Aboriginal art: it’s a complicated thing

This complexity appears to be an inoculation against criticism. There is a national deficiency of clear-eyed assessment of contemporary Aboriginal artists’ oeuvres, resulting in a severely limited language to assess, judge and understand works of art and their relationship to, and place within, the commercial art market. This limited critical examination has a major impact on the always intricate and often vexed Aboriginal art marketplace, resulting in very few sources of information or authority on works of art and consequently considerable opportunity for misinformation or ignorance. The result? The national narrative of Aboriginal art is often reduced to an accessible and digestible discussion of profitability; complexity and richness distilled to economics. This simplification conceals powerful questions about commerce in Aboriginal art, about its creative and cultural imperatives, its successes and its underbelly.

One of the biggest challenges in putting forward a topic as intricate as the intersection between commerce and Aboriginal artists is that for each example of unconscionable or illegal practice, there is a balancing example of collaboration or mutual benefit (even in these first paragraphs, each statement can be challenged; the sector’s diversity ensures that nothing is true for all Aboriginal artists, all of the time “ but there is enough wrong, enough of the time to worry many industry participants).

Unpacking the layers at work only builds the complexity “ the inter-cultural terrain and resulting fraught communications ensure that the already different starting points in any commercial transaction remain far apart. Vastly different concepts of finance mean that Aboriginal artists are often willing (or, by virtue of family obligation or personal circumstance, forced to be willing) participants in transactions that are grossly unfair; yet trying to assess or compare the decisions of worldviews as different as desert artist and consumer are confounding. Compounding this is the terminology itself: Aboriginal art covers such a diversity of practice, yet issues of unethical commercial practice are largely (but, of course, not always) the domain of remote community artists, particularly from desert regions and in direct proportion to the ‘fine art’ qualities of the artist and their art. As another dimension in the swirling mix, commenting on the market forces at work, as both a non-artist and non-Aboriginal person, opens the way to being sideswiped by a whole other set of criticism.

The absence of accessible, informed commentary on the Aboriginal art marketplace and the strength of the profitability narrative are two of the critical drivers of the industry’s imbalance, an instability with acute implications in the longer term for the ongoing inventiveness of artistic practice and the resulting livelihood choices in remote areas. Art creates critical pathways for some remote community residents; in an environment of intense marginalisation and economic disadvantage, the opportunity for equitable access to independent income, self employment, small business and the resultant nurturing of leadership and motivation is astounding, particularly as it is the only marketplace in which Aboriginal people enjoy an advantage. This enables individuals and communities to create a career or enterprise that succeeds because of its cultural distinctiveness, not despite it.