Is it finally over?

For the APY Art Centre Collective has been notified by the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations (ORIC) that it has concluded its investigation and Registrar Tricia Stroud has “decided to take no further action”. It was the last of four investigations into the First Nations marketing organisation, its hundreds of artists and its three commercial galleries, triggered by the publication of a video by The Australian newspaper in April 2023. This appeared to show a non-Indigenous assistant directing the painting of a work by celebrated artist Yaritji Young, who was not present. The artist would later deny that her art had been interfered with.

A spokesperson for ORIC said it was not appropriate for ORIC to comment on the nature of the matter investigated and “no adverse inference” should be drawn from the investigation concluding.

OK. A little history. My first story in this eleven article saga (there were actually 12, with one called ‘Not the APYACC’ because it was about the same Yaritji Young happily painting for a mob that had nothing to do with the APYACC) was on 13th April 2023 – more than 21 months ago. It read:

“Last Saturday’s ‘Weekend Australian’ was obviously confident that it had passed all possible legal hurdles to claim that five Anangu artists and six non-Indigenous staffers had reported seeing white staff interfere with artworks. Three-time Walkley Award winning journalist, Greg Bearup writes that he has seen a video appearing to show studio manager Rosie Palmer painting on senior artist Yaritji Young’s canvases. However, several of the claims were followed up by legal letters retracting those claims and a statement saying the APYACC strenuously denied that any of their artists were compromised.

“We believe our professional studios meet [the] highest standards of integrity and professionalism,” the statement said. “It is in no way interfering [with] the artist’s Tjukurpa (creation) or out of the ordinary for an art assistant to take part in this process … at the artist’s direction, Indigenous or otherwise.

“True industry experts understand the line between assistance at artists’ direction and interference with the artistic process and know that APYACC has never crossed this line. It is grossly offensive to the many hundreds of proud Anangu who work with APYACC to suggest otherwise, or that they would tolerate their Tjukurpa being interfered with”.

Despite such protestation, there have been the four enquiries since that publication. The first by the National Gallery (NGA) was necessary because an imminent artshow, Ngurra Pulka was exclusively sourced from the APYACC. Sadly, that enquiry – which cleared the exhibition’s paintings as “meeting the Provenance standards of the NGA” – was a black-letter judgement by two white lawyers who followed the limited brief commissioned by the NGA to perfection.

For the NGA had made it clear that its review would not assess:
o the broader ethics and workings of the First Nations’ art market;
o the significance of the Tjukurpa (cultural stories) of the 28 paintings; or
o whether individuals who contributed to the 28 paintings were entitled to do so under relevant First Nations cultural laws.

I, on the other hand, attempted to explain that such a non-Indigenous approach to such a contentious issue missed several key issues that I had understood from the work of anthropologist and remote art centre facilitator, Jennifer Loureide Biddle in her book ‘Breasts, Bodies, Canvas’. This 2007 work takes Biddle on a journey from Lajamanu with her Warlpiri women artists where the ‘market’ is anyone who’ll buy a canvas.

The notes of my original reading call it “a brilliant insight into the complexities of Indigenous art sale. For at the point of sale the canvas has no spirituality, despite the fact that, when it was being painted, it was intended in Biddle’s words to “bring to life to Country, Ancestors, people”. At sale time, it is simply part of the economy of obligation of traditional Aboriginal life; to make money for the artist’s relations and community”.

And it’s why I worried that the NGA enquiry could well miss this vital point by simply asking the artists, ex post facto, whether they’re happy to call the artworks theirs. They’re now in the market. Of course they’re happy. But were they really happy at the time to have their Jukurpa interpreted by a white hand holding the paintbrush without consulting them – if that’s what happened????

Could these concerns have been widespread throughout the industry? At various stages during this attenuated process, two senior figures around the art centre movement, Tim Acker and Luke Scholes expressed distress. So did the uber organisation for desert artists, Desart – which eventually joined with the three other uber groups covering most of the country to call for Skye O’Meara, who’d set up and runs the APYACC, to step down. Worse, the Indigenous Art Code, the official ethical organisation for First Nations art, terminated the APYACC’s membership.

So another enquiry was established by Arts Ministers in SA, in the NT and Federal Minister Tony Burke. But, in total confusion, it produced an unpublished report, saying it didn’t have the powers to take action, but it did have “sufficient evidence to refer (undisclosed) matters to appropriate regulatory bodies”. These were the consumer affairs body, the ACCC and the body governing Indigenous-run organisations, ORIC. In July last year we learnt that “consumer law had not been breached”, and now ORIC has said the same for its rules of management.

So unsatisfactory. More so now that quesions from me about publication of the three Ministers’ report received the following response from the SA Arts Minister’s media advisor:

“There is no report. The independent panel referred evidence to ORIC and the ACCC for further investigation. Those investigations have now been resolved.”

But there was ‘evidence’ – according to some sources, of wrongdoing in nine different categories. Surely a worried art sector – and there are almost a hundred remote art centres that need to consider the governance implications of this saga – deserves to have that made public.

But, unsurprisingly, the APYCC board chair Sandra Pumani announced that the finding had come as a relief after almost two years of investigations. “We was honest, we was open to everyone and anything,” Ms Pumani said.

And the APYACC general manager Skye O’Meara said the collective and its leadership was feeling stronger than ever. “We’ve been examined to an inch of our lives and we have upheld, absolutely,” she said. “Every allegation that was aimed at us has been proven to be false and to be lies, and so, tell me another organisation in Australia that has been able to stand up to that”. O’Meara added that the art collective leadership would now like to see its membership of the Indigenous Art Code reinstated and a Senate inquiry into possible exploitation of artists in the First Nations art industry.

“The art centres are the only means of accessing non-government income in the APY Lands,” explained O’Meara. “They’re a place where culture is celebrated and instructed, where elders teach young people … it’s time for government to look at protecting these deeply important vehicles that are the engine room of the most celebrated art-making that’s coming from Australia to international audiences as well”.

All true. Though clearly any enquiry into such fraught cross-cultural issues is very hard to set up appropriately. The questions asked, the ‘experts’ commissioned, the powers of investigation given them, the remoteness of many situations, and the fact that remote art centres continue to have non-Indigenous managers in the face of inter-tribal rivalries – all these matters stand in the way of truly satisfactory verdicts.

And the verdict in the APYACC’s case is, belatedly, the old Scottish one of ‘not proven’, rather than acquitted. They are surely in a situation comparable to the late Cardinal Pell’s where the High Court found “there was a significant chance that an innocent person had been convicted because the evidence used to convict him did not establish his guilt to the required standard of proof”.

And that level of uncertainty is bad for everyone involved.

But perhaps the National Gallery is celebrating this ‘win’ by opening an APYCC exhibition on 22nd February. Rather than paintings, though, it’s in the safer territory of spears. Kulata Tjuta: Tirkilpa is the largest and most significant installation of the culturally important and visually spectacular Kulata Tjuta (Many Spears) Project. Like others in the series, it is rooted in age-old traditions and senior men’s knowledge and is designed to keep Country and culture strong by passing their skills on to young men.