A new Aboriginal art sales service and community development organisation has been founded in Cairns, with a second office set to open in Alice Springs.
General Manager Tim Cram said four years of development had gone into the ARTSense business model, which focuses on providing existing art owners with an opportunity to on-sell work through an online gallery and also via partnerships with retail gallery spaces. ”At this point we don’t intend on opening a gallery anywhere in Australia,” says Cram. ”The logic behind this is we want to work with retail galleries, not against them.”
By focusing on existing art owners, Cram believes he has tapped into a niche in the market: ”Clients forever were asking ‘how do I sell this painting if the time ever comes’ … I very quickly realised on-sell services and support for pre existing art owners wasn’t widely available or promoted if at all.”
At present, ARTSense sources work via word of mouth, though a stringent selection process is in play, which Cram explains is due to quality and authenticity issues. ”Because we are on-selling artworks for private owners, original provenance and verification must be assured by the seller via either photographs or certificates of authenticity from the original place of purchase. This is passed onto the buyer … An artwork will be rejected for listing if insufficient evidence of provenance is provided or ARTSense is otherwise not satisfied with a painting’s authenticity.” Cram adds: ”We don’t discriminate against [poor] provenance, however provenance does reflect how a painting is valued.”
Alongside its retail operations, ARTSense will offer community development services to remote artists and communities in Western Australia, the Northern Territory & Queensland, including grant writing services, training and mentoring, website development and joint venture brokering. Cram says the long-term aim of these projects will be to ”develop fully functioning, sustainable art centres and support for arts management bodies that benefit the entire community”. He identifies training and employment, the involvement of non-artist members (such as with repairing a run-down art centre building) and the development of balanced income streams as three specific aims of these projects. ”We offer communities the training & support to manage their own art centres; [and offer] individuals the opportunity to be trained and employed by retail galleries, art centres and/or arts management bodies,” explains Cram. ”If need be, we have the capacity to assist communities in managing their art centres outright.”
