on shortcomings or areas for development, but this topic instead encourages acknowledgement of growth, resilience, technical development, collaboration, and expanded professional understanding. Reflection allows creatives to recognise that sustaining a practice requires both artistic ambition and the capacity to care for oneself within demanding cultural systems.
In this interview, Jill Dawsey discusses the exhibition For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability in relation to disability studies, medical history, and contemporary art practice. Dawsey critiques the historical tendency of medicine to objectify disabled bodies, instead positioning disability as a lived and socially constructed experience shaped by systems of care, exclusion, and representation. The exhibition challenges dominant narratives surrounding illness and bodily "normality" by foregrounding artists whose works address vulnerability, survival, and agency. Importantly, Dawsey frames disability not as limitation, but as a perspective capable of reshaping cultural understanding, institutional practices, and the relationship between art, embodiment, and public discourse.
The Australian Association for the Arts (aarts) Creative Initiatives program focuses on supporting artists and creative practitioners through opportunities that encourage collaboration, professional development, and cultural engagement. Central to the organisation's mission is advancing "the rights of, and opportunities for, people with disability or who are d/Deaf to develop and sustain professional careers in the arts and have equitable access to arts, culture and screen." This positions accessibility and inclusion as structural priorities rather than secondary considerations.
Tracey Emin’s exhibition I Loved You Until the Morning positions painting as a direct and vulnerable response to illness, bodily trauma, and emotional endurance. Through autobiographical imagery, Emin confronts experiences of pain, intimacy, grief, and recovery, refusing idealised representations of the female body. The exhibition becomes significant within discussions surrounding disability and care because it frames the body not as stable or perfected, but as fragile, changing, and deeply human. Emin’s work challenges social discomfort surrounding illness and women’s health while asserting personal experience as a legitimate site of cultural and artistic knowledge. Care, in this context, emerges through honesty, visibility, and emotional exposure rather than concealment.
References:
Artforum 2025, Curator Jill Dawsey on Art, Medicine, and Disability at MCASD | UNDER THE COVER, YouTube video, viewed 6 May 2026, <https://youtu.be/VUlOW-b3MpQ?si=6uhzu9FNBUs9tNiy>. Artforum 2025, Jill Dawsey on For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability at MCASD San Diego, Artforum, viewed 6 May 2026, <https://www.artforum.com/video/jill-dawsey-on-for-dear-life-art-medicine-and-disability-at-mcasd-san-diego-1234725956/>. (Figure 3)
Australian Association for the Arts 2026, Creative Initiatives, aarts, viewed 6 May 2026, <https://aarts.net.au/creative-initiatives>. (Figure 4)
Davidson, M 2024, Tough Times Tips, Creative Plus Business, viewed 6 May 2026, <https://creativeplusbusiness.com/tough-times-tips>.
Georgiou, M 2025, Artist burnout is not a mental health issue – it is a labour issue, ArtsHub, viewed 6 May 2026, <https://www.artshub.com.au/news/opinions-analysis/artist-burnout-is-not-a-mental-health-issue-it-is-a-labour-issue-2650825>. Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego 2025, For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability | PST ART: Art & Science Collide, YouTube video, viewed 6 May 2025, <https://youtu.be/GkXAjQ3ERWc?si=a75gDNjbS8fiHQs5>. (Figure 1 & 2)
Yale Center for British Art 2025, Tracey Emin: I Loved You Until the Morning, YouTube, viewed 6 May 2026, <https://youtu.be/wNVhkRJHvYg?si=ixEkkbrYFKM-KSXR>. (Figure 5)
